She spat in his face.
He growled, flashing his teeth, and wiped it away with a dirty rag. “Bitch.”
He strode past her, tucking the rag into the waist of his leathers on the same side as his waterskin. He pulled a pair of thick gloves from the other side of his trousers and tugged them on as he stopped beside the heavy wheel that the chain of her cage was attached to and kicked the lever.
The chain unfurled, rattling loudly as it thundered through the two pulleys mounted on the ceiling of the cavern, and she shrieked as her cage crashed into the ground, the impact shaking every bone in her body. Her head smacked against the bars and she breathed hard, fighting a wave of nausea. It passed quickly as she realised she had landed with her head close to where the dark-haired brute had tipped his water.
She scrambled onto her knees and tried to press her head between the bars to suck on the ground, but the door of her cage creaked open and the redhead fisted her hair. She gasped and reached up, grabbed his gloved hand in both of hers and flailed as he pulled her from the cage.
Her heart thundered as he dragged her across the ground, her bare feet bouncing off it as she tried to find some purchase and fight the male.
“Can touch you all I want if he doesn’t know about it.”
“No,” she gasped. “Please. I didn’t—”
He lifted her off the ground by her hair and threw her past him, and she grunted as she slammed into a rock in a shadowy alcove. The male lunged for her. Darkness surged through her, panic making it rise swiftly to the fore, and she growled as she shook off the blow and reacted on instinct. Everything seemed to slow and she felt as if she was watching herself from outside her body, as if something else was in control of her, as she kicked off.
She slammed into the male, her slender weight no match for him. She didn’t even knock him backwards. He made another grab for her and she batted his hand away, bared short fangs as she exploded towards him.
Managed to grab his arms.
She went to headbutt him and stilled as he howled in pain as if she had struck him already. He reared back and easily dislodged her as she tried to figure out what was happening. Her eyes widened as he rubbed at his bare arms, as she looked at them.
Her stomach turned.
His skin was black where she had touched him, flesh flaking as if she had burned him, and onyx threads snaked outwards from those two points, spreading the darkness across his flesh as he desperately battled it.
She blinked hard, shocked to her core, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Her head lifted as he fell and she looked around her at the cavern.
Unable to believe she was free.
As he rolled on the ground, crying out in agony, she hurled herself into action, aware she had only moments before the dark-haired guard came to see what all the noise was about. She grabbed the full waterskin from his waist together with the dirty rag and tried to run, tripping her way across the floor of the enormous cavern. Her muscles burned with each stride, but she forced herself to keep moving, and not look back.
Sickness washed through her as the warrior cried out again, as that bellow of pain suddenly cut off.
She hurried into the darkness, into a tunnel she had often stared at during her captivity, not slowing until she was deep in the twisting labyrinth and sure the other guard wouldn’t find her.
Her eyes fell to her left hand as she slowed to a walk, the sickness brewing again as her mind filled with an image of the male she had touched—a male she had somehow harmed with only that touch. The darkness within her writhed, but it wasn’t restless this time.
It was sated.
Fear trickled through her. Fear of this newfound power. Fear of what lay ahead of her.
But it was nothing compared with the renewed sense of determination that flowed into her as she mused her dark power.
A power she could use to have her revenge.
She lifted her head and stared at the route before her as she tucked the waterskin beneath her arm and wrapped the dirty rag around her injured hand, tying it tightly to stem the flow of blood. Her fear fell away as she followed the narrow tunnel, picking her way around jagged black stalactites and stalagmites that joined the ground to the ceiling in places like dreadful fangs.
Her mission was finally beginning.
She was going to find the male who had killed her twin and avenge him.
And then she was going to find her family.
And when she did, they would die.
Chapter 2
Thanatos ducked beneath a dip in the roof of the tunnel, bracing his hand against the onyx rock as he worked his way downwards, watching his footing. He grimaced, lips pulling taut as the tops of his black wings knocked against the rough ceiling and caught on the protrusion of rock. He ducked lower, almost on his backside, and hunched forwards, easing his wings past the obstruction.
Maybe continuing along this path had been a mistake.
He probably should have turned back the moment the tunnel had started to narrow, picking another route to explore and chart in his mind.
Behind him, something chittered, as if mocking him.
He huffed and gripped the wall, fingers tight in the holds he found as he carefully navigated the steep slope. He hoped to the gods it opened out again soon and didn’t get any narrower. Fitting his seven-foot-two frame into small spaces was difficult enough at the best of times, but this was beginning to move past difficult into impossible territory.
A little like his mission.
Four years of searching and he had nothing to show for it, and his god-king, Hades, was growing impatient. Thanatos had charted realm after realm at the very edges of the Underworld, places beyond the sight of his god-king, seeking the one where Hades’s only daughter was being held.
With only a description of what Hades’s oldest son had seen in the memories of another to go on.
Thanatos raked his free hand through his damp onyx hair and exhaled hard.
