Entwined

Chapter Fourteen

“There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“What do you mean there’s nothing wrong? He looks like he’s about to kick it any minute.”

Voices drifted to Zander’s ears, rousing him from the blackness surrounding him like a shroud. He felt like he was pushing his way through a thick, soupy haze that didn’t want to clear and was fogging both his vision and mind.

“Physically,” the female voice said again, “there’s nothing wrong with him. I can’t find a single thing that explains his deterioration. But I can tell you this. Every time her vitals dip, so do his.”

“What are you saying?” a male voice asked. Unfamiliar. Deep.

“I’m saying,” the female said on a sigh, “they’re linked. In a way I’ve never seen before. Nothing we do to him affects her, but that’s definitely not the case the other way around.”

Zander strained to listen through the fog.

“Are you telling me there’s nothing you can do for him?” a male voice asked. This one Zander had heard before. But where? He struggled to make the connection but couldn’t. And why wasn’t his brain working?

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” the female said. “We have to focus on her.”

“Then focus, dammit,” the familiar male voice said again.

“We are.” This time the female’s voice held an edge of frustration. “The problem is, you’re not hearing what I’m saying. It’s not the injuries that are killing her.”

“Then what is it?” another female asked. This one too was familiar, calm where the others were frustrated, and Zander found himself struggling to bring his eyes open so he could make the connections he knew were right on the tip of his mind. He squinted but couldn’t see more than a hazy film.

“She doesn’t seem to have a will to live.”

“Skata.”

Okay, that voice was clear as a bell. Zander knew Ther-on’s voice anywhere.

On a groan, Zander rolled to his side and pushed himself up to sit. Pain stabbed every inch of his body, but he ignored it. The bed beneath him was firm, more like a gurney than a mattress. He looked up and around as his vision came and went, took in the white walls and bandages and tape on the long counter to his right and realized he was in some kind of medical facility.

The half-breed colony. Which meant Titus had gotten him and Callia here after all.

Links, memories, flashes of what had happened in that cave, in that cabin, hit him from all sides. Callia. His feet hit the floor. Almost went out from under him. To keep from sliding to the ground he braced a hand on the bed behind him until he was steady, then slowly followed the sound of voices toward the hall.

Shit. He was weak. Weaker than he’d been his whole life. Just crossing the room made him feel like he’d climbed Mount Olympus.

He gritted his way through the pain. When he rounded the corner and looked down the long narrow hall, he discovered he’d been right. A small group was huddled deep in conversation. Theron, Casey, Nick and a female who wore blue scrubs and held a clipboard.

“Zander, oh, my God.” Casey rushed to his side and tried to take his weight by slipping an arm around his waist, but he brushed her off and leaned one hand against the wall near her head instead. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

He ignored the king’s daughter, the one who would never be queen because her mother had been human, and looked at Theron. “Where’s Callia?”

“She’s being monitored,” the female said before Theron could answer.

The woman was average height for a half-breed female, average weight. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she had nerd written all over her plain-Jane features. She also obviously didn’t think much of him, because the scowl on her face was anything but friendly.

Zander dismissed her and looked over her head toward Nick, standing on her other side, looking like he had a migraine the size of Mount Rushmore. Join the fucking club. Nick dwarfed the woman in both size and confidence. “I want to see her.”

“Zander,” Casey cut in with a hand on his arm. “That’s not a good idea.”

Zander glanced down at Theron’s wife, his eyebrows drawn together, while a strange feeling brewed in his chest. They were keeping something from him. “Why not?”

Theron pushed away from the wall where he’d been leaning to stand at Casey’s side. “Because she’s not doing well. And neither are you. You’re in no position to…”

Zander’s gaze jumped to Theron, and warning bells went off in his head. What was Theron doing here? If Titus had gone to Argolea and brought him back, and Casey had come with him, it meant something wasn’t right. These days Casey stuck close to the castle for Isadora’s sake.

“Don’t fuck with me, Theron. Did she wake up? How long has it been?”

“It’s only been twenty-four hours,” Theron sighed.

