Ravaged: An Eternal Guardians Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (6 page)

Needed a woman? No way. Sure, he had desires just like the next guy, and he had no problem fulfilling those desires when he was out on his scouting trips. There were always willing females if you knew where to look. But the last thing he needed was one infiltrating his personal space.

More frustrated than before, he snapped the top of his pack, pulled on a jacket, then slung the straps over his shoulders. Screw Silas and his opinions. Ari didn’t need anything but himself. He’d been getting along just fine alone for dozens of years.

He headed for the door and the frozen wilderness beyond. And hoped he ran into another pack of daemons. A good bloodletting would take his mind off that nymph. But something told him it wouldn’t be enough to make him forget that she now had a name.

* * *

Daphne hadn’t slept well. Her dreams were a mixture of Ari and the Sirens and her long-destroyed village.

She climbed out of bed and yawned as she dressed in the sweats and T-shirt Silas had given her after dinner. The clothing was huge. She had to roll the pants down at the waist several times just so they stayed up, and the light-blue T-shirt wasn’t much better—hanging like a dress almost all the way to her knees. After tucking it in as best she could, she fluffed her hair and told herself she could still make this work. She’d aced her strategy training. She simply had to think outside the box where Aristokles was concerned.

She turned out of her room and moved barefoot through the hall. When she reached the kitchen on the lower level, she found Silas filling a backpack on the table with supplies—water, bandages, gloves.

She approached slowly, not sure what he was doing. “I hope you’re not running away.”

Silas glanced up and smiled, his hair damp around the collar from a shower, his light-blue eyes sparkling, making her almost forget about the scars on his face. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Fine,” Daphne lied as she pulled a chair out at the table and sat. “Are you going somewhere?”

Silas shoved a bag of granola into his pack. “Supply run. We’re low on several things.”

Panic clawed at her chest. “How long will you be gone?”

“Three, maybe four days. I’m supposed to take you with me.”

Shit. She couldn’t let that happen. “Um—”

“I don’t think you’re well enough to leave, though.”

Daphne’s gaze shot to his. The male’s blue eyes sharpened when he added, “And call me selfish, but I think you can do some good here while you finish healing.”

She didn’t know what he meant but as he pushed his pack to the end of the table, pulled out a chair, and sat across from her, she found herself hanging on his every word. “Ari left on a scouting trip. He’ll be back later tonight. He’ll likely be ticked you’re still here, but he can just deal with it. He
needs
to deal with it.”

“Why?”

“Ari thinks it’s better for everyone if he isolates himself.”

“Why does he believe that?” she asked, playing dumb.

“Because he’s bullheaded,” Silas answered. “But I fear this self-imposed isolation of his is slowly catching up with him.”

“You care about him.” The realization hit before she could stop the words from spilling from her lips.

“Of course I do.” Sighing, Silas shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “It’s more than the fact he saved my life. I’d heard rumors about the crazed Argonaut just as you, but I quickly realized he’s not what everyone says he is.”

“And what is he?”

Silas didn’t immediately answer, and in the silence, Daphne thought back over everything she knew of Aristokles. The stories she’d heard from Zeus and Athena contradicted with what Silas had told her last night. And after spending a few minutes with Ari in the library, she didn’t know who to believe.

“You know the story of the Argonauts, right? How each are given a soul mate?”

Daphne remembered a story her mother had once told her. “Hera cursed them. Because of Zeus’s affection for his son Heracles. She was jealous that Zeus had created a realm for Heracles’s descendants, and she cursed him and all the Argonauts with a soul mate.” She frowned. “I never understood how that could be a curse though.”

“It’s a curse because the soul mate in the equation is the worst possible match for that particular Argonaut. The person he’s forever drawn to but who will torment his existence. Some Argonauts never find their other half. Some do. Ari found his, fifty-odd years ago, in the human realm while on patrol with his Order. She was a nymph, like you. Young and beautiful. And she was running from Zeus.”

