Abruptly, he turned, veering off the dirt pathway and into the overgrown grass around his ankles.
Cassian stalled, hesitant to follow.
Finnian rotated and eyed him. “Are you afraid?”
“Hardly.” He dropped his head down to his boots, contemplating what it would do to him if he got his boots muddy.
“Take my hand and step where I step. We’ll keep them as clean as we can.”
Cassian looked up to Finnian’s outstretched hand and onto his playful smile, poking deep dimples on both sides of his mouth.
He staunched the warmth pooling in his chest from the sight.
Take his hand and be done with it.
Curse him and go home.
Cassian grabbed hold of Finnian’s hand, measuring the softness of his long fingers as they lightly clasped around him. Gently, he guided Cassian forward.
Pulses of Finnian’s power came in tiny surges, traveling up the tendons of Cassian’s hand and down his forearm. A side effect of touching a thing of witchcraft. Their magic lived within their bloodstream, often making its presence known without trying, undetectable to an average mortal or a lesser deity. Cassian found an odd pleasure in the sensation.
They made their way down the small slope and closer to the stream. Vines with large, white, trumpet-shaped blossoms decorated the trunks of the oaks, their roots gnarled deeply into the bank and their petals reaching for the waxing moon.
Finnian let go of Cassian’s hand and plopped down next to the tree.
He plucked one blossom from its stem and twirled it between his thumb and index finger.
“Moonflowers,” he said, staring down at it.
Cassian sat in the space beside him. Their arms grazed, evoking lightning beneath Cassian’s skin. A feeling well worth the stain of the damp soil soaking into his trousers. “They are nocturnal flowers, then?”
“Yes. They are my favorite.” Finnian looked beyond the flower to the ever-moving current of the stream. “They flourish in darkness, and I find something quite poetic about that.”
“Darkness is not as terrible as one would believe.” Cassian leaned back on the tree’s trunk, its bark rough against the layers of his clothes, mesmerized by the relentless motion of the stream. The sound was a lullaby to him. It had been ages since he gazed into a body of water absent of souls. “Darkness only scares those afraid of the unknown.”
Finnian’s probing stare tingled along the side of Cassian’s cheek. He kept his attention on the water, not confident in thereaction it would whisk awake within him if he met Finnian’s eyes.
After a long wave of silence, Finnian said, “Tell me more about yourself, Everett.”
Cassian scrambled to think of lies. Anything to make Everett more believable. Too much and not enough came to mind. The effort it would take to sort through it all would be taxing.
“I am tired,” he confessed with a sigh.
Finnian spun the blossom pinched between his fingertips, staring down at it. “Tired of?”
“Life.”
Finnian glanced over at him. “Do you wish to die?” A question asked out of genuine curiosity, not a threat.
Cassian shook his head, dismissing the ridiculous notion. The High God of Death, longing for death.What an anomaly that’d be.
“Nothing like that,” he said reassuringly. “I am simply realizing how much I lack enjoyment—fulfillment.”
“And what about this moment? Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I am.”
“Then do not overthink it.” Finnian flicked the moonflower blossom into the current gliding a few feet from where they sat. “Relish in the happiness you so desperately seek, as it is happening before you, and you are missing it.”