Zander cut a look at the healer, then refocused on Theron again. And he knew his temper flared in his eyes, but he didn’t give a rip. “Twenty-four hours? Why the hell haven’t you taken her back to Argolea if they can’t do shit for her here?”

“Watch it, hero,” Nick mumbled from across the narrow hall.

Zander’s eyes whipped to the leader of the half-breeds.

“Don’t piss him off,” the female muttered to Nick. “You saw her scars.”

“What the hell are you mumbling about?” Zander glared down at her. “And who in Hades are you anyway?”

“Lena,” Nick said behind her, straightening from the wall himself. “One of our best healers. So ditch the attitude, or I’ll put your ass back in that bed myself.”

Zander’s jaw ticked, and that familiar feeling of rage pushed against his chest. The only thing that kept him from losing his cool was the palm of Theron’s hand now pushing against his sternum.

“Everybody chill out for a few minutes,” Theron said. He glared down at Lena. “And cut the digs. Tell him what you just told us.”

The female heaved out a breath like she didn’t want to tell him anything, but finally said, “Do you know anything about daemon poison?”

“Daemon what?”

“Poison,” she said louder, challenging Zander with her eyes in a way that made him wonder what the hell he’d ever done to her. He was 100 percent sure they’d never met. “An archdaemon’s claws are filled with a poison. Even if the wounds heal, the poison destroys healthy tissue one cell at a time. If it gets into the bloodstream, it travels to the organs and does the same, though at a much slower rate.”

“What are you saying?” Zander asked.

“She’s saying Callia’s infected, Zander,” Theron said. “Titus told us what happened in that cabin. Atalanta sealed Callia’s wounds, trapping the poison inside.”

Zander looked from face to face, trying to make sense of what they’d just told him. “I’ve been cut, bitten. All the guardians have been wounded. You—”

“You’ve never been cut by an archdaemon,” Theron said.

“Odds are good none of you have tangled with an archdaemon,” Nick cut in. As Zander glanced his way, Nick frowned, the expression doing shit to settle the unease in Zander’s gut. “The archdaemon doesn’t usually fight. He commands. We’ve seen this before. Certain victims my scouts have come across have had the festering type of wound Lena described. We didn’t know what it was until we found a female, alive, with a similar wound on her leg.”

Lena looked down at her feet, pursed her lips as if she’d heard it all before, but Zander didn’t miss the revulsion sliding over her features or the way she refused to meet his or any of the others’ eyes.

“She was pregnant,” Nick went on. “In a great deal of pain. She’d been raped. Repeatedly.” Casey gasped, and Nick rubbed a hand over his forehead, like just the thought sickened him as well. “We tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let us. She begged us to kill her.”

“From what we can tell,” Lena finished for Nick when it was clear he didn’t want to go on, “the archdaemon is the only one who can reproduce. We think he uses this poison to immobilize his victims and keep them alive long enough to give birth.”

“Dear God,” Casey said, covering her mouth with her hand. At his side, Theron slipped an arm around her waist and drew her close.

“The rate of gestation seems to be severely amplified for daemon offspring,” Lena continued. “A month, maybe two. We’re not entirely sure. We haven’t been able to study it.”

“Study it?” Zander snapped. “Like a science experiment?” His thoughts ran back to Callia. To the way she’d been laid out on that table before Atalanta.

“We did find one of these offspring shortly after birth,” Nick said, flicking Zander a warning look before focusing on Theron. “Dead. Its body looked human, but there was something about the eyes that wasn’t right. And the internal organs—”

“When we did an autopsy,” Lena cut in, “we found it wasn’t like us at all. Six-chambered heart, three lungs, two sets of kidneys. Imagine a race of these half-breed daemons living among us. It would be like—”

“The ultimate new weapon,” Theron finished for her, his jaw flexing.

Zander barely caught what they were saying. His stomach rolled, and he kept seeing Callia, bloodied and bruised. Heard her screams in that cabin before they’d gotten there. He pushed his hand against the wall to give him something solid to focus on so he didn’t lose it right there and then. “Is she…?” Gods, he couldn’t even say the words. “Was she…?”

