Callia's stomach clenched into a knot as she stared at the old andras and he drifted off to sleep as if he had not a care in the world. The king expected her to...

Skata.

She lifted a shaky hand to her forehead, swiped at the sweat beading there and turned for the door. This exam had suddenly taken on a whole new form of personal torture.

She left the room as anxiety and anger boiled in her gut. After relaying the king's message to Althea in the antechamber, she reluctantly headed down the great marble staircase toward the king's study on the second level.

Damn the king. Her temper soared as she reached the bottom step and turned the corner toward the study. Damn the politics of this war. Damn the Argonauts and Zander especially for making her feel, when she'd been doing a helluva job just getting by these last ten years. She didn't want to sacrifice. She didn't want to think about marriage and bindings and doing what was right. And she especially didn't want to be alone with the one Argonaut who had ruined her entire life.

She pushed the study door open to see Zander turn from the bay of windows, late-afternoon sun highlighting the gold in his short blond hair, backlighting the muscles and planes of a well-defined body she'd known more intimately than any other. But he didn't greet her, not that he ever did. And there was absolutely no reaction whatsoever on his face at seeing her. Not that there ever was.

He turned his gaze out the window again without a word.

She let the heavy door snap closed at her back and walked toward the desk, her shoes clicking across the king's seal as she crossed the marble floor. Calm. Clear. Completely professional. That's how she'd play it with him, no matter how much she wanted to throw something. If he was going to act like they were complete strangers, two could play that game.

"Strip," she said as she cleared the ancient mahogany desk of its lone lamp so she could use it as her exam table. "Everything off."

Stormy blue-gray eyes shifted her way. And oh, yeah, that was definitely not happiness reflected there at the prospect of being alone with her. Like she cared.

"I'm not getting naked for you."

She ignored the little thump in her heart at the sound of his deep voice and narrowed her eyes. "Then you're going to have a hard time binding yourself to the princess." She glanced at his hips. Smirked. Wanted to gouge out a wound in his chest big enough to dump a truckload of salt into. "Or soft, as the case may be. Rumor has it you can only perform with human women. Whether you like it or not, the king wants to make sure you're...up to par, you might say, before he lets you marry his daughter."

She knew she was antagonizing him, but just couldn't stop herself. It had been building for a long time. Since the moment he'd turned his back on her all those years before. She wanted to make him hurt the way he'd hurt her. To feel...something...instead of being the stone-cold bastard he really was. And since this was the first time they'd spoken in ten years, was it really a shocker their conversation was about to be a doozy?

She focused on his darkening eyes, saw the temper flare there and felt marginally better over the fact he was finally exhibiting some kind of emotion, even if it was contempt. "Of course," she went on, "you can save yourself the burden of this little exam by simply admitting you're impotent."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"No." What little humor she had faded. "What I'd like is to get this over with so I can be on my way. Contrary to what you might believe, Zander, my world stopped revolving around you a long time ago. Now either strip, or I'll tell the king to choose someone else."

Chapter Four.

There were times when the bitter cold was something you reveled in. When the shiver running down your back was a stark and blessed reminder that you were alive. For Max, this was not one of those times.

He stared up at the seething seven-foot monster in front of him. Blood and sweat and other disgusting things he didn't want to think about dripped down its ugly face. The shiver that ran through Max was a mixture of the near-zero temperatures this far north in mid-October, and the fear that lanced through every cell in his small body.

"You. Will. Pay!" The daemon lunged, his sword slicing through air, coming dangerously close, but one thing Mr. Ugly didn't count on was how quick someone only four and a half feet tall could be.

As if fueled by some outside source, Max darted between the daemon's legs, whipped back and sliced out with his own blade, cutting deep into the daemon's thigh. The monster howled, dropped his sword and went down to one knee. Blood spurted from what could only be his femoral artery, spraying over Max and the ground. Bile welled in Max's throat, but he lifted his sword again, ready to strike. To finish this. The need to annihilate stronger than anything he'd felt before.

