Thanatos chuckled, the sound low and edged with mischief. ‘Eager to see what I keep locked away, are you?’ He tapped his temple lightly. ‘Careful, Melinoe. You might find things you’d rather not see.’
Mal arched a brow. ‘Oh really? Like what?’
‘Like you… naked on my bed.’
She froze mid-step, narrowing her eyes. ‘I should never have asked.’
His laughter rippled across the stillness, dark and wickedly amused. ‘No,’ he agreed, lips curling into a grin, ‘you probably shouldn’t have.’
He halted, turning to face her fully. For a fleeting moment, Mal found herself caught, unable to look away. The God of Death stood amidst that lifeless field like something carved from obsidian and shadow, tall and impossibly poised, his jaw sharp and tense as though perpetually honed by irritation… or perhaps restraint.
‘You are the Goddess of Shadows,’ he said, his voice low, as if the words themselves bore weight. ‘Every god possesses powers unique to themselves, gifts no other god can claim. Then there are lesser abilities, those tethered to the realm they rule. You wield shadows as none else can, bending them to your will. But you are also what is known as a Deadly God, bound to the Underworld itself. That grants you dominion over the dead. Should you wed a god from another realm, you would inherit gifts beyond your own.’ He stepped closer, his dark eyes unblinking. ‘We begin with your primary power, shadows. You can visit the shadow-world.’
‘Shadow-world?’ she echoed, frowning.
‘A reflectionof the real world,’ he explained, ‘but steeped in darkness, another dimension stitched entirely from shadow.’
Mal stared down at her hands, her eyes widening, imagining an entire realm born of darkness and hers to command. ‘How do I do that?’
Thanatos moved to her side, his presence like a sudden chill. He stood behind her and, with deliberate slowness, placed his hands upon her shoulders.
Mal immediately stepped forward, snarling, ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Don’t be difficult,’ he said, the faintest amusement threading his tone.
‘Must you touch me to teach this?’
‘Yes.’
She sniffed the air and narrowed her eyes. ‘Funny. I smell a lie.’
Thanatos rolled his eyes, an expression she could feel rather than see. ‘Must you challenge me in everything?’
‘Fine.’ She huffed and stepped back into position, stiff as armour. ‘But hear me, Thanatos. If there is no true need for your hands to be there, I will cut them clean off.’
She heard it, the subtle curl of his lips, that dangerous, unspoken smile.
‘Look ahead,’ he instructed, his lips so near her ear she could feel the ghost of his breath. ‘Fix your gaze upon the land. Now, watch the shadows, every one of them. Hold them in your focus.’
Mal obeyed, her eyes narrowing on the dark shapes cast by a distant stand of trees, their silhouettes stretching like skeletal fingers across the earth.
‘Take hold of them,’ he explained, his voice soft but commanding, ‘as though your hand might reach outand seize them. Pull. Stretch them. And do not close your eyes.’
She imagined her fingers clutching those dusky outlines, felt the tension in her grip as she wrenched, tugged, and pulled.
And then, in the blink of an eye, the world shattered.
Mal almost stumbled as reality dissolved around her, replaced by something vast and unreal. She still stood upon the same earth, yet everything was altered, like a world plunged into deep water or choked with smoke. The trees had shed their solidity, becoming shifting pillars of vapour and ash. Every fragment of the Underworld remained, yet it all shimmered as if built from shadow alone, insubstantial and whispering.
She turned and found Thanatos behind her. But he too had changed. No longer flesh and bone, but something spectral, his eyes molten crimson, spilling tendrils of smoke as though they bled fire itself. Mal glanced down at her own hands and found them made of shadow and swirling vapour, her fingers dissolving and reforming with each movement, graceful and terrible.
Behind her rose the castle, not stone and mountain-carved splendour now, but a monolith woven from smoke, its walls coiling upwards, endlessly upwards, into a sky so black it had neither dawn nor end.
Mal spun at the guttural roar, her eyes widening as shapes emerged from the smoky haze. Beasts, scores of them, advanced with spectral grace: stallions with manes of living darkness, birds whose wings were silent knives, and sleek panthers whose eyes burnt with ghostlight. They halted before her, silent and still, awaiting only her command. Every one of them was hewn from shadow.
And above, in the shrouded skies, wyverns soared.
Thousands.
