looked over her shoulder in that direction, trying to see what he had. There was a shallow indent in the rock, but it didn’t appear to be a tunnel. She turned and strode towards it, still sucking her finger, and frowned as she saw he was right. What she had thought was only an alcove in the black rock was in fact a tunnel. It banked right at the entrance, the left side of it all she had been able to see from a distance, but opened up just behind the wall of the cavern.
She followed it.
Deeply aware of the towering dark god who entered behind her, his gaze locked on her back, sending heat skittering over her skin.
And the dangerous path she was treading, one that might lead to her trusting him.
One that already had her wanting him.
Chapter 6
Calindria was doing her best to maintain the distance between them. Thanatos was doing his best to narrow it down.
“Your brother is much like you.” He had been talking about her family non-stop for the last mile, as if facts about them would change how she felt.
She hated the fact it was changing how she felt.
“How so?” She didn’t look back at him, focused on her footing because she was damned if she was falling from this narrow ledge and plummeting into the ravine far below. She wouldn’t die here in this wretched realm, not after she had survived for so long and had finally found her freedom.
“Spirited. Wild.” He said those words as if they were disgusting to him. “Reckless.”
She stopped dead, leaned her back into the rough wall of the cliff that had been waiting for them at the end of the last tunnel, and frowned at Thanatos. Reckless. Something she had been once, and to her detriment and that of her brother. She saw him die again, saw the one who had taken them slit his throat before her and felt powerless to stop it just as she had back then.
Calindria closed her eyes against it, drew down a shuddering breath and held it as she sought calm, hoping it would erase the images from her mind.
“I’m not… I was… I’m not like that.” She tensed her fingers against the rock beside her, gripping it tightly as pain welled inside her, tore her down all over again and left her feeling as if she was bleeding. “Not anymore.”
She moved on before he could say anything, shuffling forwards along the ledge, her focus on the point where it broadened. She couldn’t shake what he had said though. Not the part about her being reckless, because he was wrong about that. The part about her being spirited and wild.
Was that such a bad thing?
To be wild was to be free.
To be spirited was to not let events in her life bring her down.
She thought about Thanatos, trying those words on him for size, and realised they didn’t fit him. He wasn’t spirited. He wasn’t wild. He was controlled. Disciplined. Perhaps he had said what he had with an air of disgust because being like her was incomprehensible to him. He had already revealed he was very loyal to her father, that he served another with pride rather than contempt towards the perceived difference in their statuses. She was beginning to feel Thanatos wasn’t just loyal. He was a male with rigid principles, one who took nothing lightly.
Calindria found being like that incomprehensible. She had been trapped in a cage for so long, but she had never allowed it to break her. She had thought of the future, had held on to her dream and had known one day she would fulfil it. She would live in a bright, verdant world, with room to roam as much as she wanted.
A world where no one would bother her.
She stepped onto the wider ledge, relieved to leave the treacherous one behind, and turned her back to Thanatos.
Cursed.
Ahead of her, the broad slab of rock ended abruptly. She hurried to the edge, stopping a few feet back from it, and scowled at the enormous drop into darkness. There had to be another ledge she could use to navigate this abyss. She peered left and then right. There was not. She planted her hands on her hips and huffed as she surveyed the ravine. It was at least twenty feet to the other side, probably more. There was no way she could leap it.
“I will have to fly you over.” Thanatos stopped a short distance