"Good. Good, Maximus." Atalanta's voice echoed in his ear. "Let your hatred guide you. Finish him. Plunge your blade deep into his chest. Then send his soul to Hades for all eternity by decapitating the beast."

He wanted to. His muscles ached to kill. But the pride he heard in Atalanta's voice stopped his forward momentum.

The monster lifted its face, his glowing green eyes now level with Max. There was fear there, true fear at what would happen to him. And in that instant Max saw himself reflected back in those eyes. He saw the weeks of training, the years of hopelessness and his own fight just to stay alive. And he saw that Atalanta was winning.

He dropped his blade, stumbled backward. Couldn't seem to tear his eyes from the daemon in front of him. A kind of respect passed between them. And on the daemon's part, a thanks, if you could call it that. But it was probably more relief. Tomorrow he'd be healed of this wound and be ready to take Max on again. This time to the death.

"Spineless." Atalanta swept by Max, picked up his blade and thrust it into the daemon's chest. The monster's eyes went wide. He reached for the blade, but she yanked it from his body, swung out and decapitated the beast without so much as a grunt. His grotesque head hit the ground just before his body fell.

Max's eyes grew wide, but he didn't run or even gasp. He'd seen her kill before. Knew he would see it again.

She rounded on him, leaned down and narrowed her black-as-night eyes. "I grow tired of your humanity, Maxi-mus. Kill or be killed. That is the world in which we live. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will take your place at my side."

She was tall, close to six and a half feet, he guessed, and with her jet-black hair, which fell straight to her waist, her snow-white skin, her coal eyes and those high, sharp cheekbones, probably pretty to some, but not to him. This close she smelled sweet, of honey and spun sugar. But he knew how deadly she was. The beauty was a mask. Inside she was as sick and twisted as the daemons who served in her army. And when she struck, her sting was worse than any scorpion's.

"Yes, Maximus," she whispered, a wry smile sliding across her perfect face as she leaned in closer. "I feel your hatred for me right now. You want to lash out. To hurt me. But you can't. Because I am your materas. Feed the feeling, yios. Channel it. Direct it back to the ones who created me. To those who are responsible for your misery now. You know the root of all evil lies with the Argonauts."

She let the last word linger near his ear, her hot breath running down his neck, under the collar of his thin shirt. The sickness he'd been fighting condensed in his stomach and rose to his throat, and it was all he could do to swallow it back.

Her eyes were filled with victory as she eased away, but there was also something else there. Disgust at how he had failed her yet again.

He stared at her. Didn't break the eye contact. Knew she'd see it as another sign of weakness if he did. But she was right. He did hate her, and he did want to hurt her. Though what stopped him wasn't the fact she claimed she was his materas. No, he stopped because the humanity left in him that she hated so much wouldn't break. Not while he breathed air in his lungs.

She rose to her full height, her red robes pooling around her feet, and glared down at him. One perfect hand lifted and pointed back toward the fortress across the barren field. "Leave me now before I change my mind and let Thanatos have a crack at you."

Though he wanted to run, Max turned and walked across the frozen ground, head held high, shoulders back. When he reached the massive log structure, he darted around the side to the servants' entrance at the back. He knew his place. Though the bulk of Atalanta's army was housed in the barracks nestled in the woods and steep-rising mountains behind the property, a few of her "chosen" resided with her in the big house. Thanatos, her archdaemon. A couple of servants. And him.

He went in through the kitchen and silently climbed the rickety back stairs to the fourth floor. This huge house, more like a wilderness lodge than anything else, was still an improvement over the Underworld. There he hadn't had his own space. Here, even though it was freakin' cold 24-7 and his toes were in a constant state of numbness, at least he had more than a corner to call his own.

