“I’m afraid you’ve already chosen, Lieutenant,” she whispered, rising from her cocoon of blankets and candlelight. He flinched against the sharp sting of her words.
“Send word to whomever you please, but by dusk I’ll be too far from here for it to make a difference.” Her voice trembled with the threat of heartbreak as she crossed the room.
“Tethys, wait,” he called after her, grasping her wrist before she crossed the open threshold.
“I’m done waiting. My entire life, I’ve been told what to do and how to do it. To sit aside and wait for others to fix things. I’ve been isolated, ostracized, and now heartbroken. But the woman who allowed herself to be caged burned in that fire.”
Tethys ripped from his grasp and swept out of the room, leaving her last words dissipating in the air.
Chapter 46
Araes’s feet stayed frozen to the floorboards as Tethys’s voice shredded through his mind. The walls caved in around him, sucking the air from the room entirely.
She’d asked him to make an impossible decision, but one he knew there was only one answer to. He’d felt it since the first time he’d seen her. It whispered in the quiet moonlit nights they’d spent together, but it screamed with her absence.
When Tethys took his hand and serpentined them through the crowded ballroom the night prior, the match ignited. When the manor went up in flames and his heart pounded in his eardrums at the thought of losing her to ash, it wasn’t just the walls that burned. His blood was molten in her presence and no matter the amount of mental restraint, the ember of a thought returned over and over and over again.
He was hers entirely.
If he was the darkness, she was his light. If he waschaos, she was his peace. Nothing could keep him from denying what he now knew with his entire fucking body to be true. The tether they pushed and pulled against finally snapped.
Araes forced his lungs to expand and stood from his seat. Flying down the hallway, past the kitchen and out the open cottage entrance he went. His heart raced as he stumbled into the open trail. It’d started to rain and now pellets from the heavens beat down on him with each step.
“Tethys, wait,” he called, his voice hoarse.
She paused at the trail’s edge and dropped the small satchel she held in one hand. Her eyes blurred with raging tears as she turned to face him.
“Come back inside,” he demanded, reaching for her hand. She swatted it away and laced her fingers behind her back, raising a furious brow
“You cannot persuade me to stay, Lieutenant.” She scowled, raindrops ricocheting off her shoulders. The braid she wore hung limp down her back and Penelope’s tunic clung to her body, sculpting every groove and curve of her abdomen. The skies above them darkened further and thunder boomed on the near horizon.
“You’re too stubborn to listen, but at least wait out the storm. It’s a death wish going out in this.” A lethal anger flared through his body as he watched her lips part. She wiped the rain from her eyes—vicious and tensed in her boots. Time ticked by as they watched each other.
Araes took a step toward the goddess.
“Tethys…” he started, closing the distance between them. The goddess shoved his chest aside.
“You may refer to me as queen or Goddess. I did not give you leave to use my given name, Lieutenant, nor will I ever again,” she said.
He swallowed the words before they escaped his lips. There was so much he desperately wished to tell her, butthose golden eyes silenced every rising thought.
“As my queen commands,” he breathed, clenching his fists to keep them from shaking. Her fury bore holes through him as he silently reasoned with her. Another crack of lighting struck overhead, and Tethys flinched, shivering under the curtain of rain.
“Please. Come inside. Wait out the rain at least,” he begged.
“I will stay until dusk…only because I cannot foresee getting far in this gods-damned storm,” she muttered, brushing past him and disappearing into the cottage. Araes ran his hands through his hair, smoothing back the soaking strands, and followed his goddess inside.
Chapter 47
“My choice is made, Lieutenant. You’ll have to take me as prisoner to keep me from going,” Tethys hissed, slamming Araes’s bedchamber door behind her.
The air was heavy between them. Tethys curled her trembling hands to keep Araes from noticing the frigid heartbreak now coursing in her veins. She was utterly drenched and felt the biggest of fools, thinking she’d make it even a mile down the trail.
Wringing her braid out, she watched Araes, as still as marble, from across the room. The cramp in her jaw deepened as she bit her cheek. This soldier, once with unstained honor and the highest of morals, now looked at her with eyes that blazed in darkness. She shifted in her boots, struggling to master her shallow breaths.
“Never in my hundreds of years of existence have I met someone who has vexed me so,” she seethed, feeling a lingering raindrop roll down her cheek. She didn’t botherto swipe it away.
Araes gritted his teeth and prowled toward her.