“No,” Lena said quickly. “There’s no sign of sexual assault to the female you brought in. We think you got there right after he infected her. The other guardian who came in with you explained what you found—we think some kind of power struggle between the archdaemon and Atalanta. Maybe he was going to impregnate her, but Atalanta had other plans? We just don’t know.”

Relief was quick and consuming, but as fast as it hit, it faded. Zander ignored the half-breed healer’s babbling. “What did you do for the others? The ones you found who were infected?”

“Nothing.”

“Why—?”

“They all died, hero,” Nick said.

Zander’s gaze jumped back to Theron, now holding Casey tight at his side. Tears brewed in Casey’s eyes. Sympathy stretched across Theron’s face.

“No.” Zander turned his back on Theron and refocused on the healer. Panic and urgency rushing through his veins. “There has to be something you can do.”

Lena sighed and dropped her crossed arms. “There’s nothing. I—”

“Zander,” Theron said, reaching for his arm.

Zander shook off Theron’s hand. Fuck that. They were all acting like this was a lost cause, and it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. “Callia’s a healer.”

“So am I,” Lena said, frustration edging her voice higher. “But it doesn’t matter. She can’t heal herself, and my powers aren’t strong enough for this.”

It did matter. Callia was all that mattered right now. Zander’s eyes slammed shut. His mind spun. Images of Callia over the last few days whipped behind his eyelids like a movie. Her taking care of him, her cradling his body in that cave, warming him with her heat, enticing him with her essence. Hurting him. His disjointed thoughts stopped spiraling long enough to latch on to that moment. To what she’d done to him. To what she’d almost done to that daemon who’d tossed her across the cabin.

His eyes popped open. “Her powers are transferable.”

“What?” Lena asked. “How do you know that?”

How did he know? Because he’d seen it with his own eyes. And felt it in his own damn body. “Because she showed me. Her gift is being able to draw pain and illness out of the body. She can also throw it back. You can tap into that. Use your powers to harness hers and extract the poison.”

Lightbulbs flashed on behind Lena’s light brown eyes. “Theoretically, that might work. But how would I trigger it? She’d have to push pretty damn hard for me to pull out the infection. And she’s unconscious. We have her sedated right now, but even without the drugs, mentally she’s out of it.”

“You get her off those drugs,” Zander said, “and I can get her to do it.”

“You?” Lena asked with disdain. “You can barely stand up straight yourself.”

Zander edged away from the wall, swayed, caught himself. A renewed sense of purpose pulsed in his veins, giving him the strength he needed to get through whatever happened next. “I’m fine.”

Lena shook her head, and the contempt Zander had sensed in her before came back full force. She crossed her arms over her chest, dangled the clipboard from one hand. “I really don’t care if you pass out, Argonaut. But I’m curious how you, of all people, can trigger her powers.”

“She has to be good and pissed.”

Lena’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t say.”

“Lena,” Nick murmured, a warning in his voice.

She brushed Nick’s hand off with a flick of her wrist, her gaze locked on Zander. “And I suppose you’re the one person in the world she’s got reason to be pissed at.”

It occurred to Zander this little half-breed was gunning for him, but he didn’t know why, and honestly, he didn’t fucking care. The only thing he cared about right now was getting to Callia and getting her the help she needed. “Yeah, that’s right. No one pisses her off more than me. Now are we going to do this or what?”

Lena’s eyes tightened to thin slits, and she clenched her jaw so hard, Zander was sure her teeth ground together. “Yeah, we’ll do this. But get one thing through your head, Argonaut. When she wakes, she’s not leaving here with you.” Her gaze cut to Theron. “She’s not leaving here with either of you.”

Confused, Zander looked to Theron, who’d let go of Casey and now stood at Zander’s side in a very clear, very defensive posture.

“Lena,” Nick said firmly. “That isn’t our concern.”

“Too bad, Nick,” the female tossed over her shoulder. “I’m making it my problem. I saw the scars on her back. I know what they mean. And I know you of all people know what they mean too.”

“Scars?” Casey asked. “What scars?”

Lena’s fiery gaze swung Casey’s way. “The ones she got when she was punished.”

“Punished?” Zander’s brow wrinkled. He didn’t remember scars. Not anywhere on Callia’s smooth, creamy skin.

