“Mm, I suppose you think they deserved a father who could keep them alive.” Lamont tipped his head to the side. “Like you? That’s two children you’ve failed, then.”
Nyx went still, horror tearing through him. “What?”
“That’s what I came to tell you,” Lamont said, smiling. “It’s all done now, so I can share the happy news. We found your bitch and her brat with a witch boy in the south—” Nyx lunged again, and Lamont scooted the chair farther back. “And we sent them with the others.”
“The others.”
“Mm. The witches who were loyal to that bitch, Thena. The one who said my son would die before he was due, as though she could see anything with her runes and her collars. And a few of your soldiers, too—some guards, the ambitious ones who looked at me and whispered when they thought I wasn’t listening. Criminals. Scum. Those women, the nobles who came to me concerned because they didn’t like the way I run things. As though we were barbaric hill people, to listen to women. I sent them away. All of them. To the ice country, where they can die in the cold while the empire thrives without them.”
Nyx could barely breathe. It couldn’t be true. It had to be some trick. The northern island was uninhabitable—only one of the navy’s ships had made it there, and most of its crew died of exposure or starvation before they limped back into the harbor. If Nadia and Kelta were heading there—if they’d already boarded the ships—they were dead. Or they would be, soon, frozen on a barren island.
“You didn’t.” Nyx searched Lamont’s face for the lie. “You wouldn’t. It will destroy you. It will destroy the empire.”
“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do,” Lamont said, and Nyx realized, as a strange, almost peaceful calm settled over him, that it was true. Lamont had sent his own wife and daughter off to die while Nyx rotted in an abandoned schoolroom, helpless.
“You’ll die for this.” Nyx’s voice sounded odd to his own ears. Like someone else was speaking. “I’ll destroy everything you ever loved, Lamont. Everything you worked for. When I’m done, no one will remember your name.”
The air around them grew warm, and the shadow Nyx cast over the floor shifted, as if the lantern behind him had moved.
Lamont laughed, but it was too high-pitched. “Yes, you can make as many threats as you like. And you’ll stay here, so that when my son is of age, I can bring him down to see what failure looks like.” He stood, but there was sweat on his brow, and Nyx could taste the fear in the air. Not enough, apparently, to temper his desire togloat.“Good night, Nyx. I’ll likely see you in the morning.”
He closed the door after him, and the sound of it rolled through the room like thunder.
Nyx should have been screaming. Somewhere, in a small, dark corner of his mind, he was, but he felt distant from it, like he was watching a play from the back row of a theater. Instead, he leaned against the post and ground his teeth together.
“Ares,” he said. “I know you’re here.”
The shadow on the floor shifted again, and Ares walked around Nyx. They were dressed in the uniform of the hill people’s Sun Lord, and sunflower petals were woven into their hair like ribbons.
“Hello, soldier.” Ares crouched before Nyx, and their gaze was as calm as Nyx felt, like the eye of a storm. “You called to me. I am here.”
“I want him to hurt,” Nyx said. “What can I give you, to see it done?”
Ares reached up to touch Nyx’s cheek, and their fingers came away wet. Nyx hadn’t even known he was crying. “What you want is gift enough. But there will be a price. You’ll be binding yourself to me—not as a companion but as a vassal. And you cannot be my brother’s companion so long as War has a place in your soul.”
Nyx thought of Azaiah turning away from him, leaving him in the dark. “I can return to him when it’s done.”
Ares clicked their tongue. “Perhaps. It will change you, this thing you ask of me. But I love my brother, and I will do this for you: I will keep you alive, Nyx, soldier of Death. No weapon of war will harm you, and you will be kept—not safe, no, but kept—until my brother has use of you. This I will do for him, and for you. And you will have your revenge.”
“Then do it,” Nyx said. “My family is dead. I will see everything Lamont loves burn.”
Ares leaned forward, tipping Nyx’s chin up, and kissed him. Their mouth tasted of ash and burned his tongue, and when they pulled away, the shackles binding Nyx to the post lay in pieces on the floor.
“What will you do first, my general?” Ares asked. “Will you strangle the emperor in his sleep?”
“No.” Nyx stood, and warmth ran through him, easing the ache from nights of sleeping upright, chained to the post. “I want him to see his empire fall, first. Then he’ll die.”
“Very well.” Ares held out a hand. “Let us acquire an army.”
* * *
In the crypt where the cultists met to adore him, Death stirred.
The chamber was thick with the smoke the acolytes enjoyed, the sort that brought the heavy languor that was somewhere between dreams and wakefulness, where every touch felt like silk scarves on flushed skin, every sip of wine sweeter than the last. His acolytes were beginning to ask him for things, small tokens; so far, Azaiah had brought them only stones from his river, but they seemed to be enough to astound and delight them.
He thought of Avarice, alone in his well in the southern sea, surrounded by useless trinkets humans cast into the water to obtain their heart’s desire. Long ago, Avarice had been a thought, a wish, in a fountain full of coins. Now he wore a crown of rust and ruled in his kingdom of trash, and Azaiah wondered if it always started like this: with coins. He still had the two with his features etched on them, kept now on a string around his neck.
When he felt himself slipping, heard the dark, toneless whisper of his double, ofDeath, Azaiah would pull them out and look at them, settled by the knowledge that he could still recognize himself.