After being banished from Hades for reasons he still didn't understand, Atalanta had moved her army to this barren wasteland deep in the forests of northern British Columbia. He knew why she'd brought them here. Because it was isolated. Just as he knew this house and all the land around it had once belonged to some old oil tycoon who'd struck it rich somewhere in Alaska. That man was now dead, the gruesome details of his mutilation alive in Max's mind thanks to Thanatos, but no one in the nearby community of Fort Nelson had any idea a demigod from the Underworld was living among them. None realized they would soon die. Or that the woman who now resided here plotted revenge and was formulating a way to take over the world.

His thighs ached by the time he reached the fourth level. He was so tired from the day's fighting he could barely see straight. At the end of the long hall that split the floor in half, he eased open the three-foot-high door and crawled through the small space. Inside, he grasped the rungs of the dusty, wooden ladder and climbed until he reached the attic. Then finally sighed in relief.

Across the dirty floorboards, his pallet beckoned. The filthy porthole-shaped window high on the wall looked out at the frozen gold-brown training field, but he didn't spare it a glance. He never did. Its only use was to let light into the dingy room, as it did now.

He was grubby, covered in blood and sweat, and he needed a shower in the worst possible way, but it could wait. Right now he wanted comfort. The kind he could only get from one thing.

He crossed the room. The blanket had already been removed from his pallet-by one of her minions in the house who'd watched the scene outside, no doubt. Punishment, he was sure, for not killing that daemon when he'd had the chance. If there was one life lesson he learned every day it was that in this world, everything had consequences. But today he barely cared.

Next to his pallet, a fresh bowl of water and a plate of bread had been left for him. Though his stomach growled at the sight, he ignored the pathetic food and instead continued on. To the fifth floorboard from the wall. To the one only he knew was loose.

He pried the board up with fingers still so cold he could barely move them. After lifting the corner, he reached underneath to draw out the glass.

It wasn't a mirror, but it wasn't clear either. The oval piece was frosted on both sides, rippled as if from the inside out even though it was smooth to the touch. Around the outside it was rimmed in what looked to be gold, though Max couldn't be sure, as he'd never seen real gold before. All he knew was that it was heavy, a solid weight in his palms, no bigger than a saucer, and it held a magic like nothing he'd ever known.

A window between worlds.

He cradled the glass gently against him, walked forward until his feet brushed his pallet, then sank down to his knees. He held the glass in front of him and whispered the words the little old lady who had visited him in secret both in Tartarus and here had taught him.

"Show me my heart's desire."

The ripples inside seemed to move. And then the glass cleared. Heat flowed from the object in his hands into his body, warming him from the outside in. And when he looked, he saw her face.

Excitement pumped through him because only rarely was she looking straight on when he peeked. And because it meant at this very moment she was gazing through glass somewhere herself. Maybe she was thinking of him right this second, as he was thinking of her.

Oh, she was beautiful. A smile spread across his face. She never aged, but then, being an Argolean, she wouldn't, would she? Not until the last few years of her life. To anyone else she would look to be in her early thirties, though he was sure she was much older. Her skin looked silky, her eyes a dreamy violet color, a lot like his own, or at the very least how he hoped his appeared. Her hair was a deep auburn, today falling to her shoulders in a silky drape he was sure was as soft to touch as it was to look at. But as he peered closer, as he drank her in inch by inch, he realized her features were set, that her jaw was locked, her mouth a slash across her pretty face. And though he'd seen her take on many expressions, this was one he didn't know. Today she looked...upset.

A protective urge bubbled up in him. A need to find who had hurt her and why and then make them pay. But before he could read anything else in her features, she turned away and the image faded. The glass once again became the same frosted, rippled and cold piece it had been before.

"No. Wait. Come back." He shook the glass. "Show me my heart's desire. Come back!" He said the words again. And again. Only nothing happened. The heat that had been there only seconds before was now gone. Right along with her.

Knowing it was all he was going to get tonight, he stretched out on the pallet, closed his eyes and cradled the glass against his chest. Tears burned the backs of his eyes. His stomach rumbled again. Never before had he felt as dirty and gross as he did at this moment.