“Nick,” Theron warned in a low voice, “put a leash on your female.”

“I’m not of your world, Argonaut,” Lena spouted before Nick could stop her. “And no one ‘puts a leash’ on me.” She turned fully to Casey. “Did your Argonaut here tell you how they treat females in his world?”

“Lena—”

“You should know,” Lena said, ignoring Nick again. “Seeing as how you live there now.”

“Nick—” Theron started.

“She’s got every right to speak her mind, hero.” Testosterone all but bounced off the hallway walls. Nick moved in to stand directly behind Lena in an offensive move none of them missed. “Especially on this. And we both know she’s right.”

“What is everyone talking about?” Casey asked. Her violet eyes searched the group with a level of frustration Zander felt all the way to his bones.

Lena’s features settled into a smug expression. “Males in their world”—she gestured toward Theron and Zander with her chin—“can do whatever the hell they want. But females? They’re under a whole different set of rules.”

“Theron,” Casey said cautiously, looking toward her husband. “What is she talking about?”

Theron’s jaw visibly twitched as he stared at the healer. “It’s an archaic tradition. One that’s not practiced anymore. The cleansing ceremony hasn’t been used in ages.”

Cleansing ceremony.

The blood drained from Zander’s face.

“Tell that to the female in that room with lash marks embedded in her skin.”

Casey gasped.

Lena took one seething step toward Zander. “I don’t care if she screwed around on you or humiliated you in front of the whole kingdom. No woman deserves to be whipped like a dog. Not for infidelity and definitely not for something as sacred as giving life. I’ll help you save her, but after that you’re not touching her. Not ever again.”

Voices kicked up in the corridor as Zander watched the healer head up the hallway and disappear through a door, but he barely heard the arguments swirling around him. Because suddenly the blood screamed in his ears and Cal-lia’s words from the cave—words he thought had been a lie—were all he could focus on.

I’ve been in a cleansing period for the last ten years.

No. No, no, no…

Zander’s stomach rolled and pitched. The hallway spun and tilted. He needed air. Fast. Turning, he ran his hand along the wall, but didn’t feel the wood and stone. He swung out and grasped the first arm he caught. “Air. Surface. Now.”

Voices around him went silent, and he felt Theron’s big hand close around his upper arm. “Zander. Skata. You don’t look good. You—”

“Air!” he roared. Couldn’t they fucking tell he couldn’t breathe?

“Nick,” Theron said quickly.

“Down the hall. End of the corridor. There’s a stairway that will take you to the surface of the colony. But—”

Zander didn’t wait to hear the rest. He was weak, and he was fading fast, but his legs moved as if his life depended on it.

Somehow he made it to the surface, pushed the heavy sealed door open and stumbled out onto the ledge of a great canyon.

The door whooshed closed behind him as he gasped air into his shrinking lungs. Pebbles crunched beneath his feet, skipped over the edge and tumbled below where the ground dropped at least a mile and a stream meandered like a writhing snake. Ahead and to the right the hillside climbed, covered in dense underbrush and spires of pine trees, but he didn’t see the beauty. He barely saw any of it. All he saw and heard and felt was Callia’s face, Callia’s screams, Cal-lia’s pain.

Ah, gods. What had he done?

He dropped to his knees as his vision blurred. Rocks and twigs impaled his knees, his shins, his bare feet. He barely registered the bite and sting, because his mind was a thousand miles and ten years away.

“Damn Hera.”

The voice, female and elderly, was not a complete surprise to Zander, not now, not at this moment when nothing else in his never-ending life seemed to matter except how badly he’d fucked up. He turned his head and looked toward a group of boulders where a slight woman dressed in diaphanous white sat perched on a rock, staring down at him. Her hair was pale, her features sharp, her skin wrinkled yet luminescent. Power radiated from her, the kind of power he’d never had, and he knew in an instant just who she was.

“Lachesis.”

Her brow lifted. “Why the hell don’t you think I’m Atropos?”

He refocused on the pebbles in front of him, tried to breathe through the pain, but it stabbed him from all sides. “Atropos wouldn’t waste her time on me.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His mind raced, swirled, replayed every conversation, every moment since the day Callia had told him she was pregnant.

