Relief was sweet and swift to bloom as he wrapped his arms around her, crossing them over her front, and held her.
Her father still looked as if he wanted to kill Thanatos.
Her mother, however.
The darkness lifted from her face as she slowly smiled, as a spark of warmth and something that looked like happiness lit her green eyes. She looked at Hades, that softness lingering, warming further as she gazed at her husband.
“Your mission is done, Thanatos. It is time you returned home,” Hades growled.
Calindria lifted her hands and gripped Thanatos’s arms, anchoring him in place when she feared he would release her and do as her father had ordered. His reason for being cold and distant was staring her in the face as Hades looked at her, as he glared at her hands where they gripped Thanatos. He had feared angering her father, and while she could understand that, she was damned if she was going to let her father get his way. She realised it wasn’t only fear of her father that had made Thanatos distant from her. The tight way he held her, the rush of his heartbeat in her ears and the relief she could feel growing inside him said he had feared she wouldn’t want to be with him now she was with her family again.
Foolish male.
Beautiful male.
Her father could be furious with them all he wanted.
Nothing would stop her from loving Thanatos.
From being with Thanatos.
“If he goes, I am going too.” She steeled herself as she put that out there, built a wall around her heart and stoked her resolve, aware that she had a fight on her hands.
A battle she would win.
“You are home now.” Her father turned a hard look on her. “You will remain here.”
She tensed at that, frowned at him when hurt arrowed through her, piercing her heart. She looked at the palace to her left.
“From one cage to another,” she growled and glared right back at her father, not caring when his look softened, when regret crossed his sculpted features. “This is not my home. It has not been for a long time… and I will not be placed in another cage, forced to remain here against my will. I am grown now, and you cannot—”
She cut herself off when her throat tightened, when hurt gave way to fear and she wasn’t strong enough to shake it. Memories roared up on her to tear her strength down, a thousand replays of her time in the cages, of her life behind bars. Not a life. An existence. That was what her father was offering her and gods, it hurt.
“Calindria,” Thanatos murmured softly and held her a little closer. “No one will put you back in a cage. I swear it.”
Her mother scowled at her father. He glanced at her, blue eyes imploring her, but her mother didn’t back down. She turned her cheek to him and tilted her chin up as she folded her arms across her chest. Hades looked as if she had just plunged a dagger into his chest, and gave Calindria that same wounded look.
She remembered something else about the terrifying god-king of the Underworld.
She always had been able to wrap him around her little finger.
He was hard as iron on the outside, but beneath that indomitable exterior beat a tender heart, one that would do anything for the two females in his life—her mother, and her.
She looked at the palace again.
“I don’t know this place, but I do know this isn’t my home. It isn’t where I belong, Father.” She looked at him, her brow furrowed, and then turned in Thanatos’s arms and placed her hands on his bare chest, right over his heart, and tilted her head back to gaze up into his eyes. Eyes that were tender, soft and filled with affection. Gods, there was love in that look and it seared her soul with his name. She stroked his chest. “I have a home. My home is with you. When I told you that I wanted to visit you in your castle to see it and learn to control my power, what I had really wanted to say was that I want to live with you there. I don’t want to be apart from you. Never.”
His throat worked on a hard swallow and he looked as if he wanted to kiss her.
Her mother spoke before he could. “Do you love him?”
Calindria looked over her shoulder at her and smiled as she warmed inside. “With all my heart.”
Hades grunted something, earning a black look from Persephone. It softened instantly again, her emerald eyes sparkling as she looked from Calindria to Thanatos and then to Hades.
“I cannot think of anyone better suited to our daughter. They are the perfect match, and you know it.” She swept over to Hades, roses and poppies blooming in her wake, and wrapped her arms around his left one.
He sighed.
Calindria felt the truth in her mother’s words right down to the pit of her soul.
She looked up at Thanatos.
They were the perfect match for each other, and she was sure she had the Moirai to thank for that. She was sure the three goddesses had had this in store for them from the moment of their creation, this path set out for them, one that had been difficult and dark, but had brought them to this point where she felt bathed in light whenever Thanatos gazed at her.
And whenever she looked at him.
“You love me?” he whispered, silver eyes searching hers, a hint of disbelief and hope in them.
She smiled, nodded and tiptoed, pressing her hands to his chest for support as she brought her mouth closer to his.
“I love you,” she breathed.
He hesitated only a moment before capturing her lips, claiming them in a kiss that stamped his name on her heart.
They were more than the perfect match, more than made for each other.
He was the other half of her soul.
And for the first time in centuries, she felt whole again.
She drew back and looked up into silver eyes that shone with endless affection.
“I love you, Calindria.” He smoothed his fingers across her cheek, the corners of his broad mouth twitching into the semblance of a smile.
“Can I see your castle now?” She sidled closer to him, itching to be alone with him, doing her best to ignore the feel of her father’s glare as it shifted from her and evidently landed on Thanatos judging by how he tensed.
