Pallas was flamboyant and dramatic, but she always made Azaiah smile and insisted on painting him in a variety of strange and beautiful scenarios. To most, they would look like a seascape or a pastoral scene, a winged white horse descending from storm clouds in a beam of light. Only a few could see Azaiah there, playing a game of Winter on the shore, striding through fields of grain with his scythe raised high, or long hair streaming behind him as he rode the horse down from the sky, holding lightning in his fists.
The last one was vaguely embarrassing, but he did like the one in the field. Perhaps, if he asked her, she would let him have it and he could give it to Nyx. He was curious as to whether Nyx would see him or only sheaves of wheat and dandelions, empty of anything but the suggestion of a breeze bending the stalks.
“I will go forth and seek Pallas,” he said as Ares climbed to their feet. Azaiah, too, stood. “Are you taking your leave, then?”
“Yes.” Ares made a face. “Crying and fucking, that’s what’s left here. Nothing I care about. I will visit the camp of the vanquished, hear their speeches, let their vows of vengeance sustain me.” They smiled. “Take your soldier, Brother. If not for a companion, then for a night, just to take some pleasure for yourself. But remember, if you are corrupted, you bring the floods that will end the world. No more land, and no more people to fight over it, and no more battles for me to dance between arrows and listen to the song of steel blades.”
Azaiah sighed. Ares was, in their own way, as dramatic as Pallas. But Azaiah loved them. Death and War were so inexorably linked that it was impossible to think of being so close to any of his other siblings. His always was supposed to be a lonely existence, wasn’t it? As the poets were fond of saying in far more creative and evocative prose, everyone died alone.
Even Death.
“I will do my best to keep the corrupted rains from ruining your fun,” Azaiah said, and Ares laughed, saluted him with their sword, and turned to walk away. Fire sparked at their heels, and as they passed a tent, Azaiah heard the two occupants start to argue, shouting curses at each other. Not every war was between armies, and not every battlefield was a wide expanse of open land.
The raised voices died down as Azaiah’s sibling vanished into the night, and when Azaiah walked past he could hear the soldiers sheepishly apologizing to one another. He shook his head, then looked around for Nyx. If Nyx saw him, Azaiah would stay. Pull the Winter board from his cloak, offer another game, another round of questions. If not, he would go to Kallistos and his sister’s temple.
The sky rumbled, and he turned his face up, wondering what it would feel like to stand there as his own corruption rained down around him. The thought was unnerving. He had never known before that his own compassion and care could slough off him like a snake’s outgrown skin. He’d thought he was simply how he was, and that was how he would be. But he remembered the Winter deck, the Death card. How it never meant an end, just a change. He was Death, so he was capable of… changing. And that meant the possibility of changing in ways that were not desirable.
The thunder came again, louder, and Azaiah stood at the edge of the pyres where the dead burned in their shrouds. He saw a familiar figure across from him, features firelit, head bowed in reverence. Showing respect to the dead, while other sounds caught and carried on the wind—crying and fucking,just as Ares said.
The sky shook, lightning illuminated the camp, and the figure raised his head. It was Nyx, and he was staring now, not at the bodies on the pyres but at Azaiah.
Azaiah raised one hand in greeting. After a long moment, Nyx raised his own, slow and careful, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should or not.
But he had, so Azaiah drifted toward him, quiet as smoke.
ChapterFour
Azaiah passed between the pyres, the light of the flames making his silky hair go faintly gold. He was beautiful, but in the way of the strange, wild creatures Nyx came across in his campaigns: moths with the pattern of owl eyes on their wings, bright lizards oozing poison, spiders that glittered like jewels. Like a fly caught in a web, Nyx couldn’t move, waiting for Azaiah to come to him.
“Of course you’re here,” Nyx said when Azaiah was close enough to touch. A gust of wind pushed at Azaiah’s back, and Nyx smelled something floral mixed with the scent of fire and death. “I met another one of you today. War.”
“Yes, my sibling thrives in these places.” Azaiah’s face was in shadow, but Nyx could feel the heat of his gaze. “I would play another game with you, Nyx, if you wish.”
Nyx considered saying no. He’d seen enough death that day, between the soldiers he’d killed with his own hands and the ones the witches and healers couldn’t save. But this had been the first battle without Tyr, and he dreaded solitude more than Azaiah’s small, unsettling smile.
“All right,” he said. “I have time.”
He led Azaiah to his tent. It was an officer’s tent, pitched on the other side of the line from Lamont’s, which was wide open and full of soldiers. Lamont seemed determined to make himself approachable after the battle, if not during, but Nyx had no interest in witnessing the show. He opened the door flap and let Azaiah in, then lit his lantern.
Azaiah looked around the interior, which was empty of everything but Nyx’s armor and gear, a spare sack of clothes, and a bedroll. Nyx dug in his bag for a canister of water and grimaced when he saw the two tin cups he always saved for him and Tyr. He filled one and handed it to Azaiah, who looked down at it.
“I have no need for water.”
“You can just say thank you.” Nyx poured for himself and sat down. He still smelled like smoke and blood despite scrubbing down in the healers’ tents, but the floral scent was more potent now. It seemed to be coming from Azaiah. “Can you drink, even if you don’t have to?”
“That’s a question.” Azaiah smiled and raised the cup to his mouth.
Nyx grunted and downed his water. Azaiah set up the Winter board with the same reverence as last time, taking care with each piece. “I heard stories about Death liking a game,” Nyx said, “but I never believed them.”
“You only barely believed in my siblings and me at all,” Azaiah said, shuffling the cards. “No matter. Mortals often don’t think of us as any different from, oh, the wind. Or the sun. We simplyare. They don’t see us as anything they can touch or control.”
“But we can’t.”
Azaiah paused in dealing the cards and held out his hand. “I assure you, you can touch me.”
“I didn’t mean it literally.” Nyx looked at Azaiah’s outstretched hand and tentatively reached for it. Azaiah’s skin was cool, unlike Ares’s, and Nyx looked up as thunder rolled. “Can you control it? The storm?”
Azaiah’s eyes narrowed as he smiled softly. “Ask me again when the time is right.” He slid his hand out of Nyx’s grip. Nyx reflexively tightened his hold, then let go, startled. He rubbed at his palm, smoothing out the lingering feeling of Azaiah’s touch.
