a corona of blue fire ignited around them.
She could read his thoughts in those eyes that seared her.
He was thinking about bathing with her.
She was thinking about it too, but not in the way he was. She had forgiven him, but she wasn’t ready to take that leap again with him. Not yet. Not when she still hurt from the way he had reacted last time.
Calindria led him back through the maze of the canyon, aware of his gaze on her, how it lingered on her clothing. She didn’t want to look at the knee-length tunic, because it would only lead to her thinking about what she had done. It had been her or the Messenger, and she had done what she’d had to do. There was no point in dwelling on it.
She kept telling herself that but it didn’t help.
“Does it hurt?” Thanatos croaked behind her.
She shook her head. “Surprisingly, it doesn’t. It did, but it no longer does.”
She touched her side and it didn’t even sting.
“Maybe I heal quickly?” She looked over her shoulder at Thanatos as they reached the tunnel, caught the guilt in his silver eyes before he averted them.
He sighed. “You would not have needed to heal if I had not left you.”
She paused and turned to him, pressed her hands to his dirty bare chest and gazed up into his eyes. He refused to look at her.
“You cannot know that.” She looked beyond him to the canyon. “We would have come this way. The dragons were waiting for prey to come along. There is every chance I might have ended up wounded even with you on hand to fight them.”
He shrugged stiffly and his gaze leaped to her side as his brow furrowed. “Come. I want to see that wound.”
He wanted to take care of it. She could see it in his eyes. He wanted to tend to her as she had to him, and for some reason, it unsettled him. Because she had been hurt and he felt responsible, feared retribution for it, or because he wasn’t used to this—wanting to take care of another? By his account, he had been alone a long time. Long enough to forget what it felt like to want to look after another person, to care about their wellbeing?
It had been a long time for her too, but she hadn’t forgotten the need to take care of others, how it had driven her whenever her brothers had been hurt, especially when the brother in question was her twin.
Thanatos led her to the pool, and she didn’t stop him when he unbuttoned her tunic and set it aside. He glared down at the wound on her hip and she looked there too.
The injury hadn’t healed as much as she had imagined, was a gaping circle on her side that was inky dark against her skin. He gently brushed his fingers over her hip just below it.
“Does it hurt?” His gaze darted to hers, his black eyebrows furrowing again.
She shook her head.
Thanatos took hold of her hand and she resisted him when he tried to tug her towards the pool. He looked back at her.
“I will bathe with you, to clean our wounds, but nothing else is going to happen.” She hated the hurt that welled in his eyes as she said that, felt a pressing need to take it away. “I… what you did still hurts… and I think it is best if we don’t do anything until I know… until I know why you find it so hard to trust me when we are together like that.”
His throat worked on a hard swallow and the hurt in his eyes that had been turning to relief turned to panic instead.
Calindria brushed her hand over his chest, into the deep valley between the hard slabs of his pectorals, and settled it right above his heart. “I will not rush you, Thanatos. I will not judge you, either. When you are ready, you can tell me everything.”
The fear in his eyes lingered and she had the feeling he hadn’t believed her when she had sworn she wouldn’t judge him. Was what happened to him so terrible that he thought she would look at him differently if she knew about it? Her heart ached as it slowly dawned on her. He thought she would turn her back on him. He thought that whatever he had been through would make him appear weak to her eyes, a male not worthy of her