Bloody hell. He did not like the way she said his name. Didn’t like the sudden soft lilt to her voice or the way the sounds rolled off her tongue. And it didn’t make him think of hearing her say his name just like that when she was naked, beneath him, her head kicked back on a pillow—
“Pandora can’t be real. It can’t be.”
“Why the hell not?” He pushed the image out of his mind and looked down at her this-can’t-be-happening expression. It was all he could do to keep his face neutral as that tingle spread lower and his mind flashed back to the revealing black nightie she’d been wearing when he’d first found her. To the way her skin had peeked out from beneath the sheer black fabric. To the sway of her hips, the roundness of her breasts, the soft indent of her belly button…
“Because,” she whispered, “if the creatures are real, if Pandora is real, it means the myth is real. And according to the myth, there’s no way off the island. No one who’s been here has ever lived to tell about it.”
Like he didn’t know that? Reality snapped back firmly in his face. Welcome to my hell, Princess. Dying on this island wasn’t his greatest fear. It was being stuck here alone with her that scared the shit out of him.
He headed for the trees. “Then we’re gonna have to figure out a way to prove the myth wrong now, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but—”
A scream joined the howl far below. Her hand gripped his shoulder. She pulled her body close to his on reflex. His skin warmed in response and before he could stop it, a whole host of electrifying tingles erupted beneath her fingers where she held him, beneath her breast pressed tight to his bare chest, then rushed straight down his torso right into his cock.
Which he so didn’t need, now or ever.
He ground his teeth to the point of pain. And shoved a whole lot of I-don’t-give-a-shit into his voice when he said, “I liked you a lot better when you were unconscious.”
Orpheus stared across the room toward Gryphon, out cold in the center of the bed. A series of monitors beeped and hummed above his head. Wires and tubes ran into the Argonaut’s hands, resting on the thin blanket covering his body. His chest rose and fell as if he was deep in sleep and his face looked as it always had. Only nothing was the same.
Three days. Gryphon had been unconscious for three days and nothing Callia had done or was doing was reviving him. The daemon inside Orpheus vibrated with the need to grab Callia and shake her until she healed his brother. The Argolean in him kept his feet rooted firmly in place against the wall of this room on the fifth floor of the castle. As he crossed his arms over his chest, he willed Gryphon to sit up and start bitching at him as he’d done thousands of times over the years.
Callia moved over to the bed, studied a monitor near Gryphon’s head, reached down, and felt for his pulse. She jotted numbers on a clipboard, then stepped back to enter them in her little high-tech computer with its virtual screen, near the windows.
Footsteps brought Orpheus’s head around. Zander stepped into the doorway and cast Orpheus a tight smile. “Hey, man.”
Orpheus went back to watching the bed.
“Zander.” Surprise and relief lit Callia’s face as she put the clipboard down and moved to embrace the blond Argonaut.
Zander nodded toward the bed. “How is he?”
“Fine,” she said easily. Way too easily.
“When was the last time you took a break, thea?”
“I…” Callia’s eyes strayed to Orpheus. “I don’t need a break. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Zander said. “You’re about ready to fall over from lack of sleep. Even you have limits.” He unlooped the stethoscope from around her neck and set it on the table to his right. “No arguing.”
“But—”
“O?” Zander asked. “There’s an empty room across the hall. She needs an hour or two of rest. If something changes, you’ll come and get her, right?”
Orpheus didn’t look at either of them, kept his gaze firmly on the bed. He wanted them both gone if they were going to stand here and bicker. “Go.”
“Come on.” Zander pulled her toward the door.
Callia paused at the threshold. “Orpheus…”
The concern in her voice was too much. He set his jaw. “I’ll call you if anything changes.”
“Okay,” she said softly. But his peripheral vision picked up the uneasiness in her eyes, the compassion rushing over her features. And that space in his chest that was already tight as a drum stretched even tighter.
They disappeared out into the hall. Footsteps sounded on the wide marble floor, then the snap of a door. A rasp of cloth met Orpheus’s ears, followed by the press and slide of two mouths joined in a heated kiss.
His overly sensitive hearing picked up every nip and suck and lick, even through closed doors and soundproof walls. Normally he’d get a sick kick out of listening to what they were up to in that other room, but right now all he could think about was the fact that if something didn’t change soon Gryphon was never going to have that. Not that rush of want or the carnal fire of desire. Not with his soul mate. Not with any female. Not ever again. All because of him.
Theirs was a relationship anchored in animosity. Mostly on Orpheus’s part. And yet in all the years Orpheus had dissed his brother or undermined what the Argonauts were doing, Gryphon hadn’t given up on him. The guardian had a serious case of heroics, and on more than one occasion Orpheus had told his younger brother he wasn’t worth saving. But Gryphon had never believed him.
“Oh, Zander,” Callia whispered across the hall. “Nothing’s working. He’s not getting better.”
“It’s only been three days, thea. The knife wound he took was pretty deep.”
“You don’t understand. The wound in his side has completely healed. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s what the warlock did to him.”
“You said the burns on his skin are already gone. I thought—”
“They are,” she cut in. “But I ran some extra tests this morning. Zander”—her voice lowered—“the burn has condensed inside his chest. And it’s growing.”
Silence met Orpheus’s ears. Callia’s words swirled in his brain and his brow lowered with curiosity.
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “It’s like the burn or energy or whatever is consuming him from the inside out.”
“Consuming him?” Zander asked. “How is that even possible? You said his body was healing. He’s looking stronger every day.”
“I know.” Orpheus pictured Callia pressing her fingers against her forehead as she tried to figure out what she was missing. He’d seen her do it several times over the last few days, and even though he wanted to drop-kick her into action, he knew she was doing all she could. “I’ve tried everything. I even had Max take a break from sitting with my father to come down and help me direct a healing energy, hoping that would make a difference, but it hasn’t. Whatever the warlock hit him with was so strong…”
Max was Callia and Zander’s son, and his power of transference was an aid to Callia as she drew on her healing powers. But the fact she’d needed Max’s help with Gryphon wasn’t what set off a tremor of unease in Orpheus’s chest. It was the way her voice trailed off and the words she held back that put him on alert.
“So what does that mean, Callia?”
“It means,” she whispered, “there’s nothing else I can do for him. It’s not his body being destroyed. It’s his soul. And my powers aren’t strong enough to heal the soul. Nothing is. Even if I could figure out how to stop the damage, if he were to awaken right now, he wouldn’t be the same, Zander. His soul is dying one piece at a time.”