“Because you can’t be killed?” the Fate asked.

Silence met his ears. And for a split second he thought he’d imagined her. Then she said softly, “You are not immortal, Guardian.”

Lachesis slid off the boulder and came to stand in front of him. Hot pink slippers peeked out from beneath her flowing robe, looking ridiculous and real all at the same time. Just like his life. “You’re right. I can’t snip the thread of your life, I can only spin it. But even I can’t see how far it will stretch. The distance of your life depends on two things: Her. And what you do now.”

Slowly, Zander’s head came up, and as the Fate’s words sank in, little links clicked into place in his mind. He wouldn’t have died in that cave. He might have been paralyzed if Callia hadn’t removed that bullet, but even when he’d come to, he’d known his body was working hard to repair itself. The only other time—besides now—when he’d known death was waiting to claim him had been ten years ago. When he’d been alone. At home. Uninjured. And Callia had been in the human realm.

“She’s my weakness,” he whispered.

Lachesis knelt in front of him, and though she didn’t touch him, he felt the heat from her hand as it hovered over his cheek. “A heart is never a weakness, Guardian. It is a gift. A blessing even Hera could not keep from you. Many were the guardians from your line who wished for such a treasure. Your vulnerability isn’t one to be feared. It should be cherished.”

He closed his eyes against the pain. So much pain. All because of him. “I…hurt her.”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“When I think of what she went through…”

“She’s resilient. Stronger than you or her father think. And there is power within her yet unharnessed. Things are never as black and white as they seem. Sometimes pain is the catalyst to our destiny.”

At the mention of Callia’s father, anger wedged its way into Zander’s chest. He looked up. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner? Why now, after ten years, when she’s dying?”

Lachesis sighed, stood, and though she was no more than four feet high, seemed to tower over him. “Because that’s not the way it works, Guardian.”

“And how does it work?”

“I cannot tell you anything you don’t already know. I can only lay out your options before you. Nothing in life is static. The course your life takes depends on the choices you make.”

“And what are my options?” he said, pushing to his feet and pointing toward the rock formation behind him and the hidden door into the colony even he wasn’t sure he could find anymore. “She’s dying in there and it’s all because of me. It’s all because…of…”

The air whooshed out of him along with his adrenaline even though he fought it. Fought it with everything he had in him. But still he wasn’t strong enough to stop it. Just as he hadn’t stopped any of what had happened.

“…me.”

“Yes,” Lachesis whispered, stepping closer. “I would take your pain if I could. But I can’t.” Her arms came around him and though he didn’t actually feel her, her strength eased him down to sit on the hard ground. “Use it, Zander. Use it and that purpose you’ve been seeking for over eight hundred years. Give her a reason to live. The story of your life, of hers, doesn’t end here. Not unless you let it.”

Zander stared past Lachesis, toward the edge of the cliff and the canyon beyond. Days ago he’d stood on the ledge of a cliff much like this one and wished for death. Now…? Now it wasn’t about him anymore. He didn’t care if he lived or died, but he couldn’t let Callia die. Not knowing everything she’d been through because of him. Not when he hadn’t had a chance to set things right.

His gaze refocused on Lachesis. And questions, suspicions he needed confirmed filled his mind. “She gave birth to a son.”

“Yes.”

“Her father knew.”

“Yes.”

“All these years, no one ever said a word.”

He watched something wary pass over the Fate’s features. “Things aren’t always what they seem. The web of deception spins strongest near those we trust the most.”

His eyes narrowed at her strange words.

“The truth will come in time. But you have to heal her first.”

He took a deep breath. Knew she was right. With Lena’s help, he could do it. He could piss Callia off to the point where she channeled her powers and fought the infection. He could try to make up for at least one part of his horrible mess. And then…

“And then nothing is guaranteed.” Lachesis hovered over the boulder he’d initially seen her sitting on, a strange glow behind her. And she was fading.

“Wait,” he said, holding out a hand.

“The thread is thin, warrior.” She faded before his eyes. “Yours, hers, the offshoot. It grows thinner by the hour. The future hinges on the present. Before the end, remember that she is the constant.”

Then she was gone.