Ravaged: An Eternal Guardians Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

  She was out on the deck. He watched her hair blow in the wind for several moments and told himself she wasn’t his concern. He could go back to his rooms. Forget about the nymph. Forget everything but sleep. The sooner the nymph was out of his life the better. But that stupid duty inside him wouldn’t let him walk away like he wanted.

  He crossed the great room and pulled open one side of the double glass doors. The nymph stood at the railing looking out over the dark valley, snow already collecting in her thick locks. Her feet were bare, and dressed in nothing but the T-shirt and baggy sweats she had to have gotten from Silas, she was already shivering, though he doubted she even noticed.

  “Come inside,” he said.

  She didn’t move. Thinking she might not have heard him, he stepped out into the snow, the cold immediately penetrating his own bare feet. “Come inside before you freeze to death.”

  For a long moment she didn’t answer. Then softly, so softly he barely heard her, she said, “Were you there?”

  She was talking about the village. Her village.

  Skata. This is not your concern. You don’t have to answer. “No.”

  “It was the middle of June. So hot I could barely breathe. I asked my mother if I could run to the creek to cool off. She didn’t want to let me go, but I persisted. Finally, she agreed, but only if I took Argus with me.”

  Dammit, he’d been right. Though he wanted nothing more than to run now as she had then, his feet wouldn’t let him. “Argus was your dog?”

  She nodded as she continued to stare out at the darkness. “I lost track of time. When I realized how late it was, we ran back as fast as we could. I knew my mother was going to be so mad that I’d stayed late.” Her eyes drifted closed, and pain etched her features. “I heard the screams first. By the time I cleared the trees, everything was in flames. I was seven.”

  Ari knew what it was like to lose everything—your hopes, your dreams, your future. And as much as he wanted to stay indifferent to the nymph, now he couldn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  It was a feeble thing to say. His Argonaut brothers had all told him they were sorry when his soul mate had died, and it hadn’t changed a thing. He watched as she stared out at the black swirling storm. Her face was as stony as the rocks in the cliff below them. Except for the tears that slid down her cheeks in silence.

  “And you’re sure it was Sirens?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “But you weren’t there. You can’t know for certain.”

  Her protest didn’t surprise him. As a nymph, she’d probably been taught that the Sirens kept the gods’ peace. Denial was the hardest hurdle to clear. He knew that better than most. “There was one survivor, besides you. A boy. Eton, I think was his name. He was gathering firewood at the time of the attack. He saw what happened from the ridgeline and ran. After, he sought refuge in a Misos colony in Eastern Europe. He confirmed it was Sirens.”

  “I knew him.” Daphne’s eyes slid closed. “He was a few years older than me.”

  She stood still several long minutes, the wind whipping her hair, snow collecting on her dark locks, her clothes, her face, her arms and legs. And as much as Ari knew she needed this time to deal with her grief, the inch of snow that had collected near her ankles since she’d come out here told him it was time he got her inside. “Daphne—”

  Abruptly, she turned back for the hold. “I have to go.”

  Thankful she was heading back in, Ari moved into the great room and shut the door at his back. But instead of heading for the stairs and the solitude of her room as he expected, she rushed for the entry to the hold.

  She shoved her feet into the first pair of boots she found, then reached for the massive door handle. It took only two seconds to realize what she was doing.

  Ari slapped his hand against the hard wood before she could pull the door open.

  “You’re not leaving like this.”

  “Get out of my way.” She pushed his hand away from the door and yanked. “You wanted me gone, so consider me gone.”

  Cold air swept into the hold. But before she could get two steps outside, he captured her around the waist, pulled her back against him, then shoved the door closed with his foot. “I said you’re not leaving.”

  She dug her fingers into his forearms and struggled against his grip. “Let me go!”

  She was a strong little thing. Stronger than he expected. Twisting her around, he pushed her back against the wall and closed in at her front, bracing his arms on the walls near her head so she was trapped with nowhere to go. “Running after them won’t do any good.”

  “How would you know?” She pushed at his arms but he held them still. “You don’t know anything about where I’m going.”

  “No, I know everything about where you’re going. I’ve been where you are right now. I’ve wanted them dead for what they did. But I also know there is no such thing as revenge against Zeus’s army. The Sirens are too many.”

  Her struggle slowed. She looked up at him and glared, and in her heated look he knew that he was the closest target for her pain. But as their eyes met, the glare slipped away and was replaced with a sea of emotion. And he noticed for the first time that her eyes were a deep, emerald green. As green, he guessed, as the woods around her lost village. And completely and utterly mesmerizing.

  “My mother’s name was Eleni.” Tears filled her gemlike eyes, and she blinked rapidly to hold them back. “I saw Zeus in our village days before it happened, talking with her, but I never put it together. I didn’t know she was the reason...”

  Her voice trailed off as tears overtook her. She lifted her hands to her face, her slim shoulders shaking with her sobs. And before Ari realized it, she leaned into him and rested her forehead against his chest.

  For a moment, he stood stone-still. Didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. But when warm wetness seeped through his shirt and penetrated his skin, that duty took over, and he closed his arms around her, holding her while she cried.

