“No.”
“He doesn’t kill,” Nyx said, feeling somewhat protective himself. “But you, Scout. I heard you write books.”
“Um. I’m working on some, maybe.” Scout kept looking between them and Taliesin.
“Then here’s a story you might like.” Nyx unwound the Misthotoi beads around his wrist and held the three beads from the Winter game up to the light. “It starts when I was still the adopted son of the Iperian emperor, and the man I loved was dead.”
The truth didn’t come out smoothly. It was a muddled tale, too fraught with pain and old grief to be told objectively, but Nyx supposed life was often muddled. Nothing was ever truly clear. Moments of joy and heartache shone through, like the constellations over the river in Azaiah’s realm, but it would take time to make a pattern with them. Nyx managed, slowly, remembering each event like a fisherman releasing his catch one by one, letting them return to the sea. As he spoke, he set his beads on the table, lines of clay and glass that shimmered in the light.
“I let myself forget it all, when I was Glaive.” He set a bead down. Scout was silent, leaning against Taliesin, who hadn’t looked away from the beads once. “You lock away your grief, your pain, and it locks away the love that made you hurt. But the love’s worth it, isn’t it? Was it worth it for you, Taliesin?”
Taliesin reached out and took a bead, rolling it in his fingers. “Yes, of course. I’d do it again, for him.”
Scout blushed to his roots, and Nyx examined his bracelet. He was down to the Winter beads, now. He left them on the string, folding them in his palm. “It’s a funny thing, what can change us. This all started with a game in a bar—and it ended, in a way, because you decided to become my apprentice. The world might have drowned, Taliesin, if you hadn’t been a stubborn, optimistic little shit.”
Scout smiled at that, but Taliesin looked somber, still staring at the bead in his hand.
“Maybe you could’ve come to that conclusion before you started shooting me,” he said, and a smile broke over his face as Nyx laughed.
“Yes, I see your point.” He pushed away from the bench, getting to his feet. “But I figured you deserved to know. I pulled both of you into this, at the end. So you can keep the beads, Taliesin. Do what you want with them. Give them out to people as gifts, or favors… toss them in the ocean. But they’re yours. They’re a promise that this won’t happen again.”
“Thank you.” Taliesin stood and slipped the one bead into his pocket. “Glaive—Nyx. I’m glad, you know, that you found yourself again. But there are still beads on your bracelet.”
“Those belong to someone else,” Nyx said, with a glance at Azaiah. He nodded to Taliesin and Scout. “But the next time a god and his companion come to your inn, maybe don’t threaten them with a builder’s spade.”
“Maybe don’t scare the shit out of me.” Taliesin smiled again. “You can come back, if you want. I’ll tell Ma not to poison you, and you two can take the corner table. No one ever sits there.”
“Thank you,” Azaiah said, when Nyx couldn’t answer. He didn’t think he deserved that, after what he’d done to Taliesin, but here the man was again, relentlessly kind. “Perhaps we will, one day.”
Azaiah took Nyx’s hand, and they both carefully stepped over the cat napping in the doorway, leaving Taliesin and Scout behind.
Nyx stopped to breathe, standing in the sunlight by the water. There were no thunderclouds overhead, no threat of an oncoming storm, and people were singing as they worked on the docks. Azaiah reached for him, and Nyx realized he was crying, soft and quiet.
“My love,” Azaiah said, kissing the tears from his cheeks. Nyx smiled and kissed him back.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I was just… mourning Glaive, I think. And Nyx. All of it. But it isn’t bad. It’s like the rain on the hill that night. It’s… cleansing.”
“And I love you for it.” Azaiah kissed Nyx’s knuckles, still scarred from a long mortal lifetime of fighting. “Will you walk with me, beloved? There is much yet to do.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Nyx smiled, holding up the bracelet with the three Winter beads hanging from the end. “But perhaps we can play one last game.”
* * *
They found a perfect spot on the dark sands beyond their little house, and Azaiah conjured up a table and a couple of chairs with a thought.
Nyx made a lantern, and Azaiah tried not to smile as he watched Nyx concentrate so hard he bit his bottom lip and scrunched up his eyes. The lantern was serviceable, and it was—though Azaiah doubted he needed to point this out to Nyx—the same as the old lanterns that used to hang from the ropes in the camp tents.
“No one plays this anymore, did you know that?” Nyx said as he settled in his chair, watching Azaiah unfold the board. “I heard they have a board in a museum, and no one even knows what it is.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Just the way of things, I suppose. Games change as much as anything else.”
Nyx drummed his fingers on the table. His smile was wry. “Does being your companion mean I will be able to say things like that? Be mysterious?”
“I’m not sure. I think that’s just me. I’ve always been quite calm, even when I was young and mortal.” Azaiah shuffled the cards, happy to be here, at home, with Nyx. The river flowed beside the sand, and above, millions of strange stars glittered. If they were even stars. Whatever they were, he supposed he’d find out eventually.
“Does it never make you angry, that they did that? Your village. Sacrificing someone young and beautiful… Has that ever worked?”
“Well, in a sense, itdidwork, didn’t it? Here I am. And I can’t even imagine what it would have been like, to live out my life in that little village. I don’t even know if it had a name. I am not unhappy being Death, but I am glad that my successor will have had a full life before he takes the scythe and robe from me. I think perhaps it is better that way. I… When I was my other, that darker version of myself, I don’t think that was corruption, exactly. I think I was just afraid.”
