“He isn’t a thing,” Nyx said slowly. “And he isn’t what we’re talking about.”
“He’s part of it.” Nadia looked tense, every line in her body pulled taut. “You think I haven’t seen him before? On the battlefield? Walking among the dying? You run off to have drinks with the Storm Lord, but Lamont is beyond redemption?”
Nyx sat down. “You didn’t tell him, did you? Lamont.”
“No. He would think I’m mad, to see gods—or shaken by battle. But Nyx… I didn’t stop you, when you went to him. I didn’t even say anything when he took poor Eimund.”
“He didn’t kill him, Nadia, he only—”
“And Lamont isn’t a monster, Nyx, don’t you understand? He’s human, mortal. Mortals can change. We exist to change. The gods exist to kill—or spare us if we grovel enough. I love Lamont. Can you truly say you love Death? The one who took Tyr?”
Nyx looked up at her, unable to answer, and Nadia’s face fell.
“You do.” She covered her eyes with a hand. “Nyx, you know I’ll do anything for you. I’ll become empress if it means making things a little easier for you, for our people. But you can’t. You can’t do this.”
“And if I want to?” Nyx asked.
Nadia lowered her hand, and her eyes were bright with tears. “I don’t want to lose you to him.”
“I could say the same to you,” Nyx said, and Nadia slumped against the wall. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, if I have to leave you.”
Nadia hugged her arms. “Can you stay for the wedding, at least? Can you do that for me?”
Nyx got up and pulled Nadia into an embrace. She held him, pressing her face to his neck, and Nyx felt her shoulders start to shake.
“I already lost a mother to the gods.” Her voice was muffled. “Promise me I won’t lose a brother, too.”
“You won’t,” Nyx said. “Even if I go with him, I won’t be lost to you. I promise.”
* * *
The ship was shattered, pieces of the hull drifting on the water as sailors swam about calling for help, reaching for whatever they could find to stay afloat. A wyvern shrieked in triumph as it dipped down, snatched a screaming man up in its jaws, and flew off into the distance.
Azaiah, who was standing on the prow of a dinghy, sighed as he saw the shapes of shark fins on the horizon. There was too much blood in the water, too many injured sailors, for them to ignore.
It was always a bit… chaotic, taking souls in situations like this. The ship had fallen to cannon fire, not a storm, so Azaiah didn’t even have the opportunity to see his brother Leviathan. Other than the distant thunder—a sign that Death was nearby—the skies were clear, the sun just beginning to set over a scene of carnage, waste, and ruin.
Azaiah reached down, holding his hand out not to a sailor, but to his spirit, lost among the waves.
“I can’t swim,” the sailor sobbed, which was ridiculous. A man who couldn’t swim had no business on a boat, but also, he was already dead.
“You don’t need to,” Azaiah said kindly. “Take my hand, Colm, and I will lead you to a place you need not fear the waves.” He need not fear them now, but Azaiah didn’t say that. Instead, he waited for Colm to reach up and grab his hand, and then he took him to the boat with the others who’d fallen that day to the cannonballs and the waves and the sharks. Some were dazed, some were angry, but when it was over and the sea was no longer full of the screams of the dying and the injured, when the sharks had eaten their fill and the souls of the dead were ferried to the world that awaited, Azaiah stood alone on his boat and glanced around, wondering where he was. He was near the floating kingdom of ships, which must have been the cause of today’s carnage, and that meanthis brother’s Well was nearby.
While Azaiah hadn’t yet felt any rain associated with the thunder that followed him, it couldn’t hurt to stop by and ask his brother about it. Avarice never minded company, and Azaiah, while he felt closest to his sibling Ares, found Avarice… notcharming,exactly, but entertaining. He wondered, as the boat sailed smoothly through the warm waters toward the Well, what Nyx would make of Avarice. What Nyx would think of his other siblings. Whether he would like traveling the world with Azaiah, gentling those who went to death both willingly and not.
Mostly not. Especially in the southern sea, where pirates and the king’s floating armies battled constantly for supremacy. Humans didn’t even need land to fight wars over, it seemed.
If anyone had seen the dinghy bearing Azaiah forth, it would have looked like nothing but an empty wooden boat with a single sail, heading straight for the Well. But the sea remained calm and deserted for his journey, and when the boat reached the Well—a perfect circle of navy blue water set in the sparkling turquoise jewel that was the southern ocean—there was no one to see Azaiah dive smoothly from the prow into the water. The moment of entry was a shock, cold and warm at once, but it was only a matter of moments before he felt his brother’s influence dragging him down to his lair beneath the waves.
Azaiah did not come here often. His first visit had been shortly after he became Death, and he’d returned only a handful of times since then. Avarice was one of the few gods who could not leave his domain. Azaiah loved his brother, even if he occasionally found him a bit… much. As a human, Azaiah would never have served Avarice. It would not have been in his nature. As Death, human desires were not his concern… though, when he remembered Nyx taking him in the Crypt, he wondered if perhaps that wasn’t as true as he’d once thought.
“Oh my. Look what the sharks dragged in,” a voice drawled as Azaiah righted himself after his tumble through the waters and pushed his—somehow dry—hood off his head. “My baby brother, Death. Who was it this time? Anyone interesting?”
“They’re all interesting,” Azaiah said, glancing around. The well in which Avarice lived was a simple cave, though the ceiling was made of water—the same dark blue that ringed the surface—that, improbably, did not spill into the interior. There was a stone well in the very center, ringed with stones and filled with a dark, shimmering substance that glinted as if studded with diamonds. A well within a well. It was here that the baubles gifted to Avarice appeared. He lined his cave with them, jewels and crowns and trinkets from bodies that he had no use for, and he sat in the corner, atop a throne made of coral and bone and rotted wood.
“Hello, Brother,” Azaiah said, moving toward the shadow.
Avarice shifted on the chair. “Don’t come over here,” he said, voice petulant. Unlike most of his siblings, Avarice was never human. He was changed by humanity, rather than ever having been a part of it himself.