“Yes. I saw you, once, as—well, Death. You were a bit of a bastard, sorry to say.”
Azaiah was startled into a laugh at that. “That’s just Death. Death doesn’t care about anything or anyone. If I let it take me, if I’m corrupted… everything is over. You used to tell me that would be fine.”
“I was wrong. And don’t ever tell anyone I said so, especially Declan. But I… I was never going to be anything but corrupted—yet someone loves me, if you can believe that.”
“I always loved you,” Azaiah said, because it was true.
Arwyn gave him a strange, sad smile. “Your predecessor did you no favors, Azaiah. I think you should have known something of the world before you were called to your service. Whoever this successor of yours is, make sure they know love and loss, grief and joy, all of that, before you take them.”
Azaiah nodded. “Yes. I will. I don’t want to go with… him still out there, as he is. I want to bring him with me beyond the river. But when I find him, I am never myself, and Death thinks of it only as a game to be won, played with pieces that are as hard and cold as the glass marbles we once moved on a Winter board.”
“Poetic. Yes, of course Death doesn’t care about anyone. Greed doesn’t, War doesn’t. Dreams just are, regardless of who is having them and if they’re worthy of a good one or not.”
Azaiah stared at him. “Art cared about people.”
“She didn’t. Pallas cared about perfection, which is impossible to achieve unless you’re me. And Azaiah, I know how this sounds, especially when it’s me saying it. A few hundred years of being loved does something to you.” Arwyn glanced away. “I still feel hungry, sometimes. Even with him next to me in the dark. But he reaches for me, and the hunger… isn’t the strongest thing I feel.”
Azaiah felt a sharp, hot pang of longing—enough that the sky rumbled, and Arwyn narrowed his eyes. “None of that. Death likes to pontificate too much when he shows up. I’m the only one allowed to do that on this ship.”
“I miss him,” Azaiah whispered. “It is an ache, a hunger. I am tired, but I… don’t want to give up on him. When I thought Nyx was lost to me, I learned that Glaive—the name my darker self gave him, the one he uses as a mercenary—refuses to do anything that will harm a child. So perhaps some of my soldier is still there. But I do not know how much longer I can hold back the storm. It builds in me, and once my darker self grows bored of playing with Nyx like a cat with a mouse, I think it will be too late. And if Nyx,myNyx, doesn’t come back to me… he will be as cold as a drowned fire, his spirit extinguished, not even an ember left to spark in the world beyond. Like his hated brother, he will simply… fade.”
“It might be for the best.” Arwyn sighed. “Don’t make that sad face; you have no idea how it looks. I like you, Azaiah. You’re so much more fun to have around than any who came before you. And I feel… well, we’re all changing, aren’t we? Pallas lost, Somnus across the river, Ares in a crypt somewhere, throwing yet another temper tantrum. I think it is how it has to be, but I don’tlikeit. I want all of you to stay.”
There it was: the echo of the shadow in the well, the thing thatwanted, wanted, wantedwithout thought to the consequences. The thing that hoarded paste jewels and useless trinkets like a wyvern with shiny rocks and twigs, selfish and childish because that’s what greedwas. Azaiah sighed. “I know. But I won’t let the world suffer. You know that. Death doesn’t have compassion, and my soldier might have forgotten it, but I haven’t.”
“Good. And you haven’t been, ah. Back to the cult, right?” Arwyn had the grace to wince. “I should never have suggested that. Ares almost burned the pretty hair off my head.”
A pang at that, too. Azaiah missed Ares, to whom he’d always been close, even after learning it was Ares who’d promised Nyx vengeance to keep him from dying before he could make his bond with Azaiah. Ares was not known for being level-headed, and to hate them for it would be like hating the sea for being wet. Conflict followed at their heels, even when they tried to do something nice for someone. And Azaiah remembered how Ares had wept with the body of Atreus Akti in their arms, tears of flame turning the blood-soaked sand to pure, red glass.
Arwyn was right. Things were changing, and perhaps all of this was meant to be and he reallyshouldgo into the river. But he wanted to do so with Nyx. If he could hold out just a little longer…
“I haven’t, no. They, ah. They asked me to murder an imperator, and one wanted to have a child with me, and they turned their chants into curses when I refused to grant them life eternal.” Azaiah shook his head. “They don’t realize what it is like, to live that long. To see the world change in ways they cannot imagine.”
The cult had disbanded shortly after Azaiah stopped visiting the crypt beneath the grotto. The place had long since flooded, the chamber where he’d once reclined on a bed of flowers during his followers’ ecstatic rites become nothing but a ruin of stone beneath the waters of a lake. Katoikos was a modern place full of senators who liked to argue, submissives learning to smile prettily and kneel, wealthy people ignorant of what preceded their charmed, pampered lives.
But one thing endured. The Arkoudai, the fierce warriors who’d once protected the port, still carried coins for Azaiah, to pay him for the trip across the river. Their coins showed a death’s head instead of Azaiah’s features, as the only two ofthoseleft above the ground were the ones Azaiah carried still in his cloak, waiting for the day he could give one to Nyx.
“I will keep an eye on the one I’ve chosen as a successor,” Azaiah said. “But… my time here grows short. Perhaps I will visit Ares, try to convince them to come with me.”
“You can’t. If Ares tries to cross the river, it’ll dry up and turn to sand. That’s how you drowned the old imperial city, remember? Or, wait. No, you wouldn’t. I forgot. Ask Leviathan—he was there.”
Azaiah did not want to do that. He knew that his darker aspect had been present when the empire was destroyed, but he did not like to think about it.
Arwyn leaned back in his chair, perilously close to toppling over. “And you’re sure, absolutely sure, you couldn’t find someone else?”
“Could you?” Azaiah asked.
Arwyn gave a wry smile. “For a night or two. But I know what you mean. When someone sees your heart, black and barbed though it might be, and loves you anyway? That isn’t easy to give up. I’d rather drown the world myself.”
Azaiah thanked his brother for the chat, embraced him—though Arwyn grumbled, tetchy as a cat about physical touch if it wasn’t from Declan, for when Azaiah held him he could feel the bones, the crown that glimmered just barely out of view on his brother’s head.
“Your Declan loves you, shadow or prince or whatever else you are, but that isn’t what he is to you, as a companion,” Azaiah said. “It is the anchor I can see on his back, for that is what he is to you. A reminder to pay your sailors, among other things. He wouldn’t be your companion if he helped you cheat them.”
“He helps me cheat all the time,” Arwyn argued, but he sighed. “I take your point. I found a conscience, and you have to find someone who can be grief for you. Just as Ares needs a sheath and Astra needs a spanking.”
Azaiah laughed and promised Arwyn he wouldn’t leave for the river without telling him, then found Declan and made his farewells.
He could feel something stirring, a call to answer, and he went to the river so that he could respond. Perhaps later he would visit another of his siblings, though with Ares sleeping and Pallas gone, there were fewer of them than ever.
