I stood in the above lands for a moment, reacquainting myself with the feeling of sunlight upon my skin. Apollo was in a fiery mood today. I knew it had been months—since the curse had struck, if I was being technical—since I’d come out of the Underworld, but it was so bloody hot out that it felt like my skin would soon blister. Even the trees wavered with the image of a heat mirage above them. The air was redolent with the warm scent of berries baking right on their branches. The jewel green grass rustled from a hot, northern breeze that cut through the meadowlands as sharply as a knife.

Our first stop on our journey toward reclaiming our hearts would take us right through the center of centaur lands. The forest we were in would soon give way to rocky fields, a sea of lilac heather, and flatlands that rolled for as far as the eye could see.

It’d been a place she’d once dearly loved to explore with me back before our world had imploded. She was a being of water fascinated by the strange and wondrous creatures of land, and for some reason, the centaurs had always intrigued her most. I suspected it wasn’t simply their bodies but their above average intellect that had always inspired her. To an outsider, Calypso might have seemed silly and child-like in so many ways, but she had never thought as a normal person did. She was an elemental who’d seen the world through vastly different eyes than any of us could or would. She was ancient with an ancient’s knowledge, and if one had ever taken the time to know her, they’d have seen just how quick-witted my bride had truly been.

I frowned, wiping at my brow with my heavy black gauntlet as the miserable sun continued its cruel assault on me. For months, I’d been surrounded by dark and ice and cold, so I was utterly miserable in the heat. It was like my own personal brand of hell. I grimaced and tugged on my chest armor.

Calypso—no, she wasn’t my Caly anymore, but Thalassa—stepped beside me, and I felt her looking me up and down.

“You know,” she said softly, with a hint of teasing behind it, “I don’t think armor is what one wears when one goes on a long march.” She shrugged and held up her hands in a defensive pose. “Or maybe they do. I hear sweating like a stuck pig is the height of masculinity these days.”

Her eyes sparkled just like they used to when she’d tease me before. But her lips frowned, and her brow wrinkled in obvious consternation, as if she wasn’t quite certain why she was acting and doing as she was.

Not sure whether she was sincere or acting, I was wary in my response to her. “Is that so?”

Twitching as if she suddenly recalled where she was, her eyes shot to mine and she nodded. But she seemed much less flirty than before. “Why do you wear such ridiculous looking armor, anyway? I’ve already proven that scrap of metal cannot stand against my might. So you might as well take it off and cool yourself down.”

I stared at my arms. I’d never really questioned why I’d begun wearing it again with such frequency. I was the god of death and as such, rarely had enemies to worry about. Except for when I’d gone to war against the Titans in the previous life, I’d never once worn my war suit. But there was a type of security that came from being encased in steel. Even though she was right, she had stabbed me right through it as easily as sticking a knife into hot butter.

I narrowed my eyes. “I did leave my helmet at home, Thalassa. Surely, that counts for something?”

She snorted. “Well, while you swelter in your metal oven, I’ll be nice and cool and enjoy the warmth.”

As she said it, her flesh, which had been half water, transformed yet again. She became wholly fleshy, and the dress she’d been in was gone. Now she wore the tinniest pair of white shorts I’d ever seen. She was barefoot and only had on a seashell bra, loosely tied together with a thin strand of braided kelp. Her hair, now a shade of sea-foam green, was threaded through with dozens of miniature buff-colored starfish and glittering mother-of-pearl shells. Her eyes were extraordinarily green-blue and as fathomless as the waters she called her home. Her nose was pert, tipped up slightly more than usual, and her jawline looked even rounder than normal. She was like a teenage version of herself.

I frowned because I did not wish to walk with a teenage version of Caly. By comparison, I must look like her doddering and ancient uncle.

She rubbed her arms, looking around, her features full of innocent trust. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked first in front of her then turned to looked behind.

“Which way, wayfarer?” She turned to me, and I almost grinned, because that had definitely been reminiscent of the Calypso I’d known.

Snorting, I shook my head before planting my hand on the back of my neck, now coated in so much sweat that anyone might think I had just crawled out of a pool. Damn Apollo. I had no doubt the god had known I’d be coming to the surface. He and I had never gotten on, but then I wasn’t exactly chums with any of my peers save Dite.

“Wouldn’t you just love to know,” I murmured, not sure I could completely trust her. That was the whole reason I continued to wear this bloody armor, not that it had helped at all. My insides was still tender from where she’d stabbed me earlier, though I’d almost fully mended at this point.

Like it or not, I had to admit to myself that the woman who lived and breathed inside of me and meant the whole damn world to me was someone I could also least afford to trust.