Although, it might have been for different reasons.
“I need… a week… make it a few months.” He pulled a face at the building to his left. “My castle is no palace. Renovations will be needed to make it suitable for you.”
She laughed at that, because he looked as if he was talking about making it more comfortable, and she had just spent over five hundred years in a cage. Comfort wasn’t exactly important to her.
“I don’t care. As long as you have heat, food and a place to sleep, it will be fine with me. The only thing I care about is being with you.” She stroked his chest again, loving the flicker of blue fire her touch ignited in his irises, and the fact she could see his resolve buckling.
“Did she just say a place to sleep?” Hades muttered. “She means her own bed I presume?”
“Oh, my love, do stop being such a prude,” Persephone softly admonished. “She is grown now. My little flower, all grown up.”
Ares uttered, “I think her flower is missing, stolen by Thanatos.”
She blushed at that. Her father growled. Thanatos looked ready to murder her brother.
“I’d like to go home now.” She rushed the words out, part of her eager to be alone with him and the rest desperate to get away from her family before a fight broke out.
“Home,” Thanatos echoed, and his eyes lit up in a way she found she loved.
He liked that she had called his castle her home.
He wrapped his arms around her, tensed again when her father spoke.
“I expect you at Tartarus within the hour, Thanatos. As soon as my daughter is settled.”
The banked heat in her god’s eyes said that he would be doing more than getting her settled as soon as they were away from her father. An hour seemed like both a heavenly amount of time and not nearly enough for the things she wanted to do to Thanatos,
“Clock is ticking,” she whispered. “Don’t you have a mission to complete?”
Thanatos frowned down at her.
“You swore you would get me home.” She smiled into his eyes. “Take me home, Thanatos.”
Thanatos growled, swept her up into his arms and into a teleport.
She was quick to look around her as they landed, her eyes darting over the limited furniture in the large dark-walled room. The need to explore the castle that was her new home died as her gaze landed on a large black four-poster bed and the clock in her mind ticked faster, counting down the minutes she had before Thanatos had to leave her again.
She would explore the castle later.
She gripped the waist of Thanatos’s black leathers and tugged him towards the bed. Right now, she wanted to explore him. She twisted with him when she reached it and pushed him backwards. He fell onto the high mattress, his onyx wings blending with the silk sheets as he stared up at her, heat and hunger in his flickering blue eyes.
Calindria growled at just the sight of him.
His lips curled into a smile and stole her heart all over again.
Her hero. Her boyfriend.
She pounced on him and he caught her, chuckled as he wrapped his arms around her and rolled with her, pinning her beneath him. He stilled and stared down at her, warming her from head to toe, making her heart feel fit to burst.
He was the other half of her soul.
The only male in this world for her.
Her light. Her love. Her everything.
She pulled her gloves off and framed his face with her palms.
Her perfect match.
Her gorgeous god of death.
Hers.
Her darker side growled.
And gods help anyone who tried to take him from her.
A feral and possessive snarl came from deep within her, had Thanatos’s smile turning wicked and a little bit amused. She yanked him down to her and kissed him, wiping that smile from his face as she claimed his lips.
Claimed all of him.
Chapter 32
“Thanatos.”
Thanatos lifted his gaze from the worn black stone floor of the towering entrance corridor of Tartarus, his mind clearing as that feminine voice reached his ears. Not the voice he wanted to hear. He had been away from Calindria for five achingly long days, assisting the sons of Hades in their search for Mnemosyne. Six weeks had passed and still they had not uncovered a single clue regarding her whereabouts. Her servants had not seen her in many months and none of her court had seen her for longer than that.
Hades was growing impatient, visited Tartarus daily to interrogate Eris and Harleena, was becoming darker and darker by the day. Even Persephone was having trouble calming him according to their oldest son, Keras, who was understandably worried about his father’s state of mind.
Thanatos was too.
Now more than ever, Hades needed to keep his head, to seek patience and deny any reckless urges that might come over him. Thanatos feared it wouldn’t be long before the darker side of Hades’s blood made that impossible though. Reports from the palace were not good. Hades was restless, hungry to bathe his claws in the blood of Mnemosyne, and constantly on edge, awaiting her appearance.
Fearing his family would be placed in danger.
Thanatos feared that too.
His thoughts drifted to Calindria and his castle as he approached his mother where she stood with her back to the tall black fluted columns that framed the entrance to the main prison of Tartarus. The silver stars delicately stitched on the fine dark blue fabric of her dress shimmered in the torchlight, bringing to mind his conversation with Calindria all those weeks ago when she had spoken of the lonely light of the stars.
Worsening the ache in his chest.
He needed to see her.
Nyx lifted a pale hand and held it out to him, and he took it and pressed a kiss to the back of it, part of him marvelling at how he could touch her now without memories surfacing and making him want to lash out at her because of her sex.
“And how is my most beautiful son?”
He almost snorted at that. “Do you ask the same thing of Hypnos?”
