And reaching once more into her chest, she pulled out her heart with one quick tug. A sharp cry spilled off her tongue, and she sagged in my arms.
“Caly!” I barked, clinging to her as I felt her body go limp.
She smirked, looked at me slyly, and said, “Gods, that wasn’t fun.”
And though our doom was but hours away, I laughed because she could always make me laugh. She was the spot of sunshine in my life that I would never not need. But then my laughter turned serious, and the air between us quickened with crackling tension.
I looked down at the golden, glittering organ in the palm of her hand and shook my head. That she should love me this much… the idea of it was humbling and even startling. I knew Calypso loved me, but this wasn’t just love. This was absolute and complete trust in me. She’d given me both the means to destroy her and save her in one.
“Hades, Lord of the Underworld, and ruler of my heart.” She said the words deeply as she cupped her hands around her still beating organ. “Do you promise to love me forever?”
Wanting always to be worthy of her, I squared my shoulders and studied her lovely glass-like features before slowly nodding. “Forever and a day, my darling.”
She smiled. “Then if you trust me, give me your heart too.”
I didn’t even question her. What we were doing now went deeper than any other god or goddess had ever known or felt before. We weren’t jut declaring ourselves. We were literally handing one another the very key to our personal destruction. Without a moment’s hesitation, I reached into my chest and pulled. The separation of my heart from my body burned like fire through me, and I clenched my molars together so hard that I heard them groan from the pressure. But I freed my golden heart and handed it to her. My heart was twice the size of hers.
She smiled, and the beauty of it burned like a blaze. For just a moment, I saw the flicker of blood rush beneath her glassy features, giving her a lovely tinted-pink shade. Goddess, I loved this woman.
“You will bury them,” she said, “where no magic can touch them. And these two hearts will beat as one until we find them again. In our hearts will be locked our memories, and with them, my hope that we can find our way back to one another, that you will never need to know the pain of harming me. Because I know you well enough to know that if you had to destroy me, it would destroy you too. And that is a pain I could never wish upon you. Maybe, just maybe, once we have recovered our hearts, I will become as I am now. Maybe it can work.”
I heard her doubts. She was giving me hope, but it was not hope she believed in. I shook my head. “This will work, Calypso.”
She cried through her beautiful smile. “Then lay your heart over mine and let us bind ourselves one to the other in the most absolute of ways.”
Turning my hands over, I tipped my heart onto her palm, and the moment they touched, they blazed like the sun, fusing as one just as she said they would, sparkling with threads of deepest fiery orange between them.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathed, and she grinned up at me.
I would never hurt her. I never could. It would work. It had to work.
“It is our love that makes it so.”
“Where can we bury it that no magic can harm it?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I cannot know that. I will be water again, and my memories of you will be all but lost. My only aim will be to find my heart, and I will not rest until I do. That search for my heart will eventually lead me back here, to you.”
I clenched my jaw, determined that no matter what should come, I would fight like the fires of my underworld to ensure I remembered her. Remembered us.
“And”—she paused for emphasis and to make certain I listened well—“if you decide that you want us to be together again, then we will journey onward. Or, if you decide that you too have changed and wish for another life, then simply tell me where to find it and you will never again have to worry about me or who we once were.”
I growled deep in my chest, clinging tight to her arms. “That will. Never. Happen.”
Her eyes grew wide like saucers, and a tremor coursed down her spine.
“There will never be a day, could never be a day, that I will not want you. It is impossible.” I cupped her chin, making sure that she stared straight at me. “And just because we’ll have no hearts doesn’t mean we won’t feel, Caly. I will never stop burning for you.”
“Yes, my beloved, but water does not burn.” She shook her head sadly, and my soul squeezed.
“Then I will have to love you enough for the both of us until you do.”
“Then take it,” she said, shoving her hands at me. “Take it and bury it where I can never find it. For if I find my heart without you, I will not come back to you. This I know. I will remember, but I won’t care, Hades. I won’t. I know myself enough to know that. So if you love me at all, don’t let that happen to us. You are the only male I’ve ever loved, and the only one I ever could. Men are almost all weak, pitiful, vile beings, save for you. Save for our family. You taught me that there is more, there are better than what I’d seen and known before. You taught me to love so deeply, so fiercely, that if I could kill whatever it is that dared come against us now, I would do it without a second thought. I would end that which dares to take you from me.”
Her tears dripped again, and I brushed at them with my thumb.
“I will never forsake you, my Calypso. Not ever. I will hide our hearts in a place that will force us to journey for days. Weeks, if we must. But I will make you stay beside me, and I will make you fall in love with me again.”
Her watery lashes fluttered. “Understand, Hades, you might not want me in the next life. Who you love today, she may never be again. Are you certain that you wish to—”
I swooped in and stole those ridiculous words from her tongue, refusing to even let her utter them. Her tongue tasted of salt and sweet nectar. She sighed when I finally released her several seconds later.
