“You were?” Elena smiled, just a fraction. “So were we. Aleks thinks—well, it’s foolish, but…”
“Her ancestors were queens there,” Aleks said. “Or empresses.”
“We don’t know that,” Elena said, dominance snapping out. “And it doesn’t matter.”
But it did, because Nyx could finally see why Azaiah would call her eyes familiar. They were Nadia’s—Kelta’s—eyes, peering out of another person’s face. Nyx swallowed around a growing knot in his throat, and Elena blinked, startled, as Nyx covered his mouth to stifle a sob. “The daughter of the last empress was my niece,” he managed to say after a moment. “I thought I lost her.”
“You didn’t.” That was Azaiah, his voice soft. “I took her in her sleep, long after her grandchildren were born. Grandchildren who survived, passing their lessons on to the next generation and the next.”
“And you’re… you’re well. You’re having a child?” Nyx asked.
Elena looked from Azaiah to Nyx and nodded.
“I have so many questions,” Evander said from the couch, in Senex.
“So do I,” Elena said. “Should I call you Great-uncle? No, Uncle will do. I never had one, in Lukos.” She looked Nyx up and down. “The baby’s due in seven months, they say.”
“I’ll be there,” Nyx said. “If you want me.”
“So long as it’s a social visit,” Elena said, glancing at Azaiah, who nodded. “Good. Please, make yourselves comfortable. Evander probably wants to ask you if you had aqueducts or something. He’ll die if he doesn’t know everything about the universe, I think.”
“Elena, he was actually there,” Evander said, looking much younger, suddenly, than a strategos of Arktos should have appeared.
“There’s another,” Azaiah whispered, as Theron and Kataida slowly came in from the other room. Theron was asking more questions than Evander, but Kataida locked her gaze on Nyx and strode up to him, a hand on the hilt of her sword.
“What are you, then,” she asked. Her dominance was sharp, clipped, like an arrow loosed from a bow. “To be old as the ruins under Arktos?”
“I’m his companion,” Nyx said, gesturing to Azaiah. “I don’t know what else.”
“He’s my grief,” Azaiah said, drawing Nyx close. “The compassion that eases the sting of parting.”
Kataida looked Nyx up and down. “If you were uncle to an empress, did that make you an emperor, or a prince?”
“Both, for a time.” It didn’t sting so much to speak of it now. “But that time is done.”
“And people can just… become companions of gods?”
“Kataida.” There was a note of warning in Evander’s voice, a wariness that gave Nyx pause.
“I have to know,” Kataida said. “Do you have to be special, or just a mortal who is called to it?”
“I was never very special,” Nyx said, as Azaiah said, “Both.”
Kataida nodded, but Nyx could see the tension strung through every line of her body. “I see.” She turned away, and Nyx found himself drawn into the odd family in the living room and bombarded with questions.
It was overwhelming, not because of the questions spoken in varying languages and dialects, but because Nyx could see, there in front of him, proof that not all of the empire was lost. Some of its people endured, and they came out kind, like Aleks, who sang songs to ghosts, or Elena, who kept a protective hand on Aleks whenever Azaiah came close. Even war and death couldn’t snuff them out. They’d thrived despite it all, and that alone would have been enough to banish the last of Glaive from his spirit.
It wasn’t until they left, stepping out into the dark, cool night, that Azaiah told him.
“That girl,” he said, as Nyx watched ribbon dragons bump into a glass lantern hanging from a doorway. “Kataida. She is the soul of Atreus Akti reborn.”
“Ah.” Nyx knew of Atreus, of course, the man who led the Arkoudai into the desert. As Glaive, he’d served under him once, joining a group of mercenaries to drive back Staria in the mountains, and Atreus had shouted his orders like a thunderstorm come to life, dominance bleeding over the battlefield. That was before Ares sank into their slumber beneath Arktos, when Nyx had found some small comfort in seeing Azaiah’s sibling dancing amidst the chaos of battle.
“Before he was Atreus, though, he had another name.” Azaiah smiled as a ribbon dragon approached Nyx, hissing at him softly. Nyx nudged the dragon aside, and it drifted toward a nearby fire. “You called him Andor.”
Nyx turned, looking into Azaiah’s eyes. “My Andor?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I couldn’t, and my other self wouldn’t have given you the comfort.”
