dared to try anything, Thanatos was sure she would put him in his place.
The greater threat to her had been the demigoddess. The female was wily and strong, could easily hurt Calindria and not only physically. The bitch had a barbed tongue, one he was sure she would unleash on his female, and he knew exactly what she would tell Calindria.
His dirtiest, darkest secrets.
The things he had never told anyone. The things that had spawned the shame that constantly ate away at him, haunted him in his sleep and had him waking in a cold sweat each morning. If he could scour away that part of his life, scrub it from his memories even, he would do it in a heartbeat, no matter the cost. Mnemosyne could demand anything and he would give it to the goddess of memory in exchange for being freed of the sickening things he had done while under the influence of the drugs.
He should have been stronger.
He should have found the will to carry on resisting somehow.
It had been impossible though. He had been heavily drugged, drained of his strength and his will by his captivity, worn down and desperate enough that he had given up for only a moment, but it had been enough. The drugs had taken hold of him then and lured him into a haze, made his skin too tight and hot, veiled everything in a hunger he had needed to sate for fear it would consume and destroy him if he didn’t. The moment the demigoddess had walked into the room that night, he had seized her and the opportunity to slake his lust.
That didn’t make it any easier for him to stomach.
It didn’t make the memories of that night any less repulsive or shameful.
The anger in his veins exploded into a rage that swept through him, had him flashing his teeth and growling as the demigoddess appeared again, materialising on a bluff on the side of the mountain ahead of him. She flicked her silver hair over her shoulder and the wind caught it, making it stream across her right shoulder.
Thanatos beat his wings and flew at her, burning with a need to catch her. She would suffer far worse than he ever had once he got his hands on her.
The second he was within twenty feet of her, she smiled and disappeared. He growled, his mood turning darker. She was taunting him, could use the power to teleport in this realm when it was locked away from him, flitted like a ghost from place to place, sending him in circles.
His normally dull senses sparked with a warning and he twisted to his left and looked down, spotted her running across the flat valley floor there, sprinting towards a forest of black dead trees. If he let her reach them, it would be hard for him to attack her. He would be forced to land and would be vulnerable. She could have any number of allies waiting in that forest for him to make the mistake of touching down.
So he intended to capture her before she reached it.
He swooped down, pinning his onyx feathered wings against his back, picking up speed until everything was a blur around him, only his prey in focus as he shot towards her. She glanced over her shoulder, her lilac eyes widening as she spotted him closing in on her.
Disappeared.
Damn her.
He drew to an abrupt halt in the air and searched for her and spied her on the mountain. He shot towards her and she teleported again, appearing in the next valley. She ran this time and he frowned as he looked ahead of her and saw the ruins of a building there.
Dread settled in his stomach as he stared at that pile of black stones that hugged a sweeping curve in the mountains.
He knew that place.
He swallowed the bile that rose into his throat, tried to shut out the voices that echoed in his mind and shun the vile sensation of hands on his skin, gripping and clutching him.
The demigoddess stopped and looked back at him, but he shook his head. He would not follow her there. She meant to capture him again. He was right about her. She was with the enemy and she ruled this realm, had been responsible for Calindria’s captivity in it.
He glared at her back.
Her power had grown since she had held him captive or perhaps it was the realm that had grown more powerful and she had