Chapter Four
Thanatos
My wings shudder to life with a boiling fury, shaking off the shadows that typically hide them. Instinct takes over and demands I chase, but the unrelenting grip on my shoulder stops all momentum.
“How dare that corpse touch me? Touch what’s mine !” I roar.
“Lilah is not yours,” my brother retorts, in an annoyingly patronizing tone. He then addresses the silence, “Pay no mind to the tantrums of immortals,” and waves his hand in a way as if to say carry on . Conversations pick back up and if I could send every one of these corpses to the underworld, I would, just to be rid of them. My expression must say just that because my brother opens his infuriating mouth again with a simple, “Do not.”
As if to remind me he can subdue me at any time, he squeezes my shoulder with a punishing force, then releases me to make his way back behind his bar. I watch while he reaches under the bar, pulls out a large glass, pours something into it, then slides it in front of me. I don’t ask what it is, but take it all the same and finish it in one go. It feels like the fires of Tartarus scorch down my throat and ignite my insides. Refilling the glass and setting an unmarked bottle next to it, he moves from behind the bar wordlessly and roams around the room, checking on the full tables and wiping down the ones that were deserted when I walked in.
I turn back to stare at the drink in front of me, my thoughts swirling. She enrages me . How dare she make me feel these things? One time was never going to be enough and yet she continues to deny me.
A mortal ! One that also has a blanket of death wrapped around her. Not dead, but not fully alive. She simply shouldn’t be.
In a rare show of his disgustingly feeble heart, my brother pulled Lilah back through the veil when he should have left her to the consequences of her foolishness. Instead, he formed a crude fraternal attachment to her.
She adapted to her new in-between existence with an annoying sense of resolution. I watched her flit about the bar, more at ease with the deceased than the odious breathers. Soon, she watched me back with interest. A spark in those icy eyes was the first sign of mortal audacity. Then when that spark shifted into lust, she approached, thinking it would be so easy to compel me between her thighs.
What was meant to be a lesson in what happens when you taunt the Gods—and to also spite her self-proclaimed protector—turned into an insatiable need for her cries of pleasure. To be enveloped within her soft warmth while ramming the respect she ought to show me down her throat with my cock. To slide into her from behind, leaving brutal markings against her unmarked skin as a reminder of who she belongs to.