Just say yes…
Finally, the king said, “So be it.”
A breath Zander hadn’t realized he’d been holding rushed out. At his back, he heard the same from Demetrius.
“The binding ceremony between Zander and the princess Isadora will take place in seven days’ time,” the king announced. “On the eve of the full moon. You are dismissed.”
Collectively, the Argonauts turned to leave. Muttered voices echoed around Zander, but the only one he fully caught was Demetrius’s grateful one as the guardian said, “I owe you, Z.”
That pride hit Zander again in the chest full on, even though…the thought of what lay ahead solidified that ice around his heart.
This was the right thing to do. The only thing he could do. He was saving the others from something they didn’t want. Hopefully saving a small part of himself too.
He turned to leave with the other guardians, but the king’s sharp voice stopped him. “Zander.” He looked back. “Do not disappoint me. The repercussions will be fierce.”
Yeah, that wasn’t glowing thanks either. Zander bowed once, indicating he’d heard the king, but his pride wavered.
“Before you return to duty,” the king went on, “you’ll report to my private study for a complete evaluation by my personal healer. If you pass the exam, the binding ceremony will go on as scheduled. If not, I’ll choose another Argonaut. You are excused.”
Zander’s gaze hopped right to Callia. Who was staring at the floor as if it might just jump up and bite her.
For shit’s sake. This was supposed to put his feelings for her behind him. Not give her an opportunity to grope his naked body. And holy Hades, his blood did not just warm at the thought. Or at the possibility of being alone with her one last time.
Callia waited as long as she could. The Argonauts filed out of the room. Casey and Isadora left. She took her time helping the king get situated so she didn’t have to make the trek downstairs with Zander.
When he finally turned to leave she swallowed hard. Oh, gods. He was binding himself to Isadora. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever expected…that.
“If you find anything even remotely questionable in your exam, Callia,” the king said, “I want to know about it. Do you understand?”
She nodded, though inside she felt like screaming. Zander was binding himself to someone else. And now she had to go into that room with him. See him naked. Touch his body. Remember everything they’d done with each other. What had happened after…
She was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t feel the king’s hand wrap around her wrist, only registered the tug when she tried to leave and couldn’t. She turned to look back at him and found his violet eyes focused in on her. Violet eyes that couldn’t possibly see her, but were focused just the same.
He didn’t speak. Only stared at her as if searching for…something. Finally, he said, “Your mother was a great healer, Callia. Fervent in mind and body. She served as Royal Healer for a long time, and she did it well, much to the chagrin of your father. I see a lot of her in you, and it pleases me to know that you carry on her work, when your father would have chosen something else for you. But your powers are stronger than your mother’s ever were. Your future brighter.” When Callia opened her mouth to protest, he cut her off. “No, it’s true. And you know it to be so, deep in your heart.”
She closed her mouth. Stared at him. Unsure what to say or do.
“Callia, dear, I for one know what it is to want something you cannot have, but I also know the only thing that matters in this world is that which we leave behind. Your mother knew that too. Do not forsake what might have been for what can never be. A true leader sets aside his personal wants for the good of the whole. And he makes sacrifices. Ones that, in the end, justify all that came before.”
Her pulse thumped hard in her veins. A strange tingling lit off at the base of her hairline. She searched his face for a clue as to how he knew what she was feeling. Only she came up empty. Did he know about her past with Zander? Had someone told him what had happened between them? Or was he talking about Loukas, Lucian’s son, the ándras who would one day lead the Council of Twelve so at odds with the monarchy, and the male she’d been betrothed to from the time she was just a child?
“I…I am not a leader, Your Majesty.”
His eyes softened, just a touch. Just enough to tell her he knew more than she’d ever expected. “Not yet. But maybe one day.”
He let go of her as quickly as he’d grabbed her, then leaned back in the pillows, closing his eyes as if the last hour had drained him of his energy. Gone was the gentleness and wisdom in his voice when he said, “Report back to me after you see to Zander. I want to know that he can produce heirs. If this binding is to be sanctioned, I need confirmation of his virility. Once the ceremony is complete, I cannot choose another. And tell that useless maidservant Althea on your way out that I do not want to be disturbed.”
Callia’s stomach clenched into a knot as she stared at the old ándras and he drifted off to sleep as if he had not a care in the world. The king expected her to…
Skata.
She lifted a shaky hand to her forehead, swiped at the sweat beading there and turned for the door. This exam had suddenly taken on a whole new form of personal torture.
She left the room as anxiety and anger boiled in her gut. After relaying the king’s message to Althea in the antechamber, she reluctantly headed down the great marble staircase toward the king’s study on the second level.
Damn the king. Her temper soared as she reached the bottom step and turned the corner toward the study. Damn the politics of this war. Damn the Argonauts and Zander especially for making her feel, when she’d been doing a helluva job just getting by these last ten years. She didn’t want to sacrifice. She didn’t want to think about marriage and bindings and doing what was right. And she especially didn’t want to be alone with the one Argonaut who had ruined her entire life.