He was beginning to doubt those memories, but every meeting he had with Hades and his sons had him coming away with a renewed sense of determination to complete the mission Hades had entrusted him with and find Calindria.
It wasn’t only the thought of pleasing his god-king that had him scouring uncharted lands day after day without a break though, refusing to admit defeat.
It was the toll he could see those days were taking on his god-queen, Persephone. Now that they knew Calindria’s soul had form, the gentle goddess needed her daughter back, a child she had mourned for almost six centuries.
A girl who had been ruthlessly murdered in front of her twin, Calistos.
His king and queen had believed her soul lost forever when it hadn’t passed through the veil to reach Hades for judgement. Now, they had entrusted him with her rescue, and he would do all in his power to bring her back to them.
Because she fell under his domain.
As god of death, it was his duty to reap the souls of the dying when their allotted time in this world ended, only he had never been summoned to separate Calindria’s soul from her body, as he should have been, and her soul had never passed on to Hades. Thanatos pondered that, for what he was sure was the millionth time, as the path levelled out and the tunnel thankfully widened. If she was dead, lingering in the place between worlds where he ruled, he should be able to feel her as he could others who moved through the veil.
Only he couldn’t.
He had tried. He had tried so many times and in all the ways he could think of to get a fix on her location, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t feel her.
The tunnel opened out into a cavern with a jagged ceiling only thirty feet above him that dipped lower in places, great pillars of rock joining it to the uneven ground. He kept a wary eye on the shadows as things moved in them, chittering to each other, wanting to avoid another encounter with some of the local wildlife. The largest bats in the mortal world had nothing on the leather-winged black beasts that called
The first time Thanatos had encountered them, he had accidentally disturbed a large nest of them, and they had descended on him as one, ripping at his feathers and clawing his bare arms and chest. They had forced him to retreat and return to his castle to heal.
Something he had to do on foot or wing since there was a strange power over this wild land, one that stopped him from teleporting.
That power had strengthened his feeling that he was on the right track at last. It blanketed the entire realm, hindering him by not only stopping him from teleporting in and out but by dampening his senses too. He could feel things if he focused, but it was as if there was some kind of interference.
It made him feel that Calindria was here and the reason he couldn’t feel her was because of that interference. This realm shielded her somehow, making it impossible for him to sense her.
A power that didn’t seem natural to him.
Someone had taken great pains to ensure no one found Calindria. The one who had taken her or one among the enemy he had fought alongside the sons of Hades four years ago? That enemy had contained not only those of the daemon breeds, but demigods, gods and goddesses too.
A rebellion Hades’s sons had crushed, restoring peace in the Underworld.
Thanatos meandered around sharp spikes of black rock that jutted from the floor, his gaze scanning the route ahead of him, looking for an exit. Water dripped somewhere, the sound echoing around the cavern, punctuating his thoughts. Whoever had killed Calindria and had taken her soul had hidden it well, the method they had used to conceal it carrying on after their death.
If they were dead.
When Thanatos had raised that thought with Hades, his god-king had grown dark and had immediately left the palace, teleporting to Tartarus where he was holding Eris, Thanatos’s younger sister.
And the ringleader of the enemy that had risen up against Hades and attempted to bring about not only his downfall but that of the Underworld and mortal realm too.
Disgust rolled through Thanatos, as strongly as it had the night he had realised she had turned against their god-king, together with another two of his sisters and his youngest brother. His mother, Nyx, was still furious about what had happened, wanted blood and regularly visited Eris in Tartarus to sneer at her and threaten her.
So far, neither Nyx nor Hades had managed to convince Eris to tell them something other than the same denial she spewed whenever they tortured her. She just kept swearing she knew nothing about Calindria and what had happened to her.
Thanatos wasn’t buying it.
He spied three exits in total and picked the largest of the tunnels, the one set into the cragged wall of the cavern dangerously close to a pool of water. He lowered his hand to the hilt of his sword where it hung from his waist, attached to his thick leather trousers, and warily stalked towards the tunnel, keeping an eye on the water.
Wishing he had worn more of his obsidian armour than just the heavy vambraces that protected his forearms.
He had forgone the armour that he normally wore on his lower half. The thick plates offered protection but slowed him down and made it more difficult to move through the narrow tunnels or clamber into holes. He had decided to leave them in his castle for this trip when he had discovered the warren of tunnels in the heart of this vast mountain range were narrower than those in the last set of peaks that rose high into the smoky air of this realm.
Something moved in the water and his fingers tensed around the grip of his sword, ready to draw and swing it in the space of a heartbeat if necessary. Great serpents lived in the pools in many of the caverns, waiting for a creature to approach and drink the life-giving water. One had nearly taken his head off. Since then, he had avoided all the pools.
Thanatos eased around this one, facing it at all times, and was quick to duck into the tunnel. It was narrower than it had looked from a distance, but still large enough to accommodate him and his wings. He shook them out and furled them again, tried to ignore the itch to stretch them and fly. The next time he found a cavern that was large enough, and was lacking occupants, he would do a few laps around it to stretch his wings.
