Levi, remembering Iason’s predictions of deaths derived from reef coral and infections, laughed. “It’s not as rare as you think, but nothing you’d take notice of, I’m sure.”
Azaiah frowned, looking suddenly distraught in a way that made Levi want to take him surfing. “Oh. I don’t mean to ignore anyone, you know. I… I simply can’t be there for all of them.”
“I know that,” Levi said, putting a hand on Azaiah’s shoulder. “Every death isn’t yours to witness, just as I don’t drive every storm. I didn’t mean to cause you sorrow, brother.”
“I wish I could be there,” Azaiah said, and Levi caught a glimpse of his smile through the fall of his long, white hair as he looked down at his bare feet. They were as pale as his hands, his face… as the moon in the sky above. “I would, if it were possible. Aleks is growing in his power, taking on more and more. Perhaps with two of us…”
“Azaiah. You go where the river takes you. Fighting the current is pointless.” Levi looked at the waves, feeling a spike of longing. “I suppose I should take my own advice.”
“I can feel your sorrow at the absence of your draconic form, but it’s nice to see you walk as a man. It had been some time.”
“Yes.” Levi thought about that, feeling the sand under his feet and the sea breeze in his hair. “Is that why this happened to me? There are no dragons left to be my companion, so I had to be a man to find one?”
“You’ve gone your entire existence without one,” Azaiah pointed out. “And were there ever dragons that could have been your companion? Did any of the rest of them talk?”
Levi laughed, and couldn’t stop—Azaiah looked so interested and yet sopuzzled. Despite being thousands of years old, he was still so very much a human in some ways. “Azaiah. I can speak with creatures that aren’t human. Sea creatures, mostly, but I’ve communed with dragons before. Mostly the ones the Mislians cast down, but sometimes wyverns.”
“Oh.” Azaiah smiled. “I didn’t know that. When you’re a dragon, I can’t ask these questions. Or I can, but you can’t answer in any way I can understand.”
“Arwyn can understand me, sometimes. Or he used to be able to, when he spent more time as Avarice.” Levi thought about that. “I feel the same as a man and a dragon—or I would have said that I did, but maybe not. I had a lover, once, and I abandoned him because a siren told me a mortal would steal my godhood. He was given to me as a sacrifice, just like you were given to she who was Death before you, and I took him to an island in the sea and kept him for some time as a lover. But one night, I cut my shoulder, and I left him there. I didn’t want to lose myself because of him.”
“You… left him there?” Azaiah gave him the universal disapproving-sibling stare. “Leviathan.”
“Yes? Azaiah, I’m not you. I don’t care that much about people. They’re far less interesting than most ocean creatures.”
“But you’re a god worshipped by humans,” Azaiah said. “You have to know what it’s like to be one, don’t you? I thought that’s how we became corrupted—when we forgot, or lost that connection.”
Levi reached down and picked up a shell. The thought seemed… related, somehow, to what was happening with Iason. “Is that why I can’t shift back?”
“I think it might be,” Azaiah said. “Leviathan, whenwasthe last time you spent your days as a man on land, not a dragon in the depths?”
Levi had to think about that. “I was a man for a while when Avarice was playing pirate and needed me to make islands to impress his Dex. That took a lot of my energy, you know, and I had to go ask for the fires to make land that would endure.”
Azaiah sighed wistfully. “I wish I could meet—”
“No,” Levi said, and the sky rumbled. Azaiah bowed his head, acknowledging Levi’s influence in a way that went beyond a mortal submissive responding to a dominant. Levi, remembering that Azaiah had dropped everything to come here and help him, gentled his voice. “There are very few rules I have to obey, but I swore to that one. To speak of it isn’t wise, especially not here.”
Azaiah knew what had happened to the Old Ones. He nodded. “Of course. I respect the promises you’ve made. I’m only curious.”
“I know.” Of course Azaiah would be curious. He liked to know about everything, from plants to insects to extinct flower species, stars and planets, even bacteria that turned the sea red and strangled the delicate ecosystems that flourished there.Lifeof any kind interested him, which really was exactly who you wanted to preside over death. It mattered that he remember that the souls were once living, breathing people. “But that was the last time I walked for weeks on the ground as a man.”
“When Nyx and I were separated, I used to blame him.” Azaiah, too, leaned down and picked up a shell, turning it in his elegant fingers. “I thought I was losing my connection to humanity because of how long I’d been walking alone as Death. But that wasn’t it. I even started a cult.”
“And that, right there, is why you should never have askedAvaricefor advice about anything,” Levi said. “Though I’m starting to have my doubts about asking him as Arwyn,too. He’s turned from a god into a pesky mischief spirit. I don’t think he’s trustworthy.”
Azaiah smiled at him, long hair blowing gently around his face. “Didn’t you try to sink his boat to summon me, last time?”
“Yes, but I didn’tknowit was his boat.”
“Anyway, as I was saying, I think I bore some of the responsibility. Not just Nyx. He’d lost his compassion, but I’d lost something, too. I think it’s how it works, with us. Arwyn had to remember he wasn’t only Greed, but Desire, and to learn to want something for himself. Declan loved the shadow as much as the man, so Arwyn could be both. Nyx loved Azaiah the man, but Death became nothing to him, just a tool for revenge or a job to be done. That’s why he could see me as a mortal soldier but never an immortal mercenary. Astra learned to live in the waking world again, and Cillian… Pallas had cursed him so he wouldn’t sleep. Their situation is a little different, since Cillian is a god himself, but I think it’s similar.”
“Iason can’t love me as a dragon,” Levi said, tossing the seashell into the water. “He’s too small. I’d crush him.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Azaiah chided. “Iason was bound to you as a dragon through that first interaction, but I think he has to also make his bond with you as a man.”
“I’m not one, though,” Levi said, reaching down for a handful of perfect sand dollars, conches, and fan shells. “This form, it’s not me. The dragon is closer to what I am.”
Azaiah rarely showed any hint of exasperation, but his sigh sounded… weary. “I understand that you feel more yourself in your dragon form. Do you know how Iason feels about it? Does he like your dragon?”