Silas leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Olympians can’t cross into Argolea. It was the one safeguard Zeus put in place, to protect the Argonauts from Hera’s wrath. But that safeguard turned out to be a source of frustration for Zeus. See, Ari took the nymph to Argolea. He tended her wounds, gave her a place to live, and eventually they fell in love. But when Zeus discovered Ari had stolen his prize, he was livid. Since he couldn’t cross into Argolea himself, he sent his Sirens to get her back. There was a confrontation. In the struggle, Ari’s soul mate was killed.”

It was the same story Daphne had heard from the Sirens. With one minor change: in the telling she’d heard, the nymph hadn’t loved Ari. He’d recognized her as his soul mate, kidnapped her, and she’d been trying to escape his clutches when the Sirens arrived to rescue her.

“Ari lost it then,” Silas went on. “The death of a soul mate is like losing half of who you are. He withdrew from the Argonauts, went into isolation in the human realm, struggled to deal with his grief. Months passed, but he couldn’t find the strength to return home. His son Cerek wouldn’t give up on him, though. Cerek tracked him down, tried to bring him back, but Ari refused to go. When it became clear to Ari that Cerek was never going to give up on him, he faked his death. You saw those scars on his neck?”

Daphne remembered the scars she’d seen up close last night in the library. “Yes.”

“They cover the whole left side of his body.”

“From what?”

“A fire. One he set on purpose. His son thinks he’s dead. Most everyone does.”

Everyone but Zeus and Athena and the Sirens. Daphne tried to imagine the scene but couldn’t. Tried to imagine what it would take to isolate one’s self so dramatically, but came up blank. Even in her darkest moments, she’d never wanted to be alone, which was why she’d jumped at the chance to become a Siren when she’d been chosen.

“It wasn’t until after all this that Ari started having his episodes,” Silas said.

“Episodes?” Daphne looked back at the male across from her.

“Spans of time where he completely blacks out. He’s not aware of what he’s doing while in these episodes, but he has flashes of them afterward, and of the things he’s done while in them. From what we’ve been able to discern, the episodes are usually triggered when he senses Sirens close by.”

Daphne’s head was suddenly spinning. Zeus and Athena had implied he killed Sirens in his crazed need for revenge, but if that were the case, he would have started killing them as soon as his soul mate died. What Silas was describing made it sound like Ari’s “episodes” began after he’d left the Argonauts. Months after his soul mate was already gone.

That didn’t sound like revenge at all. It sounded like...a curse.

Daphne opened her mouth to ask more, but before should get the words out Silas went on.

“For a while, he kept himself locked in this hold. Thought if he isolated himself, he could stop the episodes. But his duty was too strong. The need to protect is engrained in his Argonaut DNA. He now runs his own missions, hunting daemons and safeguarding the people he swore to defend ages ago. But any time he has a blackout, it weighs heavily on him. Thankfully, they’re few and far between these days.”

Daphne’s brow wrinkled again. Zeus had made it sound like Ari’s attacks were stepping up, not lessening.

Silas shook his head. “Things changed a few months ago, though, when one of Ari’s friends called asking for his help. Nick is one of the few people from Ari’s old life who knows Ari’s still alive. I was hesitant about Ari traveling to Mexico. Offered to go with him but he wouldn’t let me. You see, he hasn’t had an episode in quite a while, and I was worried about how he would react. Turns out Ari didn’t encounter any Sirens on his trip, but something did happen there. When he came back, he was different. Sullen. Moody. No longer laughing and lighthearted as he’d been when we were renovating this place.” He looked up and around again. “He’s never said exactly what occurred, but I think seeing his old friend made him realize what’s missing in his life—friendship, family...love.”

Daphne’s head grew light. Did she have those things? Definitely not love. She’d never known a male deep enough to fall in love. And with her parents gone, she had no family left. She had friends, though, didn’t she? Her Siren sisters were her friends. But even as she tried to convince herself of that fact, she knew it was a lie. The way Sappheire had left her in the woods without a single word of comfort or encouragement proved she wasn’t a true friend in any sense of the word.