She punched my bicep. “Well, Death. Lead on then, since you’ve decided to be a curmudgeon about it.”

Her smile grew wide, but there was something behind it, something forced and unnatural, something that caused all the blood in my veins to freeze. It was the kind of smile that someone with no soul or humanity would give, something to make themselves appear more human than they actually were, and because it was so forced, it only made them look even more unnatural.

I gritted my teeth. Thalassa was a primordial and very dangerous if she chose to be, but she’d clearly forgotten who I was too.

Giving her a clipped nod, I set off straight ahead. I kept my steps slow, keeping an eye on the road and also on her. We followed a meandering, almost nonsensical trail, but there was actually a purpose to all of it.

I curled my hands into fists, my stomach a riot of nerves. I was not a wayfarer as she’d dubbed me. It was not in my nature to travel much at all. Even in the other life, I’d only gone outside of her world or mine at her behest and only then because she’d been Calypso and could have made me hand over the keys to my very soul if she’d asked it of me.

Humming softly beneath her breath, I saw her fingers working dexterously, moving in a blur as she wove something together, pulling nautical, sea-faring items from thin air.

I frowned.

As if she was aware of my studying her, she lifted her hands but never stopped or looked over at me. “Just some little baubles I like to make in my spare time. I like pretty things,” she said, and suddenly, I saw the item began to take shape. It was a nautical crown, held together by kelp and brimming over with strings of pearls and gem-encrusted crustaceans.

In next to no time, she had it finished and placed precariously on her hair, then turned to me with a wink and a smirk. But again, like a great white with its double eyelids and inky-black eyes, there was something strangely off about her mannerisms.

“So… how do I look, Reaper?”

She twirled, hands on her hips, rotating her body from side to side so as to show off her best angles and features—long, curvy legs, small waist, and full breasts. But all I saw was a child’s face fixed to a woman’s body, and I felt nothing. Who in blazes did she think I was? Some perverted male who’d be ready to sacrifice life and soul for this?

The cheek muscles in my jaw flexed as I bit down. Ridiculous, small games—that was what she did with me now. Toyed with me. Tried to play me for a fool. More than that, she’d used the one word for me she knew I hated, had known it in the other life, anyway. I stared down at her full mouth and felt a giant wave of disappointment spread through me.

She was trying to trick me. I wasn’t a fool. I knew a trickster when I saw one. But she was abysmal at it. I’d spent enough time with my dead to know when they tried to get one over on me, not to mention the whole weighing of the souls thing I could do quite easily, even to another god. I knew the intentions, good or ill, of a person simply by testing their soul, and I tested it with a simple prod at their consciousness, one not even the gods could sense. But whenever I did, it told me all I needed to know.

If the soul was weighted down, if it was heavy, it meant it was no good. It meant that if they were mortals, they did not gain the peace of Elysia, but the damnation of Tartarus.

Her smile faltered, and the flirtatious look on her face began to fade as she studied me back. I didn’t lie, not because I couldn’t but because I found the entire exercise pointless and the sign of a weak and pathetic mind. I believed one should say what one meant and mean what one said.

Thalassa’s soul was wrapped in chains and heavy as sin, a millstone tied around her neck. She wasn’t who she’d been, and at this point, I honestly wasn’t sure she ever would be.

My Calypso had given me an out, told me that she would not despise me if I chose to walk away, that I could leave her to her new life and her new persona. No harm, no foul.

She wore no smile now, and we’d stopped walking. I wasn’t sure when that had happened, but she was standing in front of me with her small hand on my chestplate.

“Hey,” she said simply, and that false mask slipped for only a millisecond, a moment of time. In her eyes, I saw something completely different—the pain from before, that conflicted anguish that tugged at my heartstrings.

And for just one second, I was buoyed by the memory of my true love.

“Who are you now, Thalassa?” I asked, words shivering from deep inside me. I let her hear the pain in those words because I’d never been any good at pretense. “Do I dare trust you? I think I’d be a fool to try.”

She gasped, shoulders drooping just slightly as she pushed back on her heels. “Wh-what?”

“Do you really imagine me a fool that I would fall for these childish games you play?”

She blinked. “I… I…”

“Stop.” I curled my lip. “Do us both a favor and end this nonsense. You do not need to talk with me, nor do I need to speak with you. We don’t have to be friends in this life if you don’t wish it. But do not delude yourself into believing that I’ve fallen under your spell. At least have a little more respect for me than that.”

She swallowed hard, staring at me as though I were a completely different thing from what she’d imagined me to be. “Who are you?” she asked me right back, throwing my words back in my face.

