Page 158 of The Spider Queen

“I already told you why. For Agamemnon. Because of my choices, I lost myself to insanity. Do you want that to happen to you? You want to go insane because you’re stubborn?”

“Of course I wouldn’t pick insanity,” I objected.

“You’re picking it now,” she said. “Don’t you feel like you’re losing your grip on reality and your own emotions? If you’d been someone else, maybe you would’ve wound up with Hunter. Married him, had children with him, watched your eldest son become another Hunter that served Thane.” She shrugged. “So you weren’t really given a choice after all, were you? This was your destiny.”

Destiny. Fate. Soul mates. All designed to screw with my life.

“Thane holds back because you do. But I’m telling you, Poppy. If you open your heart to Thane, and I mean truly open it, he will open his for you too.”

“He doesn’t believe in love.”

She snorted. “Of course he does. But the woman who freed him after countless others failed spurns him. How is he supposed to feel when instead of falling for him, you fell in love with one of his Hunters? You would choose a mediocre life, afinitelife, instead of immortality with him. You reject him. You revile him. You make him yearn for his imprisonment again.”

“What?” I gasped. “How could he possibly want that? To be trapped, to be—”

“Because in his prison, he still had hope, Poppy. Hope that the woman he was meant to be with, to love, to raise his children with, would free him. But now… Now that you don’t want him, he is plagued with wanting you. There will be no other for him. If you choose to reject him, to go mad instead of being with him, then he will be tortured for all eternity.”

I swallowed. “I didn’t know it was that…desperate. I had no idea.”

“That’s why I’m telling you.”

“Why didn’t Thane tell me that himself?”

“Would you have heard him? Would that have swayed you if that knowledge had come from him?”

I fell silent, knowing the answer. So did Cass, which was why she didn’t wait for me to respond. She went on. “Let go of your old life. Say goodbye to Hunter in whatever way you must, and mourn what you could’ve had together if it pleases you…but choose immortality. Choose Thane.”

The dark hallway suddenly gave way to light, and we stepped out into it. The air was warm on my skin, and I gasped in wonder. Everything was richer in Purgatory. The colors were more vivid, the scents more potent. In the distance, I heard the sound of lapping waves.

“Is this really how it looks?” I asked in wonder. “Like an island oasis? Or is this another one of those not-coffee situations?”

“Not-coffee?” asked a low, male voice.

I couldn’t stop the shiver of awareness that raced down my spine. I turned slowly, and my breath caught in the back of my throat. He was dressed in black leather pants and a black shirt open at the collar. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat, despite the warm temperature, and then I realized I wasn’t hot, either.

It’s the clothes, he answered.They regulate our temperature, and will protect us from even the harshest elements.

I hadn’t even been aware I’d asked the question through our mental connection.What kind of elements?

I’m not entirely sure.

I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

His eyes slid from mine to rest on Cass. I grimaced, having forgotten she was there. She smiled, though, when she looked at me—us.

“Be safe,” she said.

Thane snorted.

“That’s not comforting,” I said, causing him to laugh.

He adjusted the leather pack around his waist. “Are you ready to go into the wild?”

“Are you wearing a fanny pack?”

I heard Cass stifle her laughter.

Thane glared at me, but there was no real heat in it. “No. It’s not one of those ridiculous contraptions that tourists and speed-walking middle-aged humans wear.”