“Oh gods, I cannot believe there could ever come a moment when I might not possibly want you. You make me crazy.” She rubbed the tip of her nose against mine, and I couldn’t contain my grin. “You are everything, my Hades. Everything.” She squeezed the words out and looked at me.
“Our story is not yet done, Caly. You could never rid yourself of me that easily.”
Her smile was weak and small, but it was also full of hope. “You promise?”
“The end is only the beginning for us, Calypso. And that is a vow sealed with a kiss.”
And I did kiss her. I kissed her like I wanted to take her sweet, precious soul and steal it for my own as I’d taken so many others before hers. I wanted to hide her, keep her with me forever. But I couldn’t do that, no matter how much I wanted to.
The time for our goodbye had come, but I wasn’t lying either. This was far from the end for us. I didn’t care what I had to do to make certain we found each other again. I’d kill the world and everything in it if I had to. It didn’t make me good to feel that way, but I did. I’d never once been selfish in my whole damned existence until I’d found her.
She was the one thing I’d fight to protect. To keep safe. To make mine always.
I braced myself against her, letting her feel in my rigid length just how badly I wanted her. At her purr, a beast was unleashed in me. In us. We attacked each other with the ferocity of the impending doom that rested heavily on both our hearts. We made love as if it was the first and last time, with claws and violence, heat, and unimaginable passion.
But when it was done, it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly. With heavy hearts, we turned from the place that had always brought us such comfort in Kingdom—the cliffs of Never—and sailed together toward our granddaughter’s castle. Our date with destiny had finally come.
And my heart had never been so dark or so empty.
I would save her. I had to, but I feared the woman she might become, the force of nature she would be. I feared that even if I found her again
, Caly might not want me.
And if she didn’t, I might just die.
Chapter 20
Thalassa
After the curse… in the beginning
* * *
I woke up and looked around, trying in vain to remember what had just happened to me. But when I tried to raise my hands, I realized I had no form. I was water, simply the wet particles of life.
I thought of a body. My body. A form. A shape. A woman… but nothing happened. I couldn’t take on a structure. I was merely this, whatever this was.
Panic began to tear at me as I tried to reach deep into the vault of my eternal memory for some clue to my identity, to why I felt so out of place and out of touch with the world around me. I searched through the empty corridors of my mind, only learning that I was me, the me that had just opened her eyes mere seconds ago, as if I’d just been birthed. But that was not possible. I knew it was not possible. I dug deeper, reaching farther and farther backward, looking for any glint or glimmer of something that would guide and lead me. But the more I searched, the less and less I found.
I was a clean slate. I was nothing at all.
Breathing heavily, tasting the brine of my waters upon my tongue, I looked all around me. I was in darkness, a pitch-black pool with no life in it at all. But I was water, so should there not be life in me? Should there not be… children?
Panic was clawing at my insides, making me twist and dive down into myself. Surely, I was not alone here in the darkest abyss of the earth. Surely, there were others.
But no matter how far I reached out with my mind, the waters were completely empty. I trembled, knowing something was wrong, just not knowing what or why. A feeling of despondence stole over me, and I grew quiet, wondering what I should do next. I was not even certain of my own name. Who was I? What was I? I stared down at the thing I called my body, but it was shape without form. There were no clues to be found there.
Then I felt a brush of power roll through my mind, delicate at first, like the gentle lapping of a wave upon shores. But soon it grew in strength and size and began not to roll but to roar.
It was as if something knocked at the door of my soul. Like a giant pressure wave that wanted in, it was shoving, shoving, shoving against me, making me groan, making my waters burble and churn. Deep down, I knew if I let it in, I would die, and I did not want that. So I didn’t peek. I didn’t touch that door. I moved away.
Let me in.
I heard its ghostly whisper roll through me, loud as a thunder strike, and I trembled. What was that thing inside of me?
Violently quivering, I moved back into deeper and deeper darkness until it was not so loud or so painful, but then I felt empty and cold. So desperately cold.
What had that voice been?
Why was I here?
What was I doing here?
And worse yet… who was I?
At that final thought, I felt myself scream through a form that had no mouth, no body, no flesh. But I screamed and screamed and screamed as I sank into the madness of despair.
Many moons later
* * *
I began to have memories.
Thoughts.
Nothing cohesive.
But in the darkness of my waters, I started to remember things, little things, like skin as dark as the night and hair as electric blue as sea coral. Those memories made me smile sometimes, but there was one memory that made me burn. Made me rage and froth and despair.
A deeply accented voice and dark, haunted eyes.
Eyes that could peer into my soul.
Eyes that could reform me, reshape me. I’d felt those same eyes upon my waters. I felt compelled to learn who it was and I would kill it.
More time passes
* * *
I accomplished a miracle. I remembered shape. Form. I remembered how to become the body that I’d desperately wanted to have. It was like a lightning strike in my head. I woke up, and suddenly, it was all just there—how to reshape myself. Now I had flesh. I had limbs. I had a face. And I had teeth.
