“Nothing,” he said. “Iwantyou to not tell him I did that.”
“Three times,” she added cheerfully. “You did it three times! We were, like, three, four thousand feet up there!”
“We were not,” Levi said. “But we can be, when I’m a dragon. Unless you tell Iason and he turns me into shoes.”
“You’d make a lot of shoes,” Sophie said, laughing. “I saw you as a dragon. You’re huge.”
“Yes,” Levi said, smiling. “I am very magnificent.”
“And very modest,” she teased. “I really liked Meleah. I asked her if I could learn how to speak siren, but when I tried, I think I might have insulted her parents or something.”
“I don’t think you have the right anatomy,” he said. “I didn’t mean for them to speak at all, but they figured it out. Creating life doesn’t mean you can control it.”
“My dad swore he saw a siren, once,” Sophie said. He felt her shiver a little, which made sense; the sun was beginning to set, turning the water darker, the air cooler around them. “But Papa said it was just too much rum.”
Levi saw the shore in the distance and a figure on the beach—likely Iason, looking for them—and was surprised when he heard himself ask, “Are you angry at me, about losing them? It could have been my storm that brought down their ship.” He thought about the boat in the sand back with the sirens, the word on the side. He didn’t think it wasArgo, but he wasn’t sure exactly where her fathers’ ship had sunk.
“I… thought about it,” Sophie said, carefully. “At first, you seemed so… like you didn’t care. But you do care. About Iason, and me, I think, and even Argo. And I think… that’s just how you are. I know what happened to me in the water, you know. Iason thinks I don’t remember, but I do. I know my aunt Amalie paid those men to cut me and throw me to the sharks. I know she wanted him to watch them—um. Eat me.” She shivered again. “She’s a bad person in a way that you couldn’t be. Even if you made storms and people drowned in them, you didn’t… do that. My father’s sister, and she wanted me to be eaten alive just so a man who failed to kill someone she hated would see it and be sad.”
Levi’s eyes narrowed, anger sparking, and the waves around them began to pick up. “Your aunt,” he said. “Where is she, now? If she’s so eager to have her niece eaten by sharks, perhaps she’d appreciate the irony of being torn apart by a dragon. It won’t take long to fly to Staria.”
“Ew, you don’t want to eat her. She probably tastes like… I don’t know, bitterness and really strong perfume. I’m done with Staria, anyway. I don’t want to go back.” She sighed. “I just meant that I don’t think you’re malicious like that. You didn’t kill my fathers to hurt me or anything, it just… happens, sometimes, to sailors.”
“Yes. But I’m sorry if it brought you pain.”
She was quiet as he turned to swim toward shore. Then she said, “Only because you know me, now. You wouldn’t have cared before. And you don’t care about whoever was left behind, from the ship we just saw with the sirens.”
“No,” Levi agreed, because that was true. “But my seas and my storms don’t only take life, you know. You saw that today.”
“I know. I understand. Really. It’s probably too hard for a god to care about every single person on the whole planet.”
“I’m not meant to care,” Levi said. “If I did, there’d be no storms at all. The world would stagnate, and that would be very bad.”
Is that what I’ve been doing, spending so many years as a dragon?The thought was unsettling. He hadn’t thought he could ever be corrupted, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe stagnationwascorruption, for a being who was essentially the heart of a storm, and Pallas’s influence had somehow infected his realm. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just him.
“My brother cares,” Levi said quietly, more to himself than Sophie. “Azaiah. He’s the god of death. If it was my storm that took your fathers’ boat, it was the kindest of the gods who led them across the river. Or his ferrymen—they, like Azaiah, are kind people with souls that burn as bright as yours.”
“Thank you,” Sophie said, her voice wobbly. “I—I know you wouldn’t have hurt them on purpose. I just wish they could be here, somehow. Even if that would mean… well. Nothing very good for Iason. Who knows where he’d be if I wasn’t around to look after him.”
“Dead,” Levi said. “He’d be dead.”
Sophie sighed. “Yes. I know. I was… It doesn’t matter. But I don’t like thinking about it that way, you know? Trading two fathers for two more. I mean, not that I— You’re a god, I know that. You’re the Sea-Father, not, um, Sophie-Father—”
“It’s fine,” Levi said, smiling. “Meleah likes you. Consider yourself an honorary siren.”
“I wish I could have a tail like hers,” she said wistfully.
He wondered what they’d been like, her fathers. If she would rather be in Staria with them instead of swimming in the ocean with Levi, heading back to a small house on the Mislian shore, smack in the middle of a revolution that had nothing to do with her. Or if she liked this: being somewhere exciting, being somewherenew. Stagnation wasn’t good for anyone, gods or people, but Levi—in a moment of startling self-awareness—realized it wasn’t a question he should ask her.
So he asked Iason, later, once they were back and Iason had quizzed Sophie sixteen ways to ask, basically,Did that dragon put you in any danger?She talked about Meleah and the cave—but not their waterspout flying adventure, thankfully—and the lessons Meleah had discussed with her, then helped Iason do the dishes while feeding Argo soap bubbles before transferring him from his sink to a bucket. Iason, for his part, listened and seemed engaged in what she was talking about, but Levi could see he was tired, could feel the tension clinging to him like the coral on the sunken ship’s mast.
“Thanks again for taking me, Sea-Daddy,” Sophie said, giggling, kissing Levi on the cheek with Argo burping bubbles in his bucket. “I promise I’ll be respectful and not bring Daphne and Paris to meet Meleah… unless she says it’s okay.” She kissed Iason, too, which made his mouth pull up in the slight grimace that passed for his smile. “I’m going to write down everything I learned today before I go to bed. I’msotired, all that diving and, uh… learning,” she added, then pretended to yawn dramatically and turned to race up the stairs. “Night!”
Iason watched her go, then turned with that little frown between his brows. “Diving?”
“It’s the ocean,” Levi pointed out. “She’s fine. She had a good time.”
Iason rubbed at his eyes. “Good. I’m glad. Thank you. I should have said that first.”