She pushed the study door open to see Zander turn from the bay of windows, late-afternoon sun highlighting the gold in his short blond hair, backlighting the muscles and planes of a well-defined body she’d known more intimately than any other. But he didn’t greet her, not that he ever did. And there was absolutely no reaction whatsoever on his face at seeing her. Not that there ever was.
He turned his gaze out the window again without a word.
She let the heavy door snap closed at her back and walked toward the desk, her shoes clicking across the king’s seal as she crossed the marble floor. Calm. Clear. Completely professional. That’s how she’d play it with him, no matter how much she wanted to throw something. If he was going to act like they were complete strangers, two could play that game.
“Strip,” she said as she cleared the ancient mahogany desk of its lone lamp so she could use it as her exam table. “Everything off.”
Stormy blue-gray eyes shifted her way. And oh, yeah, that was definitely not happiness reflected there at the prospect of being alone with her. Like she cared.
“I’m not getting naked for you.”
She ignored the little thump in her heart at the sound of his deep voice and narrowed her eyes. “Then you’re going to have a hard time binding yourself to the princess.” She glanced at his hips. Smirked. Wanted to gouge out a wound in his chest big enough to dump a truckload of salt into. “Or soft, as the case may be. Rumor has it you can only perform with human women. Whether you like it or not, the king wants to make sure you’re…up to par, you might say, before he lets you marry his daughter.”
She knew she was antagonizing him, but just couldn’t stop herself. It had been building for a long time. Since the moment he’d turned his back on her all those years before. She wanted to make him hurt the way he’d hurt her. To feel…something…instead of being the stone-cold bastard he really was. And since this was the first time they’d spoken in ten years, was it really a shocker their conversation was about to be a doozy?
She focused
on his darkening eyes, saw the temper flare there and felt marginally better over the fact he was finally exhibiting some kind of emotion, even if it was contempt. “Of course,” she went on, “you can save yourself the burden of this little exam by simply admitting you’re impotent.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“No.” What little humor she had faded. “What I’d like is to get this over with so I can be on my way. Contrary to what you might believe, Zander, my world stopped revolving around you a long time ago. Now either strip, or I’ll tell the king to choose someone else.”
Chapter Four
There were times when the bitter cold was something you reveled in. When the shiver running down your back was a stark and blessed reminder that you were alive. For Max, this was not one of those times.
He stared up at the seething seven-foot monster in front of him. Blood and sweat and other disgusting things he didn’t want to think about dripped down its ugly face. The shiver that ran through Max was a mixture of the near-zero temperatures this far north in mid-October, and the fear that lanced through every cell in his small body.
“You. Will. Pay!” The daemon lunged, his sword slicing through air, coming dangerously close, but one thing Mr. Ugly didn’t count on was how quick someone only four and a half feet tall could be.
As if fueled by some outside source, Max darted between the daemon’s legs, whipped back and sliced out with his own blade, cutting deep into the daemon’s thigh. The monster howled, dropped his sword and went down to one knee. Blood spurted from what could only be his femoral artery, spraying over Max and the ground. Bile welled in Max’s throat, but he lifted his sword again, ready to strike. To finish this. The need to annihilate stronger than anything he’d felt before.
“Good. Good, Maximus.” Atalanta’s voice echoed in his ear. “Let your hatred guide you. Finish him. Plunge your blade deep into his chest. Then send his soul to Hades for all eternity by decapitating the beast.”
He wanted to. His muscles ached to kill. But the pride he heard in Atalanta’s voice stopped his forward momentum.
The monster lifted its face, his glowing green eyes now level with Max. There was fear there, true fear at what would happen to him. And in that instant Max saw himself reflected back in those eyes. He saw the weeks of training, the years of hopelessness and his own fight just to stay alive. And he saw that Atalanta was winning.
He dropped his blade, stumbled backward. Couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from the daemon in front of him. A kind of respect passed between them. And on the daemon’s part, a thanks, if you could call it that. But it was probably more relief. Tomorrow he’d be healed of this wound and be ready to take Max on again. This time to the death.
“Spineless.” Atalanta swept by Max, picked up his blade and thrust it into the daemon’s chest. The monster’s eyes went wide. He reached for the blade, but she yanked it from his body, swung out and decapitated the beast without so much as a grunt. His grotesque head hit the ground just before his body fell.
Max’s eyes grew wide, but he didn’t run or even gasp. He’d seen her kill before. Knew he would see it again.
She rounded on him, leaned down and narrowed her black-as-night eyes. “I grow tired of your humanity, Maxi-mus. Kill or be killed. That is the world in which we live. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will take your place at my side.”
She was tall, close to six and a half feet, he guessed, and with her jet-black hair, which fell straight to her waist, her snow-white skin, her coal eyes and those high, sharp cheekbones, probably pretty to some, but not to him. This close she smelled sweet, of honey and spun sugar. But he knew how deadly she was. The beauty was a mask. Inside she was as sick and twisted as the daemons who served in her army. And when she struck, her sting was worse than any scorpion’s.
“Yes, Maximus,” she whispered, a wry smile sliding across her perfect face as she leaned in closer. “I feel your hatred for me right now. You want to lash out. To hurt me. But you can’t. Because I am your matéras. Feed the feeling, yios. Channel it. Direct it back to the ones who created me. To those who are responsible for your misery now. You know the root of all evil lies with the Argonauts.”