Disgusted, but more than that, deeply disappointed by the creature who wore my woman’s skin, I rolled my eyes and stepped to the side so I could walk around her.

“I’m just a man, elemental, and I grow weary of this heat, so if you’d like to pick things up a little, we can get to where we’re going.”

I wasn’t sure what she’d say to that, if she’d tell me that I was wrong—I wasn’t—or that I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about—I did. But she did neither. I sensed her walking behind me again, her steps slower than mine, pulling slightly away from me, but also making certain that she kept me within seeing distance.

I didn’t care.

I should leave her to it, tell her exactly where her heart was. In truth, it was in the least likely place she’d expect. When she’d given me her heart to guard in the previous timeline, I’d chosen the most obvious place to hide it, literally right under her nose. My Calypso would have known immediately where I’d hidden it because she’d known me that well. In that life, we’d been one heart, one mind, and one soul. But in this one, she seemed entirely clueless. I knew I had to have patience, had to be understanding, and wait. I’d even promised her as much, but making promises when someone made you feel like their whole world, and then trying to keep said promise when that same person looked at you like you were no better than a bug beneath their heel, was a type of hell unlike any I’d ever known. Either way, this entire idea of journeying together seemed suddenly futile and a waste of my time and hers.

She did not want me. She did not even like me.

I was bloody Death. Did she imagine for a moment that I didn’t realize she’d been planning an attack on my person at some point during our journey? Her entire plan had been to woo me in with her nonsense and petty silliness, and then she’d strike when I least expected her to, when I’d dropped my defenses and fully began to trust her.

Her entire plan was to regain control of her soul blade. The only way she could get it back would be for me to part with it willingly, which meant she’d have tried to harm me in some deviously awful way so that I’d have no choice but to let her have it back or die.

What I couldn’t understand was why she hadn’t taken it before? It made no sense that she’d had the thing in her hands and had decided to give it back to me, especially when I’d been more than willing to part with it. Her thoughts were like chaff scattered to the breeze, disjointed and hard to follow or understand.

But then I had a thought. Was she letting me keep the blade to make me believe I held power over her? What if her true aim was to get to her heart before she struck? The more I thought about it, the more likely that scenario seemed.

But why? That was the part that I couldn't fathom.

My Calypso would never have harmed me. She’d been devious herself, at times even cruel to those who didn’t know her, but she’d loved fiercely. Deeply. She’d never hurt any of those she’d truly loved. Could this creature boast such? I doubted it.

Our granddaughter was still frozen in her waters. Did she even once think of Fable? It seemed to me that Thalassa remembered a lot more than she let on, especially when that false mask would slip, and I could read the conflict brewing in her eyes. Deep down, a part of me suspected she knew what she was doing, which made everything a million times worse.

Suddenly, my weariness and rage morphed into one giant ball of disgust and loathing. Without thought, I twirled on my heel and called her soul blade to me.

She gasped, eyes going wide as she stopped in her tracks and stared at me and the blade, shaking her head back and forth and whispering, “What are you doing? What? What is this?”

I glared hotly at her. Detesting her ridiculous theatrics even as a part of me ached for the woman she’d once been.

“I’m done. I’m done with this nonsense. I have work that needs my attention, souls that depend on me, and you… you aren’t worth my time. Not anymore.”

I meant none of what I was saying, but I also did too. I wanted my Calypso, not this beastly goddess who was so full of anger and wrath and poison. I didn’t want to share space with someone whose only interest in me was in getting what they wanted so that they could then turn around and stab me in the back.

Her jaw dropped, but her eyes, which had been full of pain, were now flooding with rage and fury.

“How dare you?” she seethed.

The mask fell off, and I saw the truth reflected back at me. This was a creature full of pain and rage and fire. Her hair snapped and curled around her head like sea snakes, and even as I ached from this fight we were having, I stood in awe of her majesty. She was still as fierce as she’d always been.

“How dare I?” I snarled, standing over her, tall and proud, even knowing that if she really wanted to, she could snap my spine in two with a mere flick of her dainty fingers. “How dare you! Not even an hour into our journey, and you plan and plot against me.”

“I don—”

“Do not say it,” I snapped, cutting her off. “Do not lie to me again. You’ve forgotten who I am. That was your first mistake.”

I lifted a finger, holding it just before the tip of her pert little nose, which I desperately wished I had the freedom to kiss. I wanted her, wanted every square inch of her. I also hated her for what she’d done, hated her for exposing my one and only real weakness.

Her.

It had always been her.

The woman I loved was nowhere in this body, just pain and duplicity.