  She was small, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder, soft and curvy, fitting perfectly against him. He didn’t know a lot about comfort, had never been good at accepting or giving it, but he held her any way as she worked through her emotions. And though he told himself he was just being supportive, that there was nothing sexual about the situation, he couldn’t stop his body from reacting to her.

  His blood warmed. Tingles rushed across his skin wherever they touched. She smelled like vanilla, her scent rising in the air to make him lightheaded, and her damp hair was silky soft wherever it grazed his flesh. He forced himself to remain still, but the longer he held her, the more he had to fight the urge to slide his hands up and down her spine, back and over the curves pressed into him. And the more he tried to fight that, the more all he could think about was tangling his hands in her curly mass of hair, tipping her head back, and claiming her mouth with his own.

  She shivered against him, and the movement snapped his brain back to the moment. In a rush, he realized the wetness pressed against him wasn’t just from her tears. Her T-shirt and sweats were soaked from standing on the deck in the storm.

  “You’re cold.” He drew back enough so he could lift her into his arms. The enormous boots on her feet slid right off to clomp against the floor. “You need dry clothes.”

  She didn’t fight him when he carried her into the great room and headed for the stairs. Just sniffled and swiped her arm across her nose. “I don’t have any other clothes. These were the only ones Silas gave me.”

  Ari stopped at the bottom of the steps. Skata. She was right. That dress she’d been wearing when he’d brought her here was nothing but rags now.

  He moved for the hallway that led to his rooms before he thought better of it. She didn’t say anything as he carried her in, set her on the bed, then pulled a blanket from the foot and wrapped it around her shoulders. “I’ll find you something dry.”

  Still she didn’t answer. Just clutched the
blanket around her and stared off into space, her damp hair hanging around her face, her bare feet dangling above the hardwood floor.

  She looked wrecked. As wrecked as he felt most days. Telling himself it wasn’t the same, he moved into the closet and stared at the shirts hanging from the rack.

  But he didn’t see them. Suddenly, all he could see was the way she’d looked pinned against the bookshelf in his library last night. The way her breasts had lifted with her shallow breaths. The way her leg had trembled against his when he’d moved in close. The way her lips had parted and she’d lifted her mouth to taste him, an offering he’d been too afraid to accept.

  His blood warmed all over again, and arousal flickered through his belly then rushed into his groin. It was wrong, so very wrong considering how vulnerable she was at the moment, but he wanted her. Wanted her spread naked before him. Wanted her writhing in pleasure. Wanted to feel her close around him as he slid into her from behind. She was a nymph built for sex, and he was a virile warrior who’d been locked away for far too long. It was basic biology that he should want her this much. But a little voice in the back of his head whispered now—right now—part of that wanting had very little to do with sex and everything to do with the fact wanting, craving, taking could make both of their pain and memories disappear. If only for a little while.

  Skata. He blinked several times when he realized he was trying to justify it all to himself. Aside from the fact he hadn’t been the least bit civil to her since she’d arrived, he’d just told her the truth about her village. She was in the next room falling apart because of him. There was no way in this world or the next that she’d ever want him again. And that was assuming she’d even been interested in the first place.

  Disgusted with himself, he chose a long-sleeved henley he knew would be way too big for her and hide her trim little body from view, then headed for the bedroom. After she was dry and dressed, he’d shuffle her off to her own room and forget this night ever happened. And tell himself it was a good thing he’d come to his senses before it was too late.

  Plan in place, Ari stepped back into his bedroom, then stilled. The wet shirt and sweats she’d been wearing lay in a heap on the hardwood floor. Blood pounded in his ears as his gaze skipped to the right, where she sat cross-legged on the sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace, the blanket wrapped tightly around her, her faraway gaze staring into the flames.

  Naked. She’s naked beneath that blanket.

  Blood rushed into his cock, making him hard in an instant. But he fought back the arousal and told himself to hold it together a few more minutes as he walked toward her.

  He held the shirt out. “I found you something dry to wear.”

  “Does it ever go away?” She didn’t turn to him. Didn’t reach for the garment. Didn’t even look up. Just continued to stare into the flickering flames. “I thought it did. I thought I was past it. But knowing all of this...it’s sharper than before.”

  She was talking about pain. The pain of loss, the pain of heartbreak. The pain of betrayal. He knew all three intimately.

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Focused only on keeping his emotions trapped behind the wall he’d erected to stay semi-sane. But the hitch in her voice hit him hard, right in the center of his chest.

  Unable to walk away like he knew he should, he laid the shirt over the arm of a side chair and sank to the floor next to her. “It gets easier.”

  “Silas told me it’s been fifty years. It’s not easier for you.”

  Ari rested his elbows on his updrawn knees and stared into the fire, irritated Silas had told her about his past, thankful at the same time because it meant he didn’t have to talk about it now. He thought about those fifty years as he watched a flame dance over the log and wished he had sage advice for her, but knew he really didn’t. “If you’re lucky, you learn to live with it. And you don’t let it define you.”

  “But yours defines you.”

  “My situation is different.”

  Daphne continued to stare into the flames. “What was her name?”

