She smiled. “I hear the truth you work hard to keep hidden. No man ventures into the Underworld for a brother he doesn’t love. Why didn’t you ever tell him about your daemon?”
Orpheus’s chest tightened. The Siren was mistaken. It wasn’t love that had brought him here. It was guilt. A hell of a lot of guilt. Guilt for thinking he could play hero. Guilt for getting Gryphon hurt in that warlock’s castle. Guilt for never telling his only sibling he was sorry for being such a shitty brother.
Guilt shifted to emptiness, opened that hole inside him all over again. Then was replaced with an anger he’d learned was the only emotion that could fill the void. “Because he’s an Argonaut, and for a daemon, a witch-daemon, that means enemy. And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, Siren, that damn hero gene in Gryphon is a major conflict to my interests. Look around you. We wouldn’t be here now if Gryphon hadn’t tried to save my fucking soul. Something I don’t even have.”
His frustration with the entire situation welled inside him, threatened to bubble over. His dumbass brother would never listen, not to the truth, even when it all but smacked him in the face. Because Gryphon was the real deal. A hero to the core. One who instinctively overlooked the bad and zeroed in on the good.
Except in Orpheus’s case, Gryphon had been wrong. There was no good in him, no matter how much Gryphon wanted to believe there was.
“What makes you think you don’t have a soul?” Skyla asked quietly.
Reality. That emptiness widened in the center of Orpheus’s chest, dousing the anger with pain. A black hole of nothingness waiting to suck him in. “The energy that sent Gryphon’s soul here should have done the same to me. We were both hit by the same power source that day. Except I survived and he didn’t.”
Because I don’t have a soul to destroy.
“Maybe your daemon strength stopped it.”
“Maybe you’re na?ve.”
She smiled. “You have a soul, Orpheus.”
He tipped his head her way. “I have a daemon, Siren, as you oh so eloquently like to remind me.”
“Your daemon hasn’t been very reliable lately.”
No, it hadn’t. Which pissed Orpheus off more than this entire conversation. Down here, the beast could be a real asset, but Orpheus knew it wasn’t about to come out and play. Even now he could feel his daemon simmering beneath his skin, but it made no effort to unleash itself. Aside from a tremor now and then, it was as if the daemon barely existed.
“Whatever.” He didn’t have time to worry about what was happening to him. He had to figure out how to find Gryphon. “Doesn’t change the facts. And facts don’t lie. As a Siren you know that better than most.”
She didn’t answer, and silence settled between them. A silence that left him more edgy than before. To distract himself, he focused on the red-orange glow in the distance that was dimming but didn’t completely go away, as if not even night could blanket the pain and suffering with comfort.
Skyla yawned, eased down to her side, tucked her hands under her face. Even though he fought it, Orpheus’s gaze drifted her way and he watched the tendrils of damp hair blow gently against her skin.
“We’ll find him, you know,” she whispered.
His chest filled all over again as he watched her eyes drift close. She had a way of taming that emptiness inside him as no one had done before. Not even his brother. He wanted to chalk up her concern to the Orb, but the longer they were together, the harder that was to do. Logic told him she should have taken the Orb as soon as they’d immobilized that warlock. Or she could have let him venture into the Underworld alone and then stolen it when he wasn’t looking.
But she hadn’t done either of those things. She was here with him now, where she didn’t need to be. Risking her life for someone she didn’t even know.
Risking her life for him.
He leaned down until he was close to her ear, until her scent filled his senses and tempted him to take one simple taste. “Why do you care, Siren?”
She yawned. But instead of opening her eyes and looking up as he expected, she reached out and wrapped her fingers his. Fingers that were warm and soft and oh,so comforting in a way nothing else had ever comforted him before.
“The question isn’t why I care, daemon,” she murmured as she drifted to sleep. “The question is how long have I cared?”
Chapter 21
Morning in Tartarus wasn’t much different from night. The air was oppressive and suffocating. The heat sent sweat to every part of Skyla’s skin. And the closer they ventured to Tartarus, the worse the moans and screams and cries for mercy grew in the distance.