“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a lot.”
“Well,” Iason hissed at Levi as he patted Sophie’s hair. “Now you made her cry.”
“Shut up, Iason, no he didn’t.”
“I think I like her,” Levi said, and Sophie let out a half giggle, half sob. “Change isn’t always terrible, you know. If everything stayed the same, Mislia wouldn’t be here.”
“So maybe you can get used to your own changes,” Iason said.
Levi glared at him. “That’s different.”
“It is,” Sophie said. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m beset on all sides,” Iason muttered, patting Sophie’s back. He couldn’t imagine changing her so fundamentally… but she’d been dead. Perhaps she would always have come back changed. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”
“We need to help him,” Sophie whispered. “He lashed out before because he was hurting. You know how that feels.”
Iason wanted to say that he thought Levi was just a prickly, irritable shark at heart, but he held his tongue. “I already promised to help. I have to. I don’t want to be bound to him any more than he wants to be bound to me.”
Levi flashed his sharp teeth again, but it wasn’t a smile.
Sophie turned to look at Levi. “You don’t have any siblings or anything, right? No other gods who might try to eat us whole?”
“They wouldn’t want to eat you, exactly,” Levi said, and actually laughed when Sophie groaned.
“I was trying to make a joke!” Sophie threw her hands into the air. “I’m Starian! You’re making it very hard to stay an atheist, you know.”
“Starians have their own gods, of a sort,” Levi said. “You just call them folk tales, like the Green Man or the Harvest Mother.”
“No.” Sophie got up, pointing at Levi as though he were a misbehaving puppy. “No. The Green Man is too terrifying to be real. I’m going to gowalk into the ocean.”
“Sophie,” Iason warned.
“And then I’m going to scream forever,” Sophie said. She opened the tent flap and stamped her foot. “And it’s still raining!”
“Here,” Levi said, and the rain drumming over the sand stopped, the clouds fading away as sunlight fell over the beach.
Sophie gave him a thoroughly haunted look. “I’m going to take a walk,” she said. “No one pick up any more gods while I’m away.”
“I’m not making a habit of it,” Iason said, and couldn’t stop himself from adding, “Don’t go past the end of the spell nets.”
“I’m immortal now!” Sophie called back.
“I can see why you like her,” Levi said, taking a seat in the middle of the tent as though he belonged there. “A little sensitive, though.”
“She’s had a long few days.” Iason raked a hand through his hair. “So have I, not that you’ll care. So I suppose you’ll be shadowing me until we fix this?”
“You’re the wizard,” Levi said. “You did it. So you’re figuring it out.”
“That’ll be difficult, considering I don’t have training in magic,” Iason said. “And, I’m not sure if you know, I’m currently cursed.”
“I wouldn’t call myself a curse.”
“Not you.” Iason waved at himself. It was tricky, explaining the memory curse to someone who didn’t care enough about mortal affairs to know why the Archmage mattered, but when he finally got the whole story out, Levi gave him another curious look, head tilted.
“And all this happened in one day?”
“No.Youhappened in one day. This has been an ongoing problem.”