Slowly, I’d begun to fashion a home of sorts for myself down in the wet, empty waves. The first thing I’d done was create life.
But the life I created was dark and deadly and menacing, predators that were ravenous beasts, with fins full of deadly spikes and mouths filled with pointed fangs. Always hungry, the beasts attacked one another with a vengeance and violence that turned my dark waters red with their blood.
I sat upon a throne of their bones and wondered why I still felt so empty. I was more than this. Somehow, I knew that. My lot wasn’t simply to wither away in the bottom of the unknown and be nothing to no one. I was more. I was so, so much more. I clenched my hands. and my nails—now as long and thick as claws—punctured the flesh of my palms, and wherever my blood flowed, life was created.
I grinned.
What are you doing?
That voice that I was coming to loathe with every fiber of my soul echoed like a lament in my mind, making me angry, making me feel… shame. But she did not speak to me again, and I was grateful for it. Somehow, someway, I would find her, and I would destroy her completely.
I could not say how long it had been since my birth, but I knew one thing—I was a god. I was the god. I had seen the powers that lived within me. And each day that I remained in the darkness, in the below, I grew more and more impatient to begin.
Though, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to begin, only that I did.
All I knew was that there was a journey awaiting me, and that journey was my destiny. So I rose to the surface for the first time since I opened my eyes. I rose and I looked around at a world both foreign and somehow strangely familiar.
I saw things I never knew existed, or maybe I had known and simply forgotten. But I saw gods among us. Gods of the air and of the fields. They were all over, and they were not relegated to black waters where none knew of them. Only me. Only ever me.
And I thought that maybe, just maybe, I should come out of the darkness too. Maybe it was my turn. Maybe I would show them who I really was.
I frowned as a memory suddenly wiggled itself loose.
My name.
It was a strong name.
A powerful name.
Calypso, that damnable voice echoed deep inside of me, and I ached so fiercely that the waters around me began to boil.
“No,” I snapped at the ghostly creature trapped within me. “Never. I am not that. I will never be that. I am Thalassa, and the world will burn at my feet!”
No, that is not you. That is not us.
And for just a second, my soul clenched so fiercely that it brought heat to my eyes and a heaviness to my body that felt as if it would break me in two. But I was angry at the leech that continued to invade my spirit, and I screamed to the air around me.
“Go back to the bowels of the underworld where you belong, demon!”
I trembled, shaking so hard, waiting for her to say something more to me. But she didn’t. She was silent. She was blessedly gone, and my tremors soon faded away. I felt as though I would beat this beast who dared to challenge my might.
A slow-moving smile rolled over my face, and with a shout of triumph, I lifted my hands. The waters, not just my own but the waters in all of creation, reached out to me. I felt the fires of that power slam into me. It tingled. It was wonderful. And I didn’t feel so alone. I would rule them all. I would reclaim my throne. I would never be alone again.
I twisted, suddenly aware of another presence surrounding me—in the sky, in my waters, upon the lands. It watched me. I hissed, turned, and looked, soul pounding fiercely inside of me, and I wondered at the strange emotion that rolled through me.
Almost like hope and despair.
I roared because I wished the eyes to know that I was a beast, a powerful female. But the eyes did not leave me, and I felt things that caused me to suffer.
I did not recognize the emotion, only that it hurt. It hurt so badly I thought I might actu
ally die from it. So I dove into my waters, swimming furiously for the deepest trenches, desperate to get away, to hide.
And only once I was down there did I forget that I was a powerful goddess. I curled up into myself. Water leaked from my eyes, and I could not control it. Wherever that water touched, it killed all the life that I’d made.
What was wrong with me?
I did not know how long I had hidden, but I felt angry at myself for that unforgiveable show of weakness. Whoever those eyes belonged to, they could just go hang themselves. They would never run me off again. Not ever.
I was Thalassa, and I was the goddess.
I rose to the surface again, kicking my feet and reaching for the sky with my long arms. My body was strong, my movements sure.
Last night, in the cave of wonders I’d built for myself as a home, I’d started to suffer with flashes of images so vivid that they’d felt as real as the breaths I took.
A man. And a woman who had looked much like me.
That man, with his olive-toned flesh and strong, wickedly handsome features, had dared to touch me. And when he had touched me shame had gripped my virgin soul, for I’d loved it, moaned for it, begged for more.
I broke through the surface, taking in deep breaths of salt-tinged air, and snarled as I looked around, feeling empty and aching fiercely inside. I hated it. I hated him, whoever he was, for daring to imagine he could touch me in that way. Make me want him in that way.
Whoever that man was, he and I were enemies.
This I knew.
This I understood.
Because when I saw him in my mind’s eye, all I felt was an aching emptiness that made me feel sick and violent and so damned alone. And though I could not remember what he’d done to me, I knew he’d done something. Feelings like these didn’t just happen for no reason. My body remembered the trauma my brain could not.
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 19