  Ironically, it was no longer pain that consumed Ari when he thought of his soul mate. It was emptiness. Emptiness for a life he’d never have again. “Penelopei.”

  Daphne was silent several seconds. Then softly, she said, “‘Duty crumbles to ashes in the fires of love.’ My father said that once. He wasn’t a nymph. Just a human. Caught between two worlds. He left his job, his responsibilities, everything for my mother.” She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that kind of love. Not like them. Not like you.”

  Ari held back a huff. “I don’t know much about love either. Penelopei sure as heck didn’t love me.”

  Daphne finally turned his way, her soft green eyes no longer tormented by the past, but filled with a thousand questions. Questions that made his belly tingle. “But she was your soul mate. Silas said—”

  Gods, she was gorgeous. More gorgeous than she probably knew. And he had no right being anywhere near her. He looked back at the fire so he didn’t do something stupid. Like grab her and never let go. “Silas likes to romanticize the entire thing. I think it makes him feel better about choosing to stay here with me.”

  She stared at him, eyes wide and curious, waiting for more. And though he didn’t look at her, though he knew he shouldn’t go on, that he had no reason to tell her any of this, for the first time in forever he found himself wanting someone to know the truth.

  “Silas told you I found her on one of my missions in the human realm, didn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “And that she was injured?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I came across her, her dress was ripped to the thigh, her leg scraped and bleeding. She begged me to help her. Told me Zeus had been chasing her. That she was trying to get away. I believed her. Took her back to Argolea, knowing she’d be safe from him there, and tended her wounds. Penelopei was...” He watched a flame devour a branch and couldn’t help but see the similarity in the way Penelopei had devoured him. “She was like wildfire, consuming everything in her path. When she wanted something, she didn’t let consequences influence her desires.”

  Disgust rushed through him when he remembered how he’d dropped everything for the female, even his duty. How he’d so easily walked away from his family. He shook his head. “As thanks for saving her, she seduced me. It was then I realized she was my soul mate. This may sound silly but sex is a powerful medium. Every Argonaut in the history of Argonauts has found his soul mate that way. What I should have keyed into, though, was the fact a soul mate is a curse, not a blessing.”

  “You’re talking to a nymph,” Daphne said softly. “I know how powerful sex can be. I’ve seen it firsthand. Zeus’s desire for it destroyed my village.”

  And Ari’s desire had destroyed not only his life, but his son’s as well.

  Guilt crept in. A guilt he’d tried so long to ignore, but it was there. It was always there, hovering in the background, telling him there was no way he could ever make up for the pain he’d caused his son because of his blinding desire for Penelopei. For a soul mate who’d never truly seen him as anything other than a pit stop.

  “Penelopei quickly grew bored of me and life in Argolea,” he went on, “and when Zeus’s Sirens showed up to take her back to the god, she was more than willing to go. To her it was all a game. Jumping from one male’s bed to the next.”

  He sounded bitter. And maybe part of him still was. Because thanks to Penelopei, his whole world had shifted. Not because he’d loved her and lost her but because a stupid curse had made him crave a manipulative and shallow female.

  “When the Sirens arrived at my home outside the capitol city of Tiyrns,” he went on, “I wasn’t willing to let her go. I was blinded by the soul mate connection and convinced if I could just get her to stay, everything would work out. A standoff resulted. The Argonauts came to my aid. But she didn’t want to stay and struggled against my hold. The Sirens thought I was go
ing to harm her. Before any of us could stop it, a battle broke out. In the chaos, Penelopei was killed.”

  And there was the crux of the rest of his guilt. Knowing that because he hadn’t been able to control his desire, not only had he abandoned his son, but a female had died. “It wasn’t my blade that struck her,” he finished, “but I killed her just the same. If I’d let her go, she’d still be alive.”

  “Maybe.” Daphne looked back at the fire. “If I hadn’t gone to the creek that day, maybe my parents would still be alive too. Then again, maybe not. We’ll both never know. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re not meant to know. When I was a child, my mother told me that life was a series of events that make zero sense at the time, but which come together to reveal a greater good in the end. I forgot that until just now. Maybe what happened to you stopped Penelopei from tormenting another male. Maybe Zeus’s fascination with her—and you—stopped him from ruining another family’s life, like he ruined mine. Maybe everything happens for a reason.”

  He turned to look at her, at her profile set against the flickering flames. There was strength inside her. A strength he wasn’t sure she knew was there. There was also simplicity. Something he craved in his confusing, fucked up, crazy world. “Are you saying you believe in some unseen Fates pushing us around like pawns on a chessboard?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I just know that if someone had told me a week ago I’d be sitting here like this with you, I would have laughed and said they were insane. Everything’s changed in a short amount of time, and not by my doing. There has to be a reason for it.”

  He glanced back at the fire. He didn’t believe in reasons. He didn’t believe in the Fates. Where were the Fates when his world fell apart? Where were they when he started having blackouts and went nuts? No, he believed in what he could see and touch. And right now, what he could see and touch was way too close and much too vulnerable, especially when his arousal was still up and his own vulnerability hovered on the edge. “Be careful. People call me insane, and they’re not far off the mark.”