“He reacts to you in a way I haven’t seen him react to anyone else,” Silas said. “He’s nervous around you. Not in a dangerous way, but in an interested one. I’m not trying to set you up, just to be clear. That’s not my goal. I simply think your being here is good for him. It forces him to see that he can be around others and not flip out. And he needs that. He needs to see he isn’t the monster everyone believes him to be.”

Daphne stared down at the table, taking in all this new information, trying to process it, trying to fit it into what she’d been sent here to do. He still killed Sirens. That fact was irrefutable, and she couldn’t ignore it. But if he didn’t know he was doing it, if he really was cursed in some way, then that made a huge difference to her.

She needed to spend more time with him. Needed to figure out if Zeus or Silas was correct. Then she’d know how to proceed.

“I don’t want you to think he’s dangerous,” Silas said. “He can be a grouchy pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s never had an episode while he’s been in the hold, and as I said, the only ones at risk when he does are Sirens, which you are clearly not.” A half smile curled his lips then faded. “But yes, I’d like you to stay. If you’re amenable to the idea. At least until I return.”

She was. But not for the reasons he wanted.

Knowing she couldn’t agree too quickly, Daphne bit her lip. She still needed to play the damsel-in-distress role. No matter what she decided to do about the Argonaut in the end, she couldn’t let her cover slip. “He won’t want me here. Especially if you’re gone. He pretty much told me last night to get lost.”

“I know.” Mischief filled Silas’s light-blue eyes. “That’s why I have an idea. The question is simply whether or not you’re brave enough to go through with it.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Daphne wasn’t sure about Silas’s so-called plan. He wanted her to take the damsel-in-distress façade one step further and insist Ari teach her self-defense. She had to admit it wasn’t the worst idea out there, but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could pull it off. Sure, she sucked at marksmanship, but she knew full well how to take care of herself.

Like you did with those daemons?

She scowled at a book on the shelf in Ari’s library. Told herself no one stood a chance alone against a horde of daemons—especially unarmed and wearing those stupid shoes Athena had given her. But even as she tried to justify it to herself, a little voice in the back of her head whispered,
You’re not Siren material, and you know it.

Shaking off the voice, she wandered through the library, looking at books and trinkets on the shelves. Silas had started a fire before he’d left, and even though the room was warm and cozy, she couldn’t seem to relax. Reading didn’t sound the least appealing, she didn’t feel like tackling a puzzle, and she was too keyed up to sleep. Nerves humming, she wandered from room to room, wondering when Ari was going to return. Wondering how he’d react when she proposed her little “you teach me to fight and I’ll agree to leave you alone” plan.

She stopped outside the wing that led to his suite of rooms. Drew a deep breath. Knew she shouldn’t invade his privacy but wanted to know what he kept locked behind this door. To her surprise, the handle turned with ease.

A hallway led to a wide-open bedroom suite complete with a simple bed, another fireplace already burning thanks to Silas, a sitting area, closet, and a door partway open to a bathroom. The room was sparse, nothing hanging on the walls, only two pillows and a plain white blanket on the bed. No pictures or trinkets or anything that personalized it as his. She moved to the closet, flipped on the light, and eyed the scattering of clothes hanging on the rack. All rugged. All made for being in the elements. All boring colors and way too functional fabrics.

Turning out of the closet, she looked over the room again and couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness for how boring his life must be. Silas had said he kept himself closed off from people. This room was a reflection of him—simple, empty, lonely.

An image of her room back on Olympus filled her mind. White walls, white furnishings, white bedspread and pillows. No pictures on her walls either. The only thing of personal value in her room was the stack of books she’d collected.

Telling herself she wasn’t anything like the crazy Argonaut, she headed back for the hallway that led to the door. The last thing she needed was for him to find her snooping in his space. But just before she got to the hall, she noticed another door she hadn’t spotted in the shadows when she’d first entered.

She pushed that door open and stepped inside. Darkness surrounded her. Feeling along the wall, she found the switch and flipped it on. Light flooded the room from above. She let her eyes adjust, then scanned the space. A scuffed wooden desk took up the middle space. A couch sat across the room. Shelves stuffed with books lined three whole walls. But her attention landed and held on the fourth wall, on the giant world map stretching from one corner to the other.