“She does not understand why you lost control. She might wait until morning.” Anubis paused, eyeing the bathroom door. “Do not let her sleep with doubts,” he said before leaving.
Thanatos stood alone with the sound of running water and the burden of memory.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Anubis and Hypnos knew what had triggered him. Iliana didn’t. Even if he explained, would she understand?
He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, rehearsing the words he couldn’t afford to botch.
Iliana emerged. Her damp hair fell in loose waves, and the towel clinging to her curves did nothing for his composure.
She was stunning.
Her eyes widened when she saw him, but she didn’t ask him to leave. Instead, she calmly moved to the dresser and started pulling out clothes.
He forced himself to look away.
“What do you want, Thanatos?”
“I wanted to talk about earlier.” He kept his gaze on the wall, giving her privacy.
Iliana sighed. “I don’t understand why you hit Anubis,” she said, lowering herself onto the bed. “Was it because he kissed me?”
“No.” The answer was instantaneous. He turned to her, gently brushing his fingers over the bruises on her arm.
She watched him, waiting for an explanation.
“When I saw these…I lost control.” The sight rattled him, each bruise a sign of his failure.
She placed her hand over his, the touch keeping him from losing himself in anger once more. “I bruise easily. Ani didn’t hurt me. I’m going to keep training, and this will most likely happen again. You can’t lose it every time I get a blemish.”
He knew that. Logically, he knew that.But logic had nothing to do with the terror that had seized him when he saw the bruises on her delicate skin.
“There’s something I need to tell you. Why I reacted as I did.” He braced for the painful memories, for how he’d failed the last human he cared for.
“A few hundred years ago, I befriended a human woman, Eleni.” The name was still hard to say. “She loved me, but I did not return her feelings; not in the way she’d wanted.”
Iliana’s fingers squeezed his. “Than, you don’t have to…”
“I do.” He met her eyes. “I tried to be gentle, but she left upset. I did not see her again for two years.”
“What happened after two years?” Her question was soft. Careful. As if she sensed the significance of what was coming.
“I went to check on her.” His shoulders tensed at the memory. “I stayed invisible, not wanting to intrude, but when I found her…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“She had bruises,” Iliana said quietly. “Someone was hurting her?”
Nodding, he continued. “All over. Some were recent, but others were old enough that I knew…Iknewit had been happening for a while.”
He recalled the room, the witness to Eleni’s suffering. A cracked lyre lay deserted in one corner, the strings broken. She’d once played beautifully. The dust on it showed she’d found no peace or joy in it for a long time.
Iliana’s fingers clasped around his. The pressure of her hold helped steady him, keeping him from losing himself more to his past.
“In the next room, her husband sat there with this…this smirk.” Even centuries later, the image made his blood boil. “He enjoyed her cries.”
“What did you do?” she asked, softly.
“Nothing. Not at first,” he admitted. “I told myself interference would make things worse. So I left.”
