pain. He had been wrong after all.
He had been wrong to take her like that, when he should have been gentle with her, should have reined in his need enough to think clearly and realise she would be untouched.
“If Hades kills me, then I deserve it.” Although he wasn’t sure he would live to make it back to Hades for judgement of his sins.
Calindria glared back at him as he emerged from the tunnel on the other side of the mountain, looking close to killing him herself.
“I told you to leave me alone,” she barked.
He wasn’t surprised when vines shot up from the gritty black ground to twine around his legs, grimaced when they tightened and felt as if they might snap his bones like twigs.
She was getting good at controlling one power at least. He worried that she might get good at controlling the other one and prove him wrong about his theory that she couldn’t use it to harm him with a touch.
“I told you that I am sorry.” He brought his blade down, carefully hacking at the vine so he didn’t cut his legs. It tightened further and he grimaced, his lips drawing back off his teeth as pain burned in his right tibia. His voice was strained as he uttered, “Calindria.”
She didn’t look back at him, but the vine did loosen.
Maybe there was hope for him after all.
How long could she hold on to this anger towards him? Gods, if it was as long as he deserved, then that would be forever. As it was, the two days she had been punishing him like this felt like an eternity. He didn’t want to imagine another two like this, let alone thousands and thousands of them.
He freed himself of the vine and started after her.
“You never told me why you were sorry.” She scowled over her shoulder at him, her eyes narrowing with the anger he could sense in her.
A wall of black vines shot up between them.
This time, it was only a few feet wide and he easily walked around it. He scanned the valley as he did so, keeping an eye out for danger. This one wasn’t empty. There were black trees fringing the edges of the valley and a wide fissure in the middle of it. A glow emanated from that fracture and he suspected that deep in the crack was a river of lava. It wasn’t the only one either. He spied a few more rivers snaking down the mountains, running into crevasses he couldn’t quite make out at this distance.
For what felt like the millionth time, Thanatos warred with himself. Calindria deserved an explanation, and part of him wanted to give her one, wanted to bare his soul to her and tell her of his past, but the rest of him kept him silent. He couldn’t tell her what had happened to him, how the demigoddess—the silver-haired female she had apparently seen too—had held him and abused him. He didn’t want her to know about the shameful things he had done when under the influence of the drugs they had fed him to break him.
So he just said, “Everything. I am sorry for everything.”
Calindria cast him a withering glare that said it wasn’t a good enough explanation for how he had treated her, and the part of him he didn’t want to listen to said to lie to her and tell her that he feared her father’s retribution and that was why he hadn’t defiled her with his seed.
He couldn’t lie to her though.
Would never lie to her.
She had spent too many years in this realm, being shown lies, being tricked. She deserved better from him. Gods, she deserved better than him.
He was under no illusion about that. When he got her back to her family, they would part ways. He would return to his castle and his solitary life where he belonged, and she would be with those who loved her.
His step faltered and he stared at her back.
Those who loved her.
He rubbed his eyes when they stung and misted, blamed the grit and the dry air. There was a breeze that constantly picked it up and swirled it at him and some must have gotten in his eyes.
She sighed softly, and for the first time since he had tried to ruin everything between them, he felt close to easing her anger, to making her see that he regretted what he had done and that he would try not to do