“I don’t want to be corrupted,” Azaiah told his reflection.
Rain doesn’t corrupt, my avatar. It cleanses. It brings life.
“No,” Azaiah whispered as a dark, delicious urge to—to dosomething—rose within him like a tide. He swallowed hard. “I know the truth.”
The truth, my avatar, is that you do not know what it is to be hated. Not as a man. I am always unwanted, unwelcome. But you, Azaiah—someone loved you. Now they have turned from you. And it hurts.
“Yes,” Azaiah said. “Yes, it does.” He wondered why his face was wet, when the sky above was still full of stars, not clouds. Then he realized it was because he was crying.
Yes. Pain is not your dominion, is it? You were so innocent when they sent you to me. And now you know what it is to love, to feel, to ache, tohurt. Come into the water with me, Azaiah. Death does not need a name to walk the earth.
“I—I can’t,” Azaiah whispered, but he was in the water now, leaning down, like he was going to dive in and join his physical self with the being staring up at him, still and smiling.
You can. It would feel so much better, don’t you think? To be cold. To let me do what must be done. Death must exist, but you don’t have to.
“I can choose a successor,” Azaiah said. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t already turned and walked away, but the urge to let the water take him was strong, the wish to sink into a cold place where Nyx’s rejection didn’t hurt.
Let the water take you, Azaiah. Drown and be one with me. Let the rains come.
And oh, it was tempting. This hurt was fresh—but, like the wound that killed him, it would scar. He had to stay strong.Not forever,Nyx had said.Just for now.
He’d been chosen for his compassion. This was simply the other side of that coin, wasn’t it? With that thought in mind, Azaiah reached into the pocket of his robe and closed his hand around one of the coins there, rubbing his fingers over the etching of his own face.
He would go back there, he decided. Tainted adoration was better than this…thing, this dark mirror of himself that looked like him but was only Death. Death needed a tie to humanity. The thing in the water was all he would be, if he let the rain come.
He would wait for Nyx. He would sink into the embrace of the acolytes and their soft flowers, and it would be enough to keep the rains away. Then he would take Nyx as his companion and cast these coins into the river so he could forget that he had ever been tempted to be anything other than what he was.
ChapterThirteen
Nyx was running out of time.
He didn’t go to the funeral. Neither did Nadia—or Kelta, though she dressed for it anyway, too quiet in her corner of Nyx’s room. She’d slept there since they arrived, and when Andor’s body was wrapped in cloth and prepared for the tombs, she’d taken a stuffed cat from the pile on his bed and clutched it, hollow-eyed, while Nadia fell apart. So Nyx had to push his grief into a dark, tight pit in his stomach and make sure Kelta was watched and cared for, that she didn’t try to sneak off in the middle of the night to sleep in Andor’s bed with no one to protect her.
“I wish we could stay,” she said, sitting on the edge of her cot as Nyx packed a coat in her bag. Nadia was taking her over the mountains while Nyx left a separate way, hoping to lure the emperor’s spies toward the southern coast. “Not with the emperor. But here.” She kicked her feet. “Maybe he’d leave us alone if I say I don’t want to be empress, and we can just… live here. Me and you and Mama.”
“We’ll do that when I meet you in the mountains,” Nyx said, reaching for the stuffed cat. Kelta handed it to him, and Nyx realized, with a twinge of heartache, that she’d tied a ribbon around its neck in a little bow. He packed the cat in with the rest of her things and laced up the bag. “You’ll look after your mother?”
Kelta nodded. “I can do it. She’s… she’s not eating much. But she does if I’m there.”
It hurt to hear her say that. Kelta should have been worrying about lessons and sword drills, not whether her grieving mother ate that day. She should have her twin with her, someone she could confide in when the adults were too bewildering or frustrating. But now she only had Nyx and Nadia, and the painful absence where Andor used to be.
Nyx leaned down and kissed her forehead. “It will get better. When we’re together again, we’ll… we’ll find a way. It won’t hurt all the time, as it does now. We’ll survive, Kelta. We’ll survive in spite of the emperor. That’s the best we can do.”
Kelta nodded and reached for him, and Nyx held her, waiting until her breathing evened out. When he pulled away, he handed her a cloth to dry her face, and Kelta picked up her bag.
“Okay,” she whispered and held out her free hand. “I’m ready.”
Nyx took her hand and led her out of the barracks.
His soldiers knew not to be in the barracks that day. They’d left that side of the palace open, with no guards at the exits and a couple of horses conveniently saddled with unmarked tack, and Nyx took Kelta to the servants’ entrance, where Nadia and a witch were waiting. The witch was only a few years older than Kelta, a boy with a spiked collar and crown to enhance his magic, and he bowed as Nyx approached.
“I know you,” Kelta said. “You’re Sunne. I don’t like him,” she said to Nyx, frowning. “He made fun of my hair.”
“I was eight,” Sunne said. “And your hair looks nice now, Princess.”
“Shut up, no it doesn’t.” Kelta sighed and gestured for Nyx to lean down. “Do we have to?”
“He’s one of the best witches in the Crypts,” Nyx whispered back. “Behave.”