Maybe she could see back through the glass. Maybe that's what had upset her and why she'd turned away in disgust. But even as the thought hit, he knew it wasn't true. The little old lady in the white robe had told him it only worked one way. And yet that was small consolation when just thinking of her reminded him of everything he couldn't have.

He liked to imagine she would be proud of him. For standing up to Atalanta, for staying true to what he knew he was deep inside. But the reality was, maybe she wouldn't be. Maybe all she'd see when she looked at him was the same thing everyone else saw. A grimy, ten-year-old boy no one wanted.

He rolled away from the food his body desperately needed, fought back the tears that were now sliding down his cheeks and held on tighter to the glass. The warmth that had flowed into him before still resonated in his chest, so he clung to that feeling. And to the hope that someday she'd come for him.

He didn't care anymore why she'd let him go. He only wanted her back. If the gods could see their way to send her to him, he would be the best son any mother ever asked for. He promised.

Sleep pulled at him. He saw her face again. Only this time she was standing in a field of white, her beautiful features lined with worry as she looked, searched. For him, he hoped. And though he knew it was only a dream, he ran to her.

Because even just the dream of her was better than anything else in his miserable life.

As an Argonaut, Zander had never been one to just "go with the flow." It went against his nature. If someone said sit, he stood. If he was told to go one way, he went the other. The only person he took orders from was Theron, and then usually grudgingly, so listening to Callia boss him around right now didn't just set him on edge, it sent every single hair on his body standing at attention.

However, he wasn't stupid. He knew there were times when it was better to bite your tongue rather than let the rage rumble through. And right now-though he hated it with a passion-this was one of those times.

But there was still no way in Hades he was getting naked in front of her.

He crossed the room without looking at her, dropped onto one of three velvet couches in the sitting area and reached forward to unlace his boots. Too late he realized the couch he'd picked was the same one he'd bent Callia over one dark and sultry night nearly eleven years before.

Blood pooled in his groin. His skin grew hot and damp. Her words, the words she'd whispered to him the night he'd intercepted her after she'd been to see the king, echoed in his head.

Take me, Zander. Fast. Before someone gives me a reason to say no.

Thirteen simple words. That was it. She'd known exactly what to say to turn his entire world upside down in the span of a heartbeat.

Perspiration dotted Zander's forehead as he remembered the feel of her silky smooth skin, the taste of her wet heat, the way she'd come apart around him right in this very spot. He reached up to wipe his brow. Dropped his arm. Then scowled, because that was a memory he so fucking didn't need in his head while he sat here unlacing his boots so Callia could do her little "examination."

And-dammit-the rod of steel now nestled between his legs was an in-your-face reminder she, and not the gynaika he was about to marry, was his soul mate.

He let the boot in his hand thunk against the floor. Looked up and glared across the room. Callia had finished setting up and was now looking out the tall windows toward the countryside beyond, her arms folded across her chest and her jaw locked and tense.

His chest pinched as he watched her. Gods, he'd been a fool. Back then there hadn't been a single thing about her he hadn't needed. Hadn't wanted. He'd been so blinded he couldn't even comprehend a time when she wouldn't be exactly what he needed and wanted most.

But that was then, wasn't it? Before he'd realized what she really was deep inside. Before he'd discovered Hera had been absolutely correct in picking Callia as his soul mate because she was the epitome of everything he hated most. That past? What he'd done with her in this room? That really was a fantasy. This-he stared at her cold indifference and saw her as she really was and not as he'd wanted her to be-this was reality.

The erection he'd been fighting since he stepped in the room faded. He dropped the other boot, locked his jaw and stood as he lifted the shirt over his head. He'd removed his weapons before coming into the castle, as was protocol, so he didn't have to worry about his parazonium or any of the other gizmos Titus was always cooking up. And he was glad. Fiddling with his weapons would mean more time in this room with her alone.

"Where do you want me?"

She turned away from the window without meeting his eyes, dropped her arms and pointed toward the end of the king's now-empty desk. "There. Sit."