Ahead of him, in the gloom, creatures skittered and scurried away from him. He eased his head left and lowered his wings, edging around a dip in the ceiling. He was beginning to miss the world outside this mountain, even though it was as grim out there as it was in here. Perhaps more so.
The valleys of these mountains were great black lands, some riddled with crevasses cut by waterfalls that thundered into them, and others filled with dead-looking trees, and then there was his personal favourite.
A valley that had been infested with spires of jagged black rock with holes in it. The things that lived within the three-, four-, even five-hundred-foot-tall towers had not liked him being in their territory. Like the gargoyles, they had chased him from the valley, the veins of crimson that formed patterns on their black carapaces glowing like lava as they had scuttled after him on four bony legs, snapping at him with their pincers.
Thanatos was beginning to get the impression everything in this realm hated him.
Perhaps if he didn’t find Calindria, he would kill everything in it. Eradicate all life to make it easier for Hades’s legions to tame these wild lands steeped in ancient powers and bring them under his god-king’s control. He drifted in that pleasing imagery for a while, mentally getting revenge on the foul creatures who had tried to maim and murder him on far too many occasions.
Thanatos stilled as awareness rolled down his spine, making his wings quiver. Something was watching him. He’d had the same feeling several times now during his travels and was beginning to get the impression that someone and not something was following him.
The Messenger.
Thanatos had encountered the black-haired male in another realm, one close to this one, and had thought Hades had sent his servant to relay something to him. Only he had startled the male when he had questioned him, asking what he was doing in an uninhabited realm if he wasn’t there to deliver a message from Hades.
The Messenger’s mismatched eyes—one green and one blue—had widened and then narrowed, had shone with fire when he had delivered a message of his own.
He didn’t serve Hades.
When Thanatos had brought up the male in his report to Hades, two of his god-king’s sons, Marek and Esher, had exchanged a look. Hades had noticed it and demanded answers.
Apparently, they believed they had met the same Messenger in the mortal realm.
There, the male had told them he was looking for Calindria.
“If I cross paths with him again, perhaps I will ask him to assist me,” Thanatos grumbled as he eased around another jagged spike of rock that blocked his path. “He can run the tunnels like the hound he is.”
Thanatos had never liked Messengers. The clones were creepy with the way they would silently appear close to him, and they had no boundaries, were always teleporting into his castle without invitation, bypassing all his wards. Hades had given them too many powers when he had created them.
Something which had proven dangerous during the rebellion, when several Messengers had sided with the enemy and revealed something that had unsettled even Hades.
Some of them had developed the ability to feel emotion.
Thanatos had witnessed it for himself in the Messenger he had encountered, the one who was looking for Calindria. The male hid it well, but Thanatos had seen the glimmer of emotions in his eyes when he had questioned him, had noticed it in the slight twist of his lips or twitch of his eyebrows.
Hadn’t been able to miss it when the male had snarled at him that he didn’t serve Hades.
Hades was going to have to deal with his creations. Servants with emotions and so much power were dangerous. At the very least, his god-king needed to cull those who exhibited feelings and ensure future Messengers were subjected to stringent tests and given less power.
Perhaps his god-king could fashion them to be more like Thanatos’s servants—loyal, emotionless, powerless. His staff existed to serve him and carried out their duties without question.
Ahead of him, the tunnel opened up again, rapidly doubling in width. He straightened and pressed his hand into his back, arched it and sighed as something popped. He drew down a deep breath and frowned as he swore he caught the scent of a fire. Not the wretched, almost sulphuric smell of the volcanoes that dotted this realm, but the smell of wood burning.
He quickened his pace, his hand falling to his sword again, his black eyebrows pinching together as he strode into the gloom. It grew brighter as he neared the end of the tunnel and his step faltered.
He recognised this place.
His eyes darted around, taking in the stalactite laden ceiling of the enormous cavern, and his steps slowed further as he approached the edge of the broad ledge that jutted out high above the ground on one side of it.
Thanatos drew to a halt near the edge of it, staring at the rusty oval cages suspended from the jagged cavern roof by thick chains.
This was it.
This was what Keras had seen.
His heart beat harder at the thought he was close now, would be able to fulfil his mission for his god-king and would be well rewarded for it.
Thanatos spread his black feathered wings and kicked off, sweeping down into the cavern. He circled the huge dome-shaped space, weaving around spires of rock. His eyes narrowed on each cage he passed. Some were empty. Others contained remains.
None held Calindria.
Or did they?
He hovered before one cage that contained bones and held his hand out, drew down a deep breath and closed his eyes. Images flickered before him, revealing a female but this one a brunette. Not the one he was looking for.
Calindria had golden hair and blue eyes, had been a bright and bubbly little thing when he had last seen her, hanging on the tails of Calistos. She had always hidden behind her twin or her father whenever Thanatos had visited, shyly peeking out at him, ducking back into cover whenever he had looked her way.
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