PARTONE
The Hermit
Prologue
They called him Sea-Father.
The sirens who lived beneath the Iperian seas loved Sea-Father. They adorned him in kelp wreaths and sea-glass crowns when he visited; they played their conch-shell trumpets and gave him the best of the fish they’d caught. Sea-Father was a dragon, and he would carry them on his back on bright, sunny days, skimming above the water so they could see the land in the distance.
Sea-Father had created the sirens on a dare from his sister Pallas, and they loved him as a child loved their parent—and he, in turn, indulged them in all things. He stirred the water into froth for them and their little water dragons with their bright, colorful fins, the ones who ate foam and delighted in bubbles. He chased the red tides from their waters with his fierce storms and told them where the richest ships had sunk, with the best treasures for them to pillage and keep for themselves.
When he was in the form of a man, he took some of them to the shores of deserted islands and taught them to surf. They in turn taught the other sirens who dwelt beneath the waves, and it would be a Thalassan fisherman—though the nation wasn’t yet called that—who first made his own board to try and mimic them. He drowned, but others were more successful and turned the activity into an art form, making boards and slicking them with wax to more easily ride the waves.
When Sea-Father wasn’t cavorting with the sirens, he would sometimes find sacrifices left for him, lovely submissives of all genders tied with ropes to a rock in the sea. Humans also left such sacrifices for his sibling Death in a village near the northern sea, and it was there his brother Azaiah would eventually come to carry the scythe. Sea-Father—called Leviathan, though he could not have said when the name was given to him—would arrive as a dragon, watch the poor mortal thrash and beg, and then take the form of a handsome man who would tease the sacrifice and lay with them there on a sun-dappled rock before removing their bindings and letting them go.
Leviathan, Sea-Father, Lord of the Deep, capricious god of sea and storm… once, he loved his sirens and moved among mortals, shifting between his time as the dragon who whipped the water with his tempests and the man who sprawled naked and smiling on the warm sands. And then one day, when he was swimming near his brother Avarice’s Well in the southern sea, one of his sirens sought him out and took him to an old ship near the deepest part of the ocean, cold and dark, where the fish lured prey with false eyes and strange lights.
“Sea-Father, I must warn you.” Illuminated by the faintest rays of sunlight that filtered down so far, the siren, whose name was Evadne, swam in circles, fins raised, clearly upset. “I have seen something in the wading pools near the shore, about you.”
Leviathan smiled at her, stirring up silt with his wings as he drifted in the current. He could always feel that current, no matter how still the water or how deep down he went. “What is it? Hunters seeking to trap me and use my skin as a boat?”
She didn’t laugh, but then, it wasn’t really a joke. Over the years, some humans had thought they could find the elusive Sea-Father and steal his powers. It would never work, of course; he was a god. But it was strange to think that people would imagine they could somehow capture him, control him.
“It does involve a mortal,” she said. “And a net. But where others have tried and failed… this one will take it from you.”
“Take what from me, child?” Leviathan asked, voice gentle. “I am a god. There is nothing of mine a human can take unless I first offer it.”
She shook her head, hair fanning out in the water. “I know. But this—this net, you are caught in it, Sea-Father. And it will take your godhood from you.”
Leviathan didn’t think that was possible. He was the first of all the gods, before Death or Desire or War or Art or Dreams, and he would be the last of them, unless his sibling Death took him across the river to whatever waited beyond. But he did not think he could cross Death’s boundary, even if he wanted to. He was too much of this world. He hadcreatedit, pulled the land from the primordial fires simmering below the ocean’s floor, swum for hours with the Dread Lord who held dominion over the darkness from whence the demons came, negotiating the boundaries between their realms.
“I don’t think that any human can take from me what was never theirs,” Leviathan said again, but this did not soothe his agitated siren. She insisted that it would happen, that some human would catch Leviathan in a net and strip away his primordial godhood, and that he must be careful when he took the form of a man and lay with mortals.
He didn’t think much of her warning, though, as Leviathan’s very nature was to be concerned only with the present and not the future. So her words did not come to him when a man, lovely and supple, was left shackled to a rock off the coast of what would someday become Gerakia. The man wept as the sun and salt battered his hair, his skin; as the gulls soaring above mocked his cries. When Leviathan rose from the sea as a dragon and the man sought to use his natural dominance against the creature he assumed was there to devour him, Leviathan laughed in the way of dragons, amused at this mortal man slinging a pebble at a landslide.
“Go away. I don’t want to die. I don’tcareabout good tides and fishing. I hate my fucking village and I fucking hateJavier,he was supposed to be the sacrifice but he was fucking the village chief so—”
Leviathan let the man rage—he did love a good storm—until the mortal on the sacrificial stone was pulling so hard on his rusted chains that Leviathan thought he might break his own wrists trying to escape. Then he shifted forms and climbed onto the rock, and the man went silent, staring wide-eyed at him. The man was long-limbed, naked, with reddish-brown skin and wide dark eyes. There was a slight curl to his damp hair, worn long and now crusted with salt.
“I’m not going to eat you,” Leviathan said. “I only eat them if they’re dull, or if they cry too much, or if they askme to.”
The man was breathing too fast, but he blinked at Leviathan, squinting in the sunlight. “Theyaskyou to? Are you sure?”
Leviathan flashed a grin at him. “I’m sure. And yes. Some think it’s an honor.”
“Is it?”
“If they want it to be, I suppose it is.” He sat cross-legged next to the human. “What’s your name?”
“Angel. What’s yours? Do you have one? We just call you Star-Eater.I think. Unless you’re someone else.”
Leviathan’s eyebrows rose. “Who else would I be? I’m the Tempest. Star-Eater—do you know why your people call me that?”
“I’m guessing it’s because of the whole, um. Dragon thing.”
Leviathan liked this mortal. He liked when people weren’t afraid of him, when they weren’t too worshipful, when they respected him as a god yet didn’t wilt under the storm of his influence like a flower beaten down by the rain.
“It’s because, when my sibling Death takes all beyond the river, nothing will be left but me. I am the beginning, and Death is the end, but I will remain until I eat the stars with my last breath.”
