saw.
She wasn’t going to put up with this overbearing male any longer.
“If I am not dead, then I must be alive, and that means I am still a part of my family. Hades is still my father. The same Hades who is your god-king. Therefore, you should respect me, but you do not. You do not seem to respect anyone, especially females.” She didn’t stop walking until they were toe to toe, struggled to hold her nerve as he glowered down at her, all dangerous darkness as his eyes shone with blue fire and the air around him grew blissfully cold.
Her neck ached from tilting her head back far enough to meet his gaze and being this close to him made her deeply aware of the difference in their sizes. Thanatos dwarfed her. He had to be at least thirteen, maybe fifteen, inches taller than her, and his arms were thicker than her thighs, his broad chest seeming impossibly wide, filling her peripheral vision.
Calindria stood her ground, even when her instincts commanded her to back off, because she was no match for this warrior.
She gentled her tone as her anger slowly abated, replaced with a need to know more about him, born of a yearning to understand him. “Why do you hate company, Thanatos? You despise it so much you drove your own twin away from you. You hate it so much you live in a castle alone with servants you made just so you don’t need to be near another living soul. You must be lonely. Are you not lonely?”
He gnashed his teeth at her and growled as he leaned towards her, his immense body crowding her as he spread his wings. Threatening her. She had struck a nerve then, hitting too close to the truth.
Thanatos was lonely, but he refused to admit it.
Why?
It dawned on her that he viewed it as a weakness.
She didn’t.
If he asked her, she would freely admit that she had been lonely. Part of her still felt that way, even with Thanatos’s company. He was so distant from her at times, holding himself away from her even when they were only feet apart. There was a chasm between them, or a wall, one so high she could never dream of scaling it.
So high it would keep anyone out.
And for some reason, that made her feel sad.
She looked up into his eyes, her anger abating as his lingered, as he held on to his fury as he did whatever pain had made him close himself off from everyone, even his family. She wanted to reach up and frame his face with her hands, but he wouldn’t welcome the touch. He would strike at her, lashing out from hurt, in a need to defend himself against a perceived threat.
She wasn’t a threat to him.
But she felt he would never see that. He would never trust her, no matter how far they travelled together, no matter how long they spent with each other. She would do better to give up on him now, to cast aside any foolish notion she’d had that they could be friends, or possibly something more.
The softer part of her, the side of her that used to be dominant in her personality, would have her laughing and whiling away her days in the pursuit of fun, told her to give up on him. Thanatos would only hurt her if she let him get any closer to her.
The darker side of her, the one that had come to the fore during her captivity, a shield that had protected that sliver of light, bared fangs and snarled at her to not give up, to never give in.
Thanatos would surrender to her.
She wanted him, and that meant one thing.
He would be hers.
Thanatos turned on his heel and stalked away from her.
Calindria stared at his back, at his wings, enjoying the fierce wave of possessiveness that crashed over her and almost tore a growl from her lips.
A wall stood between her and what she wanted.
A wall so high she couldn’t scale it.
But there was more than one way to reach the other side and her prize—Thanatos’s heart.
She would break the wall down instead.
Chapter 14
Thanatos had been in a bad enough mood before Calindria had revealed there was a fire inside her, one that was as dark and powerful as that which her father commanded. Her outburst had taken him aback, the sight of her all riled up and angry with him, and the fact she had pulled