His fingers ghosted along the stone as they continued walking. She stopped near a low wall tangled in ivy and leaned against it, the breeze lifting her hair. He moved in close, standing just before her. His hand came up without thinking, fingers sweeping her hair behind her ear again, knuckles grazing her jaw.
“You’re warmer here,” she said softly.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze rested on her mouth.
“I wasn’t always Death,” he said.
Her throat tightened. “Often the gloom sticks to you. You are so much lovelier in this little town.”
He stepped into her space fully, pressing her gently back against the wall. One hand came to rest at her waist. The other braced against the stone by her head.
His voice dropped, low and close. “I can be so very lovely.”
Then he kissed her. Not careful. Not timid. He kissed her like he remembered it. Like he’d done it before in another life and meant to do it again. His hand slid to the small of her back, pulling her to him. Her fingers caught the front of his cloak, anchoring herself. The stone at her back held its chill, but his warmth pressed through it—through her—until she felt only the shape of him, the absence of all else.
He broke the kiss only to rest his forehead against hers, breathing her in and her hands moved beneath his shirt, splaying across his chest.
He drew her into the shadow of an alcove, tucking them out of sight like a secret. There, with his mouth on hers again, hemelted, silent and open, tasting the air between them like it belonged to him.
The sky deepened into dusk, and they made their way to the outskirts of the city, where the land sloped toward the cliffs. The wind carried the scent of salt and earth, and the sea stretched before them, vast and endless. Ilys stood at the edge, the cliffside beneath her boots crumbling, wind tangling in her hair. Death stood beside her.
"You said you wanted to show me this place.” She asked, "Did it give you what you wanted?"
With his gaze fixed on the horizon he answered. "No."
She turned to him. "And what did you want?"
He looked at her then, mournful. "To belong to it again." A wry smile touched his lips, almost self-mocking.
Without thinking, she reached for his hand, lacing her fingers through his. He did not pull away.
The water lapped gently at the sides of the tub, steam curling in the air between them. Ilys sat across from Death, one knee bent, her foot propped against his shoulder, toes just brushing the curve of his neck. Her movement looked effortless, but intention lived in every inch of it. A silent trust unfolding as she gave herself to him, one breath at a time.
Her posture remained regal, even as the bath’s heat melted the tension from her spine. She watched him, head tilted ,studying the way his broad shoulders curved against the rim of the tub, his inky hair curling at the ends.
His hands moved with care, lathering a soft cloth with scented soap and running it along the length of her leg, from the arch of her foot down the curve of her calf. Her chest ached at the sight.
“We are friends, yes?” she asked, her voice soft but certain.
Death laughed, leaning back , mimicking her proper posture with exaggerated seriousness. “I suppose we are.”
She watched him a moment longer, then, after a beat, “Tell me how you became a god.”
His gaze drifted toward the ceiling before returning to hers, eyes clouded, peering through the veil of time itself. “It is not a nice story.”
“And yet a girl raised to kill is lovely,” she countered, stretching her arms along the rim of the tub, her fingers idly tracing the worn wooden edge.
He huffed a quiet laugh, but it did not reach his eyes. “There was a war. Annon was not yet a country. It would not be for some time. I was leading men, taking back land that had once been ours. Land we needed to survive, to feed, to hold against those who sought to strip it from us. There were men above me, men who called the attacks, who made the decisions. I was their hands, their blade. I executed. I led men to their deaths for reasons I did not fully understand.”
She watched the way his fingers swirled the water idly, the way his jaw tightened before he forced himself to relax.
“I was not well for a time,” he continued. “Worn thin by war, weakened in body and mind. I had fought, killed, bled for something larger than myself, and yet I felt… lost. It was then she came to me.”
“Who?”
“A woman. In mortal form. A visitor with an offer. Though, in truth, it had already been accepted for me long before breath was given to the Fates.” He shrugged, a half-smile flickering and dying before it could mean anything. “The middle part is fuzzy.”
“Being a god?” she prompted.
