I shake my head.
Xolotl’s just gotten in my head. I did the right thing setting up the plan with Leonid. And as much as I might want to say that I’ll go with Thanatos, I can’t quite bring myself to do it. He’s never cared about any of us before, his alleged children, so why would he really care now? How can I be sure my ancestor’s plan isn’t just to purge us all once Xolotl isn’t glaring at him? At least Xolotl’s had plenty of chances and has kept me alive.
“I’d like to stay with Xolotl,” I say. “Though I’m grateful that you were willing to help defend my life, mortal though it is.”
Thanatos looks at me for a long time, and then he glances up at Xolotl. “I wish you two the best.” He’s smiling when he jumps into one of the ghastly holes the other two horsemen made and disappears.
I should have expected that Xolotl would be beaming—I did pick him. “You wanted to stay with me.”
“Shut up,” I say. “It was the lesser of two literal evils.”
“I wasn’t honest with you before.” Xolotl waves for me to go back into the hotel room.
“It has no door. Why would going in help us at all?”
He shrugs. “Just go.”
I listen without a fight for once. He did just defend me against the problem he created. I suppose that buys him some peace.
He waves his arm and a tower of rubble fills in the doorway. I doubt anyone would know how to move that without making a huge racket, which makes it close to as safe as a door.
“You’re very strange,” I say. “You want me gone, and you seem to hate me. You call your brothers to kill me, and then you change your mind and pick a huge fight with them instead.”
He stretches then, lifting his arms to the ceiling before dropping them, then shifting his head back and forth. “Agreed.”
“Agreed?”
“If you die, the backlash of my power recoiling will put me back to sleep. The bond functions that way on purpose. From the moment we wake, we’re pushed toward bonding with one human—it’s part of the balance. Their life limits our waking time so we don’t lay waste to the entire human population. We have a limited time to provide balance, and then when our bonded human dies, we return to sleep, allowing life time to retake death.”
“I’m really just a walking oven timer.” I snort. “I should’ve known.”
“We don’t usually explain this aspect to our champions, because it makes them edgy. Some of them, though none of mine, have even gone kamikaze and tried to eliminate themselves to put us to sleep earlier.”
“But if you choose a bad champion, like me, it becomes a problem. You’ve done almost nothing so far, which means that my untimely death putting you back to sleep would be inconvenient.”
“Right.” He nods. “I wouldn’t have accomplished my purpose here before my time would be cut short.”
“Your brothers came to kill me and then revive you, so that you could choose another, better champion. Yes?”
“They won’t do that now,” he says. “I’ve made it clear that you’re mine, and I’m keeping you.”
There’s too much to unpack here. I don’t have nearly enough time to deal with it right now.
“You need to sleep. I can tell you’re exhausted.”
“How can you tell? The bond?”
He shakes his head. “You’re pale, and you have dark circles under your eyes. You look disheveled.” He clears his throat. “And you smell.”
I wasn’t expecting that, and it upsets me more than it should that he thinks I stink. “I’ll just duck in to take a shower really quick.” I disappear into the bathroom. I’m in the middle of my shower when the door opens. “Hey! You can’t be in here!”
“I’m just setting clothes on the counter,” Xolotl says. His voice is strangely upbeat for him. “I made you socks this time.”
I doubt he could see any part of me, with the steam covering the shower door, but it’s unsettling that he just walked inside anyway. When I finally finish and step out of the shower, there’s another red dress waiting for me by the sink. There are, as he promised, also black socks and tall black boots resting on the floor.
I can’t help smiling as I pull the clothing on. He’s a millennia-old magical creature who kills. That’s all he does. Except now he’s making clothing for me, in two colors since I complained about them all being the same. And he fought his brothers to keep me safe. Plus he makes tiny aquatic creatures. He tried food for me, too. His face as he ate all those burgers, his eyes so bright and his expression so animated, will always make me smile.
He’s become a bundle of strange contradictions.
