Mortals still built shrines to him, still chanted and sang him songs, still made offerings of fish or shells before voyages and named ships in his honor. But they no longer left him pretty sacrifices tied to rocks, since, after Angel, Leviathan had never again favored such an offering with his divine presence, instead leaving them to turn to bone shackled in the sun.
He’d only just passed the shores of Kallistos when he saw a boat on the horizon. It was likely not a tourist boat—perhaps a Starian merchant vessel, perhaps naval—but that would have to do. Azaiah normally wouldn’t show up for one ship with so few souls, but he’d know Leviathan was summoning him. The Tempest and the Lord of Storms shared some influence, and Azaiah would be able to feel Leviathan’s call rippling through his own realm.
And if Azaiah did not answer, Leviathan would simply sink another ship. Then another and another, until his brother appeared in his long, narrow boat of dark wood, a single lantern on the prow, standing robed and cowled with the gleam of his reaper’s scythe at his back. Then he would take away the boon he’d granted this human wizard, and Leviathan could rend the man to pieces.
Snarling, Leviathan began to churn the seas, pulling cool water from the depths to rise with the waves, wind turning a peaceful sky into a froth of clouds, lightning already sparking in the distance. But before the storm took shape in truth, he felt a change occur in the core of his power, a sudden shift in realitythat he’d only experienced once in his entire existence—andthathad been at the very start of it, when he was nothing but the wind and the rain and the waves, a storm that found sentience in a single moment and thought to itself,It would be fine indeed, to be a dragon.And so he was.
He’d learned, later, how to shift into the shape of a man, but that initial moment when he took a corporeal form, it had happened from just a thought. He rarely took a human form anymore, staying a dragon unless his divine brethren had need of him or he wanted to surf. He’d been a man when he’d stood beside Ares and Death to drown an empire in an ocean of sand, and he’d been a man when he met Avarice—Arwyn, now—and his Declan on a sandbar and promised to pull islands from the sea.
Now, Leviathan tumbled in the rough water as his awareness seemed to shrink, as his wings and his claws and his scales were replaced by a human form. A human form whose long, muscular, lean body was hardly a match for even this very first stirring of a storm. Leviathan inhaled seawater as he was tossed about, a sensation he didn’t much mind when surfing but very much mindednow,given he hadn’t meant to shift forms at all. He tried to shift back but could not, and of all the strange and displeasing things that had happened to him today, this was by far the worst.
Leviathan wasn’t a man. He wasn’t even really a dragon. Hewasthe Tempest, the first god, and being thrown about in his own realm like somemortalwas simply not to be borne. Had the wizard stolen his very immortality? Could that even bedone?
A mortal’s net will ensnare you, and your godhood will be the price you pay for your entrapment.
Evadne’s form had long since joined her kin in the coral reef near Diabolos, but her words had never faded.
Along with pain, Leviathan felt something elsefor the first time in a very long while: fear. Why couldn’t he regain his form? Every time he tried, something felt wrong, like he was grabbing at a thread that was being pulled from his fingers. He tried to roar, but he swallowed more seawater and felt his eyes burn with it. Was he now…a human?
No, that couldn’t be. That wasn’t how it worked. He didn’t choose a successor. He was the first, the last… Also, a mortal would have drowned by now. That thought was comforting enough to diminish the unfamiliar sensation of panic, but didn’t quite banish it completely. He kicked toward the surface, was caught in yet another current that sent him spinning… and before he could work out where he was, a hand shot into the dark water, nearly in front of his face.
A hand, yes, but not a human hand. Its long, thin fingers were little more than bone, wearing rings with broken, rusted settings and jagged prongs, nary a jewel to be found. The skin stretched over the bones was leathery, and there was the hint of a ruffled, torn lace cuff at the wrist. The hand grabbed him by the hair andpulled,which wasn’t pleasant but was less painful than that initial siphon of his power and somewhat less than inhaling so much seawater. Leviathan kicked as he was pulled upward, and the hand kept pulling even after his head broke the surface.
Leviathan found himself deposited on the deck of a ship. He pushed up to all fours to get his bearings, yearning for the feel of wings on his back, for talons to dig into the slick wood.
“What on earth happened to you?”
Leviathan looked up. His brother Avarice stood before him, wreathed in shadow, his paste-ruby eyes gleaming in the dark. Leviathan could just make out the crown of rust on his brow.
He tried to answer, but he started coughing so hard seawater poured from his lungs, racking his body with the force of it. A few shells and one dead fish accompanied the rush of water on the deck before he was finished. At last, Leviathan drew in a dry breath. “I was looking for Azaiah.”
“By drowning yourself?” Avarice’s low laugh sounded like a priceless vase shattering on tile. “You do know we can’t die. Unless you were trying to cross our dear brother’s river? In which case I amterriblyaffronted that you didn’t at least say goodbye to your favorite sibling.” There was something sulky in Avarice’s voice at the end. Like Leviathan, Avarice had a hoard over which he was incredibly possessive… but his hoard was his family, and he hated the thought of any of them leaving him.
“No.” Leviathan got to his feet. “I was going to drown a boat to summon him. I have something to ask.”
“My boat, you mean,” Avarice drawled. “You do realize that, hmm? You also can’t killme.” He stepped from the shadows, form altering to the human one he wore as Desire: a slight man with long, messy blond hair, turquoise eyes with his curious slit pupils, and delicate features. “And if you’re going to bring me half the ocean, cough uptreasuresnext time, you scaly disaster, not deadfish.”
There was the soft sound of someone clearing their throat, and Declan, Arwyn’s companion, emerged from behind Arwyn. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with long, dark hair who looked the same as he had the day Leviathan first met him on a sandbar in the southern ocean. He nodded politely at Leviathan. “Lord Tempest.”
“Am I?” Leviathan ignored Arwyn and strode toward Declan, staring hard at him, putting the power of the storm and the sea into his voice as he grabbed Declan’s chin in his cold fingers and stared hard into his dark gray eyes. “Am I still a god?”
Declan blinked. He was a submissive, and he responded immediately to Leviathan’s influence, lowering his gaze and inhaling sharply. “Ah. Yeah. Yes, you are.”
“Levi, take yourhandsoff my man and get yourownif you want,” Arwyn said, sounding peevish. “I’ll toss you back into the ocean if you don’t.”
Leviathan stepped back. He inclined his head at Declan. “I needed to know.”
“That didn’t really sound like an apology,” Arwyn said.
Declan’s mouth quirked. “Like you’d know, Shadow.”
Leviathan turned to his brother. “Thank you. I—was trying to shift, and I couldn’t. That’s why I asked Declan. Something happened to me.”
“What?” Arwyn stared at him. Even in his human form, Leviathan could make out the glimmer of red behind the bluish green. “You— How? Were you sleeping?”
“No.” Leviathan was going to explain, but in typical Arwyn fashion, his brother didn’t allow it.
“Well, come tell me about it, but somewhere you can put some clothes on.” Arwyn gestured toward the door leading belowdecks. “And don’t ever try to drown me to call Azaiah again. As funny as it is, seeing you looking like a wet cat, I don’t appreciateit. The shipyard just finished with this boat, and I don’t want to have to wait for another one.”
