She plucked a blade of grass, rolled it between her fingers.
“I didn’t expect you to have so many opinions,” she said after a moment.
“Why?”
“I assumed you’d eat like a monk, just enough to survive.”
“I did. Until I had reason not to.”
She met his eyes. “And now?”
A beat passed.“Now I want more.”
The words hung in the air between them, suspended.
Death rose to check the horses. Ilys watched the fluid, confident way he moved—no wasted motion. His hand smoothed over the neck of his mare, and she leaned into him, trusting. He whispered under his breath, words she couldn’t hear, and the gentleness in it tugged low in her chest.
She watched the way his cloak stretched across his shoulders and the faint triangle of skin exposed at his throat where his shirt hung open. He caught a strand of mane between his fingers and tucked it behind the mare’s ear with such absent care that it made her chest tighten.
He was still learning this body. Still learning himself.
And she was learning to want him.
Chapter 33
The thought clung to her as they rode on, the night cool and sharp around them. The road stretched dark and empty, lantern light from the last village long gone. Each time Spire’s gait shifted beneath them, she felt the solid wall of Death’s chest at her back, his hand near the reins. She found it maddening how much she noticed him now.
After a while she spoke, pulling at anything to distract herself. “Tell me, then,” she said, voice light, needling, “what it wasreallylike, being a god?”
“I’ll tell you but in exchange you—”
“Surely you’re not proposing another bargain,” Ilys cut in with a scoff.
“No. Merely a conversational trade.”
“A trade is a bargain,” she argued.
“Fates, Ilys. Let me speak.” He chuckled, the sound low against her ear. She went still at the command, surprisingherself with how quickly she obeyed, how easily her body fell into his rhythm without the usual bristle toward the god.
“A question for a question,” he said more softly. “You ask about godhood, and in return you’ll answer me about what it’s like to be mortal.”
She shifted to get comfortable and, in the process, wriggled back against his chest. Heat rose up her neck, blooming beneath her skin as she became acutely aware of the line of his body against hers.
“Deal,” she said quickly, almost a plea.Talk,she begged inwardly,so I don’t have to think about how close we are.
He cleared his throat, searching for language that would fit.
“Being a god,” he said, “is like standing beneath a frozen lake. I could see the world above me—light, color, movement—but I couldn’t break through to it. Everything I touched was distant, dulled by the ice between us. I heard the living in their joy and grief, the pulse of their small, beautiful lives, but never as more than echoes.” He paused, his thumb absently brushing the reins. “The threads passed through me. I could feel them hum—birth, death, all of it—but they never belonged to me. I was the still point in the pattern, not part of it.”
His breath came out bleary. “It was quiet. Too quiet. The kind that eats at you. And sometimes, from somewhere deep in that silence, something mortal would stir. A small voice, calling out from the dark beneath the water. It wanted warmth. It wanted to touch. It wanted tolive.” He looked down at her then, his tone softening. “And I ignored it for a very long time.”
Ilys shivered at the image but forced a more detached tone, hoping to steady herself. “Sounds… dreadful.”
His laughter traveled down her body. “Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, it was.”
He drew in a thoughtful breath, the sound humming against her spine. “Now then, my turn. What to ask, what to ask…” hemurmured, teasing. “If you could bottle up any memory,” he decided, “what would it be?”
Ilys blinked, caught off guard. She sifted through the catalogue of her life and was surprised, almost embarrassed, by how many moments came to mind. For all the blood and ruin, she had lived a lovely life. Her childhood had been full of play and sunlight. She’d been insulated by affection, surrounded by those who loved her. She’d known warmth, laughter, even good sex and a soft bed at the end of it.