They were identical twins after all, but only he had wings. Perhaps that made him more beautiful in their mother’s eyes.
Those navy-to-aqua eyes shone brightly with amusement today. His mother’s mood had been steadily lightening over the past few weeks and Thanatos suspected it had to do with him and Calindria. She was pleased he had found someone to love, and someone who loved him.
“Come, Thanatos.” She looped her arm around his and gazed up at him, a wicked edge to her smile. “Do not be so quick to bear your fangs.”
She patted his arm.
He huffed. She was teasing him now.
He gently extricated himself and looked at the entrance of the prison. “Is Hades here?”
She was quick to shake her head, her glossy black hair shifting ethereally against her bare shoulders. “Hades grew bored and returned to the palace, leaving me to continue questioning my loathsome spawn. I think perhaps he wished to see Persephone. He was eager to leave.”
“I had wished to give him my report here, but now it appears I must go to the palace.” Thanatos sighed as the path of his thoughts shifted from his business back to his female.
“You seem as eager to return to your love as your god-king was.” Nyx’s smile took on a teasing edge as she stepped in front of him, her eyes locking with his. He felt as if she was trying to peer right down to his soul as she stared into them and he didn’t like it. Her smile widened further. “You did not visit your castle before you came to see your god-king? Come, Thanatos. That is no way to treat your lady. I am sure she will be missing you as sorely as you are her, awaiting your return. I remember when Erebus would go—”
Thanatos growled and rolled his eyes. “Gods, please… not with the talk of Father.”
Her smile only grew wider still, her navy-to-aqua eyes glittering with it, and he realised with a grimace what he had said.
“You called Erebus your father. My, how he will be delighted to know you have acknowledged him as such.” Nyx went to stroke his arm and he moved it back and scowled at her. She sighed softly. “Very well, I shall not tell him… but… I wish you would make some effort with him. He is so very proud of you most of all.”
He was? Thanatos glared at her, shutting down the part of him that felt warmed by that.
Nyx didn’t help matters. “Out of all his children, it is you he is most concerned with and you he often asks about during my visits to him. Hypnos runs a close second of course. I think he was always pleased I gave him twins, both so handsome and powerful.”
A huff burst from his lips. “It sounds as if he likes the thought that if something were to happen to me, then he would still have Hypnos to admire and laud to others. Am I so replaceable?”
Her slight shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. “I do not think so… but speaking of Hypnos… He mentioned he had been to the castle to visit you but you were not there, but Calindria was most accommodating. So much so in fact that he returned just today to see you… or was it to see her?”
Thanatos growled at her as rage rolled through him, as the thought of his own damned brother attempting to court Calindria out of his hands stirred the darkness within his soul and had him hungry with a need to end him. The flash of mischief in his mother’s eyes revealed she knew what she was doing, had said such a thing to stoke him into a rage and send him back to Calindria rather than to the palace and Hades. She was meddling. Pushing him and Calindria together, and to what end he wasn’t sure, but it had worked. Thoughts of delivering his report to Hades disappeared in an instant and he couldn’t stop himself from teleporting to his castle instead, the need to see Calindria and see that she was still his and his alone driving him.
He was not replaceable.
He appeared in what had become a garden in the short time Calindria had been living with him, his silver gaze frantically scanning the low black hedges that formed two long rectangles that echoed the shape of the pond between them and followed the line of the black walls his golems had helped construct. Columns cut across the far end of the formal garden, drawing his eye there, and beyond those columns was a smaller area of plants all created by Calindria as she attempted to master her power.
And deep in the heart of that wild patch of land, knelt his beautiful goddess, a streak of cerulean and gold against an inky backdrop.
Thanatos strode along the path between one of the rows of low hedging and the pool, his eyes locked on her, never straying for even a heartbeat. Calm suffused him as he saw she was alone, quick to come over him and ease his mood. She had that effect on him.
Among others.
He shook out his black feathered wings as nerves trickled through his veins, couldn’t quite shake what his mother had said about Hypnos, even when he knew she had only been teasing him and that his brother would never do such a thing. He had spoken with Hypnos soon after he had returned with Calindria and his twin had been overjoyed to see him and to hear about his little goddess. The second time they had seen each other, Hypnos had come to visit him and had marvelled at the transformation that had already taken place in Thanatos’s castle.
Thanatos marvelled at it himself from time to time. Calindria hadn’t only been busy transforming the grounds into something less wasteland and more garden. She had been working to make the inside of his castle more comfortable too, brightening it in her own little way.
Although she had done him the kindness of keeping the entrance hall and his throne room intact and as imposing as it had been.
Behind the scenes though, where visitors never set foot, she had softened things, and he found he liked the splashes of colour she had injected. He especially liked her drawing rooms, where the walls had been painted with a scene that resembled the Elysian Fields, with a sea of red poppies, lush green fields and trees, and endless blue sky that ran onto the ceiling and turned to starlit darkness in the middle above the chandeliers.
-->
