His cards were poor this time, which he felt was fitting. Even though they’d won the battle, Ares had been right. They’d gained a few fields and a resentful village—what good did that do anyone? He set the Six of Wands on the ground between them, and Azaiah revealed the Chariot.
“The Chariot endures,” Azaiah said. “Would you be a soldier if you’d been given a choice?”
Nyx shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’d be a farmer if I hadn’t been taken in by the emperor. Hard to say if I’d prefer it. I like my fellow soldiers. You go through shit like this, it brings you closer.”
“But if you could choose.” Azaiah lifted his glass bead, rolling it in his fingers.
“Why would I dwell on something I can’t change?”
Azaiah leaned back, looking him over. “You’re very young for a man who thinks his life is already determined.”
“Oh, yes, then why don’t you stop being Death? Go on leave, become, oh, the god of dreams for a while.” He sighed. “I don’t know. If I could choose, I’d just… rest, I think.”
“Where?”
“Win a hand, first.”
Azaiah smiled, and for once, Nyx smiled back.
He won the next hand with the Lovers and looked down at the image of two figures holding each other against a starry sky. “Do you take any? Lovers, I mean. You have ferrymen—every army has at least one—and the witches revere you.”
“Reverence isn’t love,” Azaiah said. “But yes, I have taken lovers. Now and then. But a mortal’s flame would need to burn bright not to flicker when I take them.”
He’d called Nyx a flame, before. Nyx shifted, thinking of Azaiah naked on an altar somewhere, fucking a supplicant with his long hair falling over them both. Was he a considerate lover, or did he simply take, the way he took souls?
“I’ve had lovers.” Nyx wasn’t sure why he said it. It just spilled from him, unbidden. “But none that lasted. Tyr was…” He stopped and looked down at his cards. “Never mind.” He set down the Five of Cups, and Azaiah touched his hand before he could draw it away, holding him there.
“The Five of Cups,” Azaiah said. “Mourning. Loss. It isn’t always a terrible thing, to love someone so strongly.” He set down the Wheel of Fortune. “But the wheel turns.”
Nyx snorted. “You planned that.”
“I most certainly did not.” But his odd smile broadened. “Why did you have the enemy dead returned to the village rather than burned?”
Azaiah’s hand was still over Nyx’s, and they were leaning toward each other. Nyx’s knee brushed the edge of the Winter board.
“They don’t have the same rituals we do. We should respect that.”
“Now that the empire has claimed them again, those rituals will fade. I have seen it before. Soon, their bodies will burn on imperial pyres when they die, and they will forget that it was ever otherwise.”
Nyx looked down. “I’m not sure about that.”
“It upsets you. War. What it means, what the consequences are.” Azaiah flattened Nyx’s palm over the card. “Your compassion is stronger.”
“You’re seeing things about me that aren’t there.” Nyx couldn’t pull away.
“I see many things, Nyx.”
“Then maybe you can see how to stop it.” Nyx clenched his hand under Azaiah’s. “You’re Death. You have to know. It doesn’t hurt less when you’ve had time to think about it. Knowing that they’re gone.”
“You’ve had very little time.”
Nyx took a deep breath. Then another. Then, to his utter mortification, tears fell on the Winter board that sat between them. He closed his eyes tight, but when he felt Azaiah’s other hand on his shoulder, he leaned into the touch. Azaiah stood, and when Nyx tried to cover his face with his hands, Azaiah gently pulled them down.
“You can take time now, my soldier. Here, in this place.” Azaiah knelt before him, and Nyx heard the board being pushed aside as he shook against Azaiah’s shoulder.
He should have drawn away. Death was not a comfort. Azaiah had taken the family who’d sold Nyx to the palace, taken the soldiers he’d fought his first battle with. He’d taken Tyr, lovely Tyr, who longed to read the books that came so easily to Lamont and kept a private library in his rooms at the palace even though Nyx had to read the words to him. Tyr, who’d held Nyx’s hair when he threw up after a long, hideous skirmish, who laughed and shaved his own head like his soldiers, earning another lecture from his father.
And Nyx was supposed to just keep going. He had to get up every morning and live in a world where no one saw the need to grieve Tyr more than they were required to. He was supposed to pretend he didn’t have a weight rolling around inside him, that it didn’t fill him so grief bled out of him with every breath. Azaiah was right. He’d had so little time. He just hadn’t known how little it was.