She let the last word linger near his ear, her hot breath running down his neck, under the collar of his thin shirt. The sickness he’d been fighting condensed in his stomach and rose to his throat, and it was all he could do to swallow it back.
Her eyes were filled with victory as she eased away, but there was also something else there. Disgust at how he had failed her yet again.
He stared at her. Didn’t break the eye contact. Knew she’d see it as another sign of weakness if he did. But she was right. He did hate her, and he did want to hurt her. Though what stopped him wasn’t the fact she claimed she was his matéras. No, he stopped because the humanity left in him that she hated so much wouldn’t break. Not while he breathed air in his lungs.
She rose to her full height, her red robes pooling around her feet, and glared down at him. One perfect hand lifted and pointed back toward the fortress across the barren field. “Leave me now before I change my mind and let Thanatos have a crack at you.”
Though he wanted to run, Max turned and walked across the frozen ground, head held high, shoulders back. When he reached the massive log structure, he darted around the side to the servants’ entrance at the back. He knew his place. Though the bulk of Atalanta’s army was housed in the barracks nestled in the woods and steep-rising mountains behind the property, a few of her “chosen” resided with her in the big house. Thanatos, her archdaemon. A couple of servants. And him.
He went in through the kitchen and silently climbed the rickety back stairs to the fourth floor. This huge house, more like a wilderness lodge than anything else, was still an improvement over the Underworld. There he hadn’t had his own space. Here, even though it was freakin’ cold 24-7 and his toes were in a constant state of numbness, at least he had more than a corner to call his own.
After being banished from Hades for reasons he still didn’t understand, Atalanta had moved her army to this barren wasteland deep in the forests of northern British Columbia. He knew why she’d brought them here. Because it was isolated. Just as he knew this house and all the land around it had once belonged to some old oil tycoon who’d struck it rich somewhere in Alaska. That man was now dead, the gruesome details of his mutilation alive in Max’s mind thanks to Thanatos, but no one in the nearby community of Fort Nelson had any idea a demigod from the Underworld was living among them. None realized they would soon die. Or that the woman who now resided here plotted revenge and was formulating a way to take over the world.
His thighs ached by the time he reached the fourth level. He was so tired from the day’s fighting he could barely see straight. At the end of the long hall that split the floor in half, he eased open the three-foot-high door and crawled through the small space. Inside, he grasped the rungs of the dusty, wooden ladder and climbed until he reached the attic. Then finally sighed in relief.
Across the dirty floorboards, his pallet beckoned. The filthy porthole-shaped window high on the wall looked out at the frozen gold-brown training field, but he didn’t spare it a glance. He never did. Its only use was to let light into the dingy room, as it did now.
He was grubby, covered in blood and sweat, and he needed a shower in the worst possible way, but it could wait. Right now he wanted comfort. The kind he could only get from one thing.
He crossed the room. The blanket had already been removed from his pallet—by one of her minions in the house who’d watched the scene outside, no doubt. Punishment, he was sure, for not killing that daemon when he’d had the chance. If there was one life lesson he learned every day it was that in this world, everything had consequences. But today he barely cared.
Next to his pallet, a fresh bowl of water and a plate of bread had been left for him. Though his stomach growled at the sight, he ignored the pathetic food and instead continued on
. To the fifth floorboard from the wall. To the one only he knew was loose.
He pried the board up with fingers still so cold he could barely move them. After lifting the corner, he reached underneath to draw out the glass.
It wasn’t a mirror, but it wasn’t clear either. The oval piece was frosted on both sides, rippled as if from the inside out even though it was smooth to the touch. Around the outside it was rimmed in what looked to be gold, though Max couldn’t be sure, as he’d never seen real gold before. All he knew was that it was heavy, a solid weight in his palms, no bigger than a saucer, and it held a magic like nothing he’d ever known.
A window between worlds.
He cradled the glass gently against him, walked forward until his feet brushed his pallet, then sank down to his knees. He held the glass in front of him and whispered the words the little old lady who had visited him in secret both in Tartarus and here had taught him.
“Show me my heart’s desire.”
The ripples inside seemed to move. And then the glass cleared. Heat flowed from the object in his hands into his body, warming him from the outside in. And when he looked, he saw her face.
Excitement pumped through him because only rarely was she looking straight on when he peeked. And because it meant at this very moment she was gazing through glass somewhere herself. Maybe she was thinking of him right this second, as he was thinking of her.
Oh, she was beautiful. A smile spread across his face. She never aged, but then, being an Argolean, she wouldn’t, would she? Not until the last few years of her life. To anyone else she would look to be in her early thirties, though he was sure she was much older. Her skin looked silky, her eyes a dreamy violet color, a lot like his own, or at the very least how he hoped his appeared. Her hair was a deep auburn, today falling to her shoulders in a silky drape he was sure was as soft to touch as it was to look at. But as he peered closer, as he drank her in inch by inch, he realized her features were set, that her jaw was locked, her mouth a slash across her pretty face. And though he’d seen her take on many expressions, this was one he didn’t know. Today she looked…upset.
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