“No. Most serve only a few hundred years. That’s the goal, anyway. My mother was a Siren. Zeus tends to recruit from past Sirens he deems worthy. Good genes, you know.” She smiled, but he was still too shocked to smile back. “I was two when I started my home training. At the age of twenty I took my vows, was inducted into the order. I moved to Olympus, spent the next few decades mastering my skills, but didn’t begin formally serving with the Sirens until I was about forty. It’s common for a Siren to give three, four hundred years to the order, then leave to marry and raise a family. From that point they’re usually granted a blessed life, much like the Argoleans, if they so choose.”
“But you never left. Why?” He couldn’t imagine dedicating his life to anyone. Hell, he’d spent his three hundred years being pissed the gods had overlooked him to serve with the Argonauts even though he was the eldest from Perseus’s line, but now that he had the markings, he didn’t want to be tied to them. Certainly couldn’t see giving twenty-five hundred years to them, even if he could.
She shrugged. Slid her fingers down to his sternum. “Just never had a reason to.”
Again, he sensed there was more she wasn’t saying. And the hurt he saw flash over her features before she masked the emotion told him loud and clear something dark in her past was the reason she’d stayed hidden behind the order and hadn’t ventured out to truly live.
Who was he to judge her, though? Wasn’t he doing the same thing? Using his daemon as a reason to remain closed off from others, to keep from finding some sort of happiness in this life? He knew it existed. Hell, if someone could love Demetrius, then anything was possible.
His pulse picked up speed and his skin grew hot again. Only this time it wasn’t panic or even desire warming him from the inside out. It was something else. Something that filled the empty place in his chest he’d lived with since the day Gryphon was lost. Something he wasn’t sure he was ready to face.
“I wasn’t going to tell Athena where we are or where we’re heading next,” she said, her sexy voice cutting through his thoughts. “I was just trying to check in so she doesn’t send more Sirens after us.”
“Why?”
This time, she met his stare head-on. No fear, no worry, only determination shone in her amethyst eyes. “Because she sent me to do a job, and I’m doing it.”
He knew that answer could be taken in a variety of ways. She hadn’t said she was going to turn him in, but she hadn’t said she wouldn’t either. Or that she wouldn’t eventually kill him if she decided that’s what needed to be done.
She yawned, snuggled back into him. “Give Maelea an hour or two to sleep, then we’ll go ask her where it is. She looked exhausted when I left her. She’s growing on me, daemon. In a petulant, irritating, teenager sort of way. The more I’m around her, the more I sort of like her.”
Her eyes slid closed, her face relaxed. Maelea wasn’t the only one who was exhausted, he realized. His Siren looked as though she could sleep for a week.
His. It was the first time he’d thought of her as his. She wasn’t, though. Never would be. They were on opposite sides of a war that was only just beginning. And this moment of truce didn’t do anything but reinforce that fact.
His chest ached at that realization, and as she drifted off to sleep in his arms that place inside that had seemed so full only moments before deflated, leaking out all the warmth right along with it. He lay still, tried to regulate his pulse so it would drop out of the stratosphere and he could think straight. Tried to figure out what the hell he needed to do next.
And knew only one thing for sure.
Skyla was not his goal. The Orb was. Everything hinged on that. And it was time he remembered that fact.
***
Orpheus’s boots echoed through the dark corridor as he moved down the hallway toward the room Maelea had been given. He hoped like hell Ghoul Girl was in there and that the Siren had been lying when she’d said she’d hidden her away. He didn’t have time to play hide-and-seek, and he definitely wasn’t in the mood.
Thoughts of Skyla lying naked in the moonlight, hair fanned out around her, eyes closed in sleep, filtered through his mind, but he pushed them to the side. Walking away from her tonight was the first smart thing he’d done since he’d met her. He was done being a schmuck. No matter how great sex was with her, no matter how much he wanted to go back to her and do it all again, it wasn’t worth compromising his goals. Those images of her that had been rolling through his head when he’d climaxed? Those thoughts of her being his? Those were prime examples of how twisted his brain was becoming with every minute they spent together.
He sensed Maelea from the hallway outside her room even before he came to her door. The same light and dark warred inside her that he’d noticed the first night, but the light didn’t repel his daemon now as it had then. He felt the daemon move inside him, but the beast didn’t come screaming to the forefront like usual. Didn’t make any attempt to do anything but lie down and sleep, which was just plain weird.
He didn’t have a clue what was happening to him, but he knew Skyla was right. His eyes hadn’t once shifted green since they’d taken down those hellhounds after the train wreck. And though he knew his daemon was still in there somewhere, calling on its strength was becoming harder and harder to do.