in trouble, alone and having to fend off hordes of those Keres.
Her heart clenched at the thought, flooding her with a need to go back to him.
“Come, my lady.” The Messenger’s voice echoed along the tunnel, sending a chill skating down her spine. “You must forget the god.”
“Must I?” She frowned at the male’s back. “Who are you to say what I must or must not do?”
“I am the one taking care of you now.” He looked back at her, his frown unmistakable this time, together with the sharp edge to his mismatched eyes. “You will do best to obey me.”
“Obey you?” She scowled at him now. “I obey no one, especially not a servant.”
“Servant?” He scoffed and turned on her, a wild look in his eyes. “I am the one who saved you from this place. I am the one who has searched for you for centuries. I am the one you will be grateful to and not that god.”
She backed off a step, her pulse picking up speed as she stared at him. Thanatos had been right about this male. He wanted her for himself, but she didn’t want him. She wanted Thanatos.
She loved Thanatos.
Gods, she had made a terrible mistake.
“Do not come near me, fiend,” she spat and held her hands up.
His expression blackened, a glow lighting his one green and one blue irises. “She promised we would be together if I got you away from that god of death, and we will be together.”
“She?” Calindria swallowed hard and started backing away from him as he advanced on her, bumped into a rock and edged around it, her breaths coming faster. “Who is she?”
“You will meet her soon enough.” He chuckled, the sound holding a crazed edge. “Although, you met her already… around six hundred years ago. I should have done things this way sooner. You could have been mine all this time.”
“Yours?” she barked. “Never. I will never be yours.”
He bared his teeth at her and lunged for her, and she twisted away from him, shrieked as he caught hold of her hand. She threw a panicked glance over her shoulder as her stomach somersaulted, sure her touch would be harming him.
Only there was no trace of pain or fear in his eyes. Only anger and lust.
She looked down at his hand.
His gloved hand.
A shiver traipsed down her spine. She needed skin contact for her power to work. That was the reason he had put the gloves on. He knew about her power. He was with the enemy, a traitor, just as Thanatos had warned her.
Gods, she had been an idiot to trust this male.
He twisted her arm behind her back and she yelped as her shoulder burned, trembled as he pressed against her back and brought the waterskin that had hung from his waist to her lips.
“Drink,” he growled into her ear, bringing her arm up higher against her back, ripping a pained cry from her. He tried to tip the water into her mouth and she closed her lips, pressing them firmly together. “I will make you forget that god. You will be mine.”
He released her arm and grabbed her jaw, squeezed his fingers between her teeth and attempted to prise her mouth open. She couldn’t let him do it. She couldn’t let him drug her. She wouldn’t be strong enough to stop him from hurting her then.
She reared her head back as hard and fast as she could.
He bellowed as her head connected with his nose and lost his grip on her. She turned and kneed him hard between his legs, and screwed her face up and denied the guilt as she placed her bare palms against his cheeks.
He jerked backwards, falling against the rocks.
Calindria turned and ran.
Didn’t look back as his screams of rage and pain tore through the tunnel.
Chapter 21
Calindria didn’t slow even as she made it to the cavern. She skidded and slipped her way down the incline that led from the higher section of it to the lower one. Her bare feet hit the dirt and she pushed off, breathing hard, every limb trembling as the agonised sounds continued to echo along the tunnel behind her.
Had her touch worked?
She felt sick at the thought it might have, that the Messenger was being consumed by the same ashy darkness that had spread from her handprints on the guard. No, she couldn’t feel bad about this. It had been him or her. If she hadn’t unleashed her power on him, then