“The end,” Nyx whispered. “Of everything.” He lay a card up. “The Tower, not Death.”
“Yes,” Azaiah said. “Exactly.”
Nyx stared at him, eyes keen and sharp in the lamplight. “That’s not happening, though, right?” His dominance was heavy, a thrust like a blade in the dark.
Azaiah thought of the water on his face from the rain that should not have touched him, back at Pallas’s temple. That had not been his storm, but it had been a storm all the same. “No, not at the moment.”
“Good.” Nyx nodded at the board, avoiding Azaiah’s gaze. “It’s your turn.”
Azaiah played his hand, but Nyx won again, and this time he asked, “So, storms, thunder… that’s always you?”
“Well, no. It doesrain, and even storm, without my influence. Thunder without rain isn’t necessarily me, either.” Azaiah shuffled the deck as Nyx poured himself more wine. He seemed to be gearing up for something, perhaps a question he needed courage to ask. Azaiah wondered what it might be. “But when I am there, so, too, the storm follows.”
Nyx drew in a breath and stared at him over the board. The thunder sounded as if on cue in a play, a low rumble over the tent. “I shouldn’t find that attractive.”
Heat sparked through Azaiah. He found himself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “Perhaps you are attracted to power, mysticism.”
“Absolutely not,” Nyx muttered. He was toying with the cards now, rather than shuffling them properly. “I have no interest in either. Power does nothing more than turn good people into selfish assholes, in my experience, and this mystical shit gives me a headache.”
Azaiah was surprised into a low, amused laugh. And he did not miss that Nyx shivered when he heard it. The tension in the tent grew heavier still, but the thunder remained a low, distant sound, nothing impending, only an echo.
Nyx won again, and Azaiah took up the wine bottle and poured more into his own cup before refilling Nyx’s as well. While the drink would not affect him as it would a mortal, its warmth reminded him of the heat of Nyx’s gaze, the way his hand had felt when it touched Azaiah’s in their previous game.
Nyx took a bit longer, this time, to ask his question. His eyes flicked toward his bedroll, and Azaiah felt his own breath catch as Nyx looked back at him and their gazes met. Nyx licked his lips, and Azaiah stared at them, wondering what they would taste like. Wine, or something else.
“Why me?”
Azaiah had the sense that while this was a question Nyx had had for some time, it wasn’t the one hereallywanted the answer to. But perhaps that was foolishness on Azaiah’s part. “Why you… what, my soldier?”
“I— Why are we here? Whyme? I’ve revered you, yes. Respected you. But I’ve chanted the same chants as the others, to keep you away in battle. I cursed you when we first met. I barely believed you or your siblings were evenreal, and now I think maybe I preferred that, because the thought of gods striding about fucking up people’s lives isn’t one I want to consider too much. So what is it, Azaiah? What did I do, to call Death over and over again, to play this game and answer questions about storms and empires that you’ve seen rise and will see fall?”
Azaiah knew their game was done for the night. He set his cards down and was quiet for a long moment as he considered his answer. “When I came and took Prince Tyr, I heard the mourners, saw tears, walked beside his body to the tomb amidst the chants. But the grief that called me most strongly was yours, so I followed you. I was curious. Your soul… it burns bright, like some mortals’ do, and I thought perhaps you would become one of my ferrymen. But when we sat to play our game, I thought you were… interesting.”
“Interesting.” Nyx’s voice was laced with a thread of what sounded like anger. “Interesting?”
“Yes,” Azaiah said cautiously.
“I call the attention of Death, of War, and peopledie, and it’s because I’minteresting?” He stood up, and though the wine bottle was empty now, he seemed unaffected by it.
Azaiah was rarely frustrated. His existence simply didn’t allow for many opportunities to experience such a thing. But he felt it now. “Death, conflict, strife, loss… these happen regardless of whether you play a game with me in your tent or talk to my sibling on the field of battle. We exist because we must. Death treats all mortals equally. War cares not for who you are, if you are engaged in it.”
“Then why are you here? Do you have other—other bright flames you play Winter with in other towns, all over Iperios? Other soldiers waiting for you to—” He stopped, jaw clenched, hands fisted at his sides. “What makes me so fucking special to Death?”
“It’s not Death who finds you interesting,” Azaiah said, after a moment. “Well. It is, but it’s… Azaiah. Me. I am more than my godhood, Nyx. I had forgotten that, over the last few centuries. That humans could be interesting before it was their time to meet me.”
“So I’m some fucking curiosity?” Nyx spat, eyes narrowed, his dominance almost louder than the thunder.
“You asked why I came to you, and I answered.”
“Why do you keep comingback?”
Azaiah rose to his feet, gently pushing aside the chair as he turned to face Nyx. Nyx glared up at him with the same fury he’d shown the first night they’d met, when Nyx laid his foster brother to rest and grieved more strongly than any other. As he did still.
“I suppose because you remind me that I am also Azaiah,” he said, feeling clumsy. This did not come as easily to him as soothing an anxious soul or coaxing one out of a broken, useless body. “Mine is a solitary life, by necessity. I exist on the outskirts. I do not have temples or acolytes. The chants are meant to keep me away, to drive me off. I am unwelcome, and I have always understood that. But I did not know that I might, perhaps, wish to sometimes feel otherwise. Even if only for a time. Even if only for a game of Winter and a goblet of wine.”
The anger seemed to drain out of Nyx. “You’re saying I make you feel human?”
“You make mefeel,” Azaiah said. “And I am not used to that.”