He crossed the floor silently in bare feet and eased a hip onto the end of the king's long desk. He tested the piece of furniture for stability, and when he was sure it wasn't going to collapse under his weight, scooted back until his legs were hanging over the edge and his bare feet dangled inches above the floor.

She didn't say anything about the fact he wasn't completely naked, and he wasn't about to bring it up again. To distract himself, he stared down at his toes while she moved around the room. She pulled a small side table with her supplies next to her. Seconds later he felt her hand land on his back and couldn't stop the way he arched in response. When she said, "Deep breath," he forced himself to relax as she moved the stethoscope around, obviously listening to his lungs.

The metal against his skin was cold, but her fingers were warm and silky-too warm and silky. His blood was already heating just from being this close to her, and every time she brushed his skin, it set off tremors deep in his body. He focused on his breathing, on the steady in and out, in an attempt to stay calm. When she moved around to stand in front of him, repeating the order, he averted his eyes from her face and focused on the fitted white sweater she wore instead.

Her gasp brought his head up. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"That's not nothing." She focused on his shoulder as she looped the stethoscope around her neck, reached for her bag and came back with gauze and supplies.

"Leave it," he said before she could touch him. "It's just a flesh wound."

She dabbed at the dried blood with a wad of gauze. "The muscle's torn. You need this stitched closed before infection sets in."

"It's already healing."

"I see that, but-"

He grabbed her wrist, stilling her motion. A jolt ran through him at the connection, but he ignored it. The last thing he needed was her hands on his body more than was already necessary. "I said leave it."

Her eyes slid from the wound to his face and held. And before he realized it, he was staring into eyes like a Caribbean sunset in the human world. Eyes he'd looked into countless times before as they'd made love. Eyes he'd dreamed about numerous times in the years since, until he'd woken in a cold and aching sweat.

Thoughts vanished from his mind. The connection they'd had from the first sparked deep in his chest, burned in the bottom of his soul. Tempted him to reach for her and find out if she felt it too. He couldn't be the only one who remembered, could he? She had to feel something when she saw him. When she stood this close. When she touched him.

Thoughts, memories, feelings he'd kept buried for a long time pushed in as he stared into her gemlike eyes. A movie of their time together flickered in front of his face. And then, when he got to the part where she betrayed him, that blaze went out. Leaving behind nothing but charred ash and ruins.

It didn't matter what she felt. Their past was over and done with. The Fates had screwed him in more ways than one. There wasn't anything about her now that could change what had happened back then.

He dropped her hand as quickly as he'd grabbed it. Then glanced back at her sweater. "Finish the exam."

Which-dammit-didn't do shit to cool him down because her breasts were now all he could see. Oh, man, they were as round and plump and gorgeous as he remembered, and he was almost sure he could see her nipples straining against the soft cotton. If he lifted his right arm, just a little, he could touch one. Could feel the nub swell and harden beneath his fing- She stepped back slowly. Set the supplies and her stethoscope down. Cleared her throat. The sound brought his thoughts back where they should be. But the quiver to her voice when she spoke told him his harsh command had gotten through loud and clear. And why that made him feel like an ass, he had no clue.

"We'll just go on with the brunt of the exam then. There's no need for the standard poking and prodding."

Relief swept through Zander. That suited him just fine. He only wanted out of this room. Preferably sooner rather than later.

"Sit up tall," she said. "And close your eyes." He did as he was told, gripping the edge of the desk with his hands and straightening his spine, thankful her voice was once more level and direct and that now, at least, he didn't have to look at her. "Good. Now, you'll likely feel warmth as I search for any abnormalities, maybe a pinch there in your shoulder, but for the most part this shouldn't be painful."

Maybe not for you.

He drew in a deep breath, tried not to frown, and though Callia didn't touch him, he felt her hands hovering mere centimeters from his bare chest. As a healer, she had the ability to seek out problems within the body and focus her energies to restore balance and health. Argoleans were less susceptible to disease than humans and healed faster, but at the core they were still mortal. Though Zander knew she wasn't going to find anything wrong with him.