a demigoddess. Weakened by a poisoned blade.” His voice sounded hollow to him, wooden. “She kept me drugged while she was holding me and regularly came to torment me.”
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her more than that.
The soft light in her eyes said she understood why he wouldn’t continue, and this time when she reached for him, he didn’t move to evade her. He accepted her touch, savouring the light caress of her fingers over his left biceps when that same touch from another had sickened and repulsed him.
Her fingers drifted off him, her hand falling to her side, and an awkward look settled on her face before she gazed down at her other hand and the waterskin she held in it.
“They would bring me water in this every few days.” She lifted the leather pouch and looked at it, a light in her eyes that told him what a relief it had been for her to have water. “A sip of it was like ambrosia… even though it was filthy.”
Thanatos didn’t like the sound of that. When he had been held, the demigoddess and her minions had given him liquid that had contained a drug. It had kept him weak, stripping him of his powers. When he had realised what the water contained, he had tried to refuse it, and they had forced it down him instead.
“Where did you get that waterskin?” He held his hand out to her and she tucked it to her chest, holding it as protectively as she had when they had first met.
“It is the one they used to give me water… only a bare sip of it whenever I was parched… but it restored me.” She clutched it more tightly when he rolled his fingers and gave her a hard look, silently demanding she hand it over.
“I only want to check it.” He wanted to toss the damned thing away, and he hadn’t even found any proof it was drugged yet.
No. He had proof. The way she protected the waterskin was proof enough. She feared he would take this water and it wasn’t because she was thirsty. It was because she was addicted to it and how it made her feel.
She reluctantly held it out to him. He took it and opened it, brought it to his nose and sniffed it, and growled when he smelled the barest hint of something in it.
“What’s wrong?” She looked as if she wanted to reach for the waterskin, fear emerging in her blue eyes as she lifted her hand slightly.
“It is not just water. They were drugging you.” He turned the pouch on its head, pouring the water out, and refused to feel bad about it as she gasped and lunged for it.
She looked ready to lash out at him as her eyes snapped to lock with his, but as the last drops of water soaked into the black dirt near her bare feet, the anger he could sense in her faded. She looked down at the damp patch and sighed.
“I think this water inhibited your powers, combined with the power woven into your cage to ensure you were not aware of them, and kept you complacent to a degree.” When he offered the empty waterskin to her, she took it.
“Is this why I cannot teleport too?” She lifted the pouch and frowned at it.
“No.” Thanatos shook his head. “I think it is something about this realm that prevents us from teleporting. Do not worry though. I recognise this tunnel and the last cavern we passed through. We are heading in the right direction, back the way I came to find you.”
She murmured, “To save me.”
He chuckled at that. “It turned out you didn’t need saving. You didn’t need me after all.”
She raised her eyes to meet his and the softness in them unnerved him, had him pulling his barriers back up and cursing himself for lowering them around her—around a female.
Her softly spoken words undid him, tore down the walls and shook him to his core.
“I do need you, Thanatos.”
Chapter 13
Thanatos had fallen quiet. Calindria glanced back at him as she walked, crossing the space between two great mountain ranges. He refused to look at her, kept his silver eyes on the ground. She wasn’t sure how long they had been walking like this—him refusing to speak, and her unsure how to break this silence.
Unsure what she had done wrong.
She held back a sigh and looked up at the sky, watching the thick black