Entwined by Elisabeth Naughton Read Free Book Online

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 hatredfor me right now. You want to lash out. To hurt me. But you can’t. Because I am your matéras . 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 matéras . 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 stillan 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,