sense of hopelessness, of sorrow that seemed to fill her up inside and weigh her down. “You would say that. You bring death too. What’s it like being the god of death?”
He hiked his shoulders stiffly, his face settling in placid lines that held a hint of pride, an expression that looked a lot like a mask to her, one worn to cover some serious hurt. “I am respected.”
Calindria read the other meaning in that word. He was feared.
“Do you have many friends?” She pursed her lips and looked at the ceiling of the cavern, barely making out a few of the heavy spikes of rock that clung to it. The darkness was strong here. “I think I had friends once, but I do not remember. My brothers were my friends… perhaps.”
Maybe she had wanted to have friends. She had a notion she had tried to make some once, but it hadn’t gone well. As soon as they had learned who her father was, they had avoided her.
Thanatos gruffly bit out, “I have no need of friends. I have siblings.”
“Your twin. Hypnos.”
He glared at the fire. “I have not seen him in some time now. We drifted apart.”
And it looked as if he regretted it, felt guilty about it for some reason.
“Did something happen between you?” She refused to stop questioning him when he turned his glare on her.
“Something happened, but not between us. It is my fault, and I do not wish to speak of it.” Blue fire swallowed the silver in his irises, the sense of darkness he constantly emitted growing stronger as his mouth set in a hard line and his black eyebrows drew down into a deep frown. “It is not your business.”
“Very well. I will not press you to talk of it. Do you have other siblings? You mentioned them in plural.”
He nodded and averted his gaze.
“I have many siblings. Erebus often summons my mother for… disgusting things. She bears him many children, as if the ones she has are not enough. So you see, I have no need for friends when I cannot escape my constantly expanding family. Still… sometimes, family is enough. Family can be trusted…” He scoffed and chuckled in a cold, empty way. “I was mistaken in that. Even family cannot be trusted.”
The way he stood and brushed his backside down warned her that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and that he wasn’t speaking about his twin or how they had drifted apart this time. Had his other siblings betrayed him in some way? She wanted to know about that, just as she wanted to know why he felt guilty about his relationship with his twin, Hypnos.
Why he felt responsible for what had happened between them.
Why he regretted it.
And why he couldn’t trust anyone.
Chapter 11
Calindria didn’t push Thanatos for answers, didn’t have the heart to press him to tell her more about himself and the things that had happened between him and Hypnos, and his family. She stood and watched as he kicked dirt over the fire and scattered the logs, covering their tracks, and searched for another topic of conversation, determined to keep him talking now.
She had been alone too long, had thought she had been happy that way, that she didn’t need anyone anymore, but spending time with Thanatos had opened her eyes. She had been lonely, and now she craved company, wanted to talk for the first time in centuries, wanted to know everything she had missed and all the things she had forgotten.
No, she didn’t just crave company. Not anyone could satisfy this need inside her. She craved Thanatos’s company. The sound of his bass voice teasing her ears. The brush of his gaze over her. The way he constantly watched out for her. A craving that felt dangerous, but too right to deny.
She looked around them at the trees, at the brambles that laced some of them together, and the prickly cones that hung from some of the branches, marvelling that she had been the one to change this landscape. To breathe a strange sort of life back into it.
Thanatos’s gaze tracked her, searing her back as she went to one tree and twisted a cone from it, and tested the fine teeth of the spines that formed its oval shape. She turned back to Thanatos and brushed her hair with it, flinching at each knot she found and tried to untangle, deeply aware of what she must look like to him. A