Page 64 of Storm Front
Bells were tolling in the Palace of the Moon when Azaiah returned, servants scurrying about, but Azaiah ignored all of it. Nyx was not in the prince’s bedchamber, where a red-eyed Nadia, her arm protectively wrapped around a sad, tearful Kelta, was refusing to allow the sheet-covered body to be prepared for burial.
He was not in the emperor’s suite, where Lamont was having supper with his mistress, ignoring the bells and the wailing of the mourners.
He was not with his soldiers, who were in the barracks, whispering about revolutions and anarchy.
He was not in his small rooms, which were disused and faintly musty. He was not in the garden where he’d taken Azaiah amidst flowers that wilted and turned to dust. Nor was he in the caves where the witches studied, near the shroud where they’d come together the first time, now years ago.
Azaiah found him in the armory. Nyx was standing before a rack of weapons, shields, and other equipment of war, breathing too fast and staring as if he didn’t know what to grab first.
“Nyx,” Azaiah said softly. Unease stirred at the back of his neck. “My soldier.”
“No.” Nyx didn’t turn around. “I’m not your anything.”
It was grief. Azaiah knew it, and yet it stung in a way nothing had, not since the knife slit his throat on some old, forgotten altar. “You offered to walk with me. To be my companion.”
“Fuck you.”
Azaiah knew this man. This was Nyx as he’d been when Azaiah first came to him, a mourner drinking alone in a bar. It was this very thing—this depth of emotion, this capacity for true grief—that had called to Azaiah in the first place. He should not shy from it now. “You understand why the bond cannot be made that way.”
“I’m not interested in your—yourrulesor yourlessons. Do you know why?” Nyx whirled on him. “None of them make sense. Where’s the thunder, the storm, for my son? I don’t care that he wasn’t my blood, he was myson.” Nyx raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve never asked you for anything. Not once.”
“You cannot ask me for this,” Azaiah reminded him. “And the thunder came with me. You were not in a place to notice.”
“Hekilledhim,” Nyx said wildly. He wouldn’t meet Azaiah’s gaze. “Lamont. He poisoned his own son, because his woman is pregnant. The witches said it will be a boy, but you know what?” He laughed, brittle and cold. “I bet they just said what he wanted to hear, because that’s what everyone does. I hate him.I hate him.”
“I know,” Azaiah said. “But your nephew—”
“Son,” Nyx bit out. And then he shook his head. “I don’t want to hear it, whatever you’re going to say. That it was peaceful. That he told you to tell us it didn’t hurt anymore. I’m sure that’s true. But he was—he was a good kid. Smart. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“No,” Azaiah said. “He didn’t.”
And nonetheless he did.The words hung between them.
Nyx looked away. “I can’t—right now. All I see is Death. Not Azaiah. And I… can’t do this, with you. I need some time. I need to stop myself from murdering Lamont in his bed. Not because he doesn’t deserve it. He does. But he has—somehow—people who are loyal to him. His imperial guard will do whatever he asks without question, he’s given them so much power and immunity from being brought up on charges for abusing it. The empire will fall into turmoil if I—if I just kill him, but oh, gods, Iwantto. With my bare fuckinghands.”
His rage made Azaiah ache, but he did not know what to say. To warn Nyx off vengeance would do no good and was not his place. “I would embrace you,” he said softly.
“I—can’t. Please. Let me have some time. Right now, keeping what’s left of my family safe matters more than fucking you.”
Azaiah winced, for that wasn’t what he’d meant—he simply wanted to offer comfort. But how could he? Nyx wasn’t seeing the man he loved and played games of Winter with in his camp tent. He was seeing the being who’d taken his nephew, his heart-son, from him. And still, Azaiah wanted to kneel, to do whatever it took to turn Nyx’s scowl into something softer, something kind.
“I understand,” he said. Feeling unwanted was not unusual. From Nyx, though, it was painful in a way that even the sacrificial knife had not been. “I will leave you be.”
“Not forever,” Nyx said, but he wasn’t looking at Azaiah. He was looking at a pair of swords hanging on a rack, reaching out for one. “Just for now.”
Azaiah bowed, but Nyx did not turn to see him go. As Azaiah walked out of the armory and left the palace proper, it took a moment for him to realize it was raining.
Azaiah stared up at the storm-churned sky and fought the urge to go back, kneel again, beg Nyx to come with him. In that moment, the rain frightened him more than anything had since he’d walked into Pallas’s ruined temple and seen her laughing in a room full of rot.
He was back near his home in seconds, worried about what it meant. As he stood on the familiar shore, he was glad at least that the storm had not followed him here. He wasn’t even sure where herewas, only that it was always night, and the sky was always clear, the stars above always visible.
He looked down into the water and saw himself: a tall man who still looked to be in his twenties, with long, white hair and spring-green eyes, the hood of his robe pushed back and the scythe gleaming over his shoulder. It took him a few seconds of staring at his reflection before he realized something was wrong.
His reflection was smiling at him.
Azaiah touched his face, running his fingers over his lips, which were not turned up into a smile. The figure in the water did not mirror the gesture.
You who wade in my waters should not fear the rain,the thing said. Azaiah could hear the voice in his head, and it was his… but flat, without intonation, like a spelled automaton. Like what he imagined Pallas’s jester might sound like, that puppet of hers, if it could speak.