I swallowed hard, feeling as though I might break in two. I’d never imagined being with her could be this this hard, seeing her but knowing it wasn’t her at all. The more I tested her soul, the less I knew this woman, and the less I wanted to.

She breathed heavily, and I was brushed by a blast of her consciousness that was cruel and dark, so damn bloody dark that it made me gnash my teeth as I choked on the bottomless pit of rage and pain that dwelled inside her.

“How did you know?” she asked, voice low and silky and deadly. Her eyes glanced at the soul blade still gripped tight in my hands.

“Thalassa, in our other world, you were the greatest love of my life and I…” I stepped forward until the tips of my shoes brushed the tips of her toes. “I was yours. Now, do you honestly imagine for a moment that you would have allowed yourself to fall for someone less than worthy of you?”

She tipped her head back and laughed with cruel gusto. “Oh, and you’re worthy of me, are you?” she sneered.

Seeing that look of hate coming from her youthful face made me feel as if I’d swallowed a ten-pound bag of rocks. I fought back a flinch, concealing the pain of her words so that she would not see, would not know, just how much her cruelty had cut through me.

I wanted my heart back, but the truth was that it wasn’t the organ I was after. Unlike her, my heart stood right in front of me. And she was twisted, cruel, and ripping me in two.

I could not bear it. I could not bear to be with her. I just couldn’t. Being with her would taint the memories of the one I loved most, and I would never do that to Calypso. My memories of her were the only good things I had left in me.

“I was then,” I said honestly.

She scoffed and looked to the side, emotions flickering over her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to anymore.

“But in all truth, Thalassa.” I lowered my face to hers, so close that she and I shared breath, and a mocking grin curled her lips as if she’d thought herself victorious. “You. Are not worthy. Of me. Not anymore.”

She gasped, twirling toward me full on, so still now that she looked almost like a marble statue—beautiful, but cold, lifeless, a husk and nothing more.

It was my turn to scoff. “Take your bloody blade. I never wanted it anyway.”

I shoved it at her, but she gripped my wrist, her small hands so powerful, so full of barely leashed control.

The winds whipped around us, and her hair turned to strands of glimmering waves, rolling and undulating around her face, which was now no longer youthful but eternally beautiful and ancient.

Her lip was curled, but in her eyes glittered the dark and bottomless depths of her waves. My body responded with a craving like a ravenous beast on the prowl. It loped through me, making my skin shiver and flicker with the blue flame of my own powers.

She hissed, her fingers scorched by the heat of the fire, but my fires had never harmed Calypso. They’d burned with other things—lust, desire, love.

Her lashes flickered, and a smile, a real one, ghosted over her wide, wine-colored mouth. She exhaled, an ahh’ing sound that was not pretense at all, but real. And when she looked at me again, there was hesitation burning in her eyes.

I opened my palm, letting the blade glimmer in the blazing sun. It gleamed like molten metal and burned with the runic symbols that would give me the power to cleave her soul in two if I wished it.

She trembled violently, and I had to fight the urge to tug her into my body and shield her from it. That wasn’t my place anymore.

Without speaking a word to me, she curled my fingers very slowly over the blade and pressed my hand into my chest with a snapping kind of finality.

My brows furrowed. Was this real? Was she implying that she would not attempt to take it from me with treachery again? Or was this just another one of her twisted mind games? My nostrils flared as my stomach roiled with nerves.

Then she stepped back, and her shoulders were stiff and erect.

“You will not leave. You vowed to guide me to my heart, so do it, Reaper,” she said succinctly, almost with anger behind it. But I heard more than just the anger. I heard something I didn’t dare trust.

I heard a truth that left me weak in the knees and breathless.

And the hope I dared not indulge turned into anger within me. Was she still playing her games? I wasn’t sure. With anyone else, I’d have trusted my instincts, but she’d always had a way of getting under my skin, and now I doubted all that I felt. I wasn't sure about anything anymore, and the not knowing killed me. I snarled, vanishing the blade instantly into the hidden pockets of fragmented time all around us, and shook my head.

“Never call me that again,” I snapped.

Her eyes thinned. “What would you have me call you?”

Turning my back on her, I marched forward and muttered beneath my breath, “Nothing at all.”

I had had every intention of returning to my Underworld, but with every step I took, I only moved farther away.

The cards were on the table. She knew where I stood, and I knew where she stood. We weren’t friends. We weren’t even friendly. She treated me as her enemy, and yet, even knowing all that, I could never abandon her.

For all my bluster, she’d just learned my only real weakness.

“Hurry up,” I growled, marching faster and never bothering to look back. She either kept up or she didn’t, and that was all there was to it.