Page 45 of Love and Death
Cerberus leans heavily against the broken frame, filling the empty space, his chest heaving as he massages one of his shoulders.
“I suppose we will have to find you a new place to sleep,” he says with a grin that doesn’t quite meet its mark.
Weariness drags at him, his dark hair falling in wild waves about his face only further emphasizing his exhaustion, and his clothes, now sweat-stuck to his body, are torn and bloodied.
“What happened?” I ask, the question slipping from me before I can bite my tongue.
The hellhound glances down at himself and raises his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise, as if he is only just now realizing the state he is in.
“Oh, this? This is nothing a little rest will not fix. Come, there is no time to waste,” he says, beckoning me with a half-hearted curl of his finger.
I hurry to obey, sidling past him and into the stairwellbefore he has a chance to think better of it. Cerberus turns to follow, grabbing my upper arm before I have a chance to put enough space between us.
“I’m not going to run away,” I say, flinching at his touch.
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe. Regardless, I cannot allow you to walk these halls without some form of restraint.”
I don’t quite know how to respond to this, so I don’t, and Cerberus starts down the stairs, pulling me along behind him.
It doesn’t take long for me to notice that I’m not tripping over myself trying to keep up with him as I normally would be.
Frowning, I take a closer look at the hellhound.
There’s a level of wariness to him that I hadn’t noticed before; it pulls at the corners of his eyes and sharpens his movements. But this isn’t what concerns me most … it’s the slight limp in one leg that he’s trying his best to conceal from me.
What could do this to him? And worse still, am I allowing him to lead me into the same trap?
One that not even a guardian can escape from unscathed.
I should have insisted on answers the moment I laid eyes on him. Now, I’m not sure if I even want to know.
The stairs seem to spiral ever downward, the flickering sconces painting our shadows long and thin against the stones.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” I venturewhen I can no longer stand the eerie silence of our descent.
“Not now.”
“But—”
Reaching the bottom step, Cerberus suddenly stops to look at me, and I nearly run straight into him.
“From this moment forward,” he says, barely a hair’s breadth away from me, “if you know what is good for you, you will keep quiet and do exactly as I say.”
“I wasn’t going—” I start indignantly, but Cerberus gives me a look that nearly has me swallowing my own tongue.
“You will obey me, Hazel, if you want to make it to your father in one piece, is that understood?”
I give him a quick nod of understanding and drop my gaze to the floor, but I can still feel his eyes boring into me. I try my best to look meek as he continues to study me. After all, I really do want to see my father.
“Good. Now, do not whisper so much as a word until I speak to you again.”
Finally satisfied by my prolonged silence, we set off again.
Somehow, our pace is even slower than before as Cerberus moves me as quietly as possible from one shadow to the next. There’s an eerie weightiness to the palace, despite the halls being completely empty thus far, that has every sound, every shift of light, setting me on edge.
Despite the hellhound’s massive size and injured state, it’s my own movements that threaten to expose us. No matter how carefully I step, I can’t seem to conceal mypresence to the same extent that he can, and I have to wonder why he doesn’t move with such stealth all the time … especially in a place like this.
I want so badly to question him, but I find myself unable to open my mouth, let alone give voice to them, as I am suddenly shoved back against the near wall. Cerberus quickly covers me with his body, nearly crushing me in the process, and a few moments later, I see why as two stone sentinels step into view at the far end of the hall.
