“Some promises have to be broken.”
Nadia looked up at him. “And what of yours?”
Nyx fell quiet. He hadn’t told her of his desire to be Azaiah’s companion, but he knew she’d noticed the way he talked—as if he were only with them for a short while, until his time with the army was over. But he’d sworn to her that he would keep her children safe, when he’d held them in his arms for the first time. There were some promises he couldn’t break, even for Azaiah.
“Think about it,” he said. “If he has a son with this new woman, he’ll cast you aside. We need to ensure you have a plan before that happens.”
Nadia stood there, face pressed to his chest, breathing softly. Then, slowly, her grip relaxed. “Nyx.”
“Mm?”
“Your… friend.” Nadia wasn’t looking at him, her gaze fixed on the door. “The one you still go to, sometimes. He couldn’t pay Lamont a visit, could he?”
Nyx sucked in a sharp breath.
“He could. It would be easy for him. Just this one thing, since he asks so much of you.” Nyx frowned at her, and she shrugged. “You’re always apart, Nyx. There’s a piece of you with him already, always. Can’t he just…”
“No,” Nyx said. “It would do more harm than good, even if he did take lives and not souls. Don’t ask me again. Please.”
Nadia sighed. “This is why you’d make a terrible emperor.” Nyx drew back, giving her a curious look, and she flashed him the faintest smile. “You’re too kind.”
“They don’t have emperors in Mislia, you know.” Nadia laughed at that, and Nyx pulled her into another embrace, holding her until her breath evened out. “I’ll keep Kelta safe in the meantime. While you make a plan to escape.”
“All right. If you insist.”
He made sure Nadia’s curls were back in place before they left the room, speaking in general terms about troop movements to bore any curious courtiers listening in. Nadia clung to his arm, though, her grip too tight, and when they heard footsteps pounding toward them, she gritted her teeth.
“Mama!” Kelta barreled up the stairs, holding a card in her hands so tightly it creased. A few flights down, Andor slowly followed, breathing hard. “Mama, Uncle!” Kelta cried. “You won’t imagine the good news! I’m going towar!”
* * *
He was in a field.
Azaiah blinked as he realized he was not in his home on the shores of the eternal river, but standing with soldiers lying dead all around him, some facedown in the mud, others slumped over their shields, yet more trapped beneath horses that were also lifeless, felled by arrows or great slashes across their throats.
He did not know where this field was, or why he was there. All he knew was that no one there was alive, and as he walked silently through the slaughter, he felt a stir of unease. Battlefields were familiar to him, and lately there had been more of them than usual, on the other side of the mountains from Nyx’s Palace of the Moon. Rival chieftains fighting inglorious and bloody battles in the vast fields of wheat, trying to take what they could and make an empire of their own. But those were more skirmishes than full-out battles.
This carnage was too much for a clash between chieftains.
Some of the dead had yellow strips of cloth around their arms or their weapons, and some had blue. They looked similar, despite that: broad-shouldered, with ruddy complexions, hair of mostly similar shades of red, red-gold, or dark blond. Frowning, Azaiah drifted among them, wondering what sort of battle ended with both armies dead on the field of war.
And then he saw them.
The shades of the dead, waiting. Waiting for him, presumably, but they were not approaching him, not seeking his comforting lead and the boat that would carry them on. They were staring at him, these pale, luminescent beings, as if they were afraid.
The sky rumbled with thunder, and Azaiah thought that it must have rained, recently, to have made all the mud. But he did not remember the start of this battle. He did not remember the call to take up the scythe. How had he come to be here? In the centuries he’d served as Death, only twice had he seen a battlefield with nary a soldier left alive, or a village where none escaped a plague. And the dead certainly did not keep themselves apart from him.
Azaiah thought of a ring of faded flowers, petals crumbling to dust in the moonlight. He pushed it from his mind, concentrated on the spirits, and raised his hands as the thunder boomed. The weight of his scythe at his back was reassuring. It was not his place to wonder how these soldiers had died. He was here to guide them forth, and so he would.
“Come, valiant ones, to the boat that waits to carry you,” he said, voice as heavy as the thunder above. After a long, breathless few seconds, the shadesrushedtoward him, silent as they poured like water across the ruined bodies they’d once inhabited, and he wondered what had kept them back.
“You were the dark one,” a woman said grimly, a ghostly wound across her stomach. “Or so we thought. But you’re not. You’re kind. How did we not know?”
Azaiah smiled. “It can be frightening to cross the barrier of worlds. But I am here to help you.”
“In my village, they tell stories of you,” a young man said—far too young, in truth, to be called a man. Far too young to die in a battle. Especially since he was, by all appearances, merely a page. “They call you the Boatman.”
Azaiah smiled. He knew, from that comment, exactly where the young soldier was from. “Think of your favorite lake, the one by the forest where the daybells grow. The one so clear you can see the bottom.”
