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“I thought it might help you work better,” he says. “Or give you something to reminisce about in your final days. Don’t be too grateful.”

“I don’t recall thanking you.” But I uncork the vial and a familiar scent rises instantly to my nose. Seawater. The brine of the ocean. The imagined taste of the sun and open air, and the under-taste of fresh peonies and peaches ripe for plucking. Home, in a bottle. A measly gift compared to the real thing, but a gift all the same. Out of the corner of my eye, I cast the Death God a curious glance. Is it because of what I’d told him last night? Had all of it been real, then? But he gives no indication of it. He is inspecting the bowl closely, with narrowed eyes.

“You can drink all of it,” I say.

He barely waits for me to finish talking before he downs the medicine in one go.

My heart patters like feet down the stairs as I wait for his reaction. There is none, at first. But any second now. Surely, at any second, his features will soften, and relief will fill his voice. The pain is gone, he will say, as those gods who have sought me out in the past have. It is magic. And I will tell him that yes, it is, my magic, and he ought to keep me around so I can continue making more doses for him, and eventually between one dose and the next I will slip out into the night like a creature back into the wild, and he will never be able to catch me again. Death will become a mere ghost in my memory, these past two days a nightmare I will have shaken free from. I can picture it all so perfectly that it feels like part of me has already stepped into that bright, bright future, that it’s already happening—

Except his features harden.

He drops the bowl with disgust, where it breaks at once into halves, the bluish-purple residue leaking onto the floor. When he lifts his gaze to mine, his black eyes are gleaming and hard as stone, his voice a vicious whisper.

“There is no change,” he says. “It doesn’t work.”

Confusion twists through me. I shake my head, hard. “That’s impossible. It must work—I made it myself—”

“Perhaps,” he says slowly, with a terrifying lack of emotion, “you are not as good as you claim to be. Or perhaps you are tricking me again.”

“No,” I say, stumbling back. I am still gripping the vial, and it strikes me suddenly as absurd, that I had thought it an act of kindness from the Death God. “No, I swear. I’m not.”

“Then why am I still in pain?” he demands, a discernible edge to his words. A question thrown not only at me, it seems. “Why isn’t it better?”

“I—I don’t know.” My thoughts are scrambled, my mind scuttering to pick up the pieces, to comb together a clear line of logic through the white haze of panic.

“You don’t know why you’ve failed?”

That hideous word: failed. It stings like a slap, and I can feel my pride coiling in self-defense. I am not secure about much. Of all the gods who have graced the lands, I have never been the most dazzling, the most charming, the most intimidating, nothing like those who seem to be born into divinity, made for it, emerging from the clouds with gold at their fingertips and fire in their eyes. There are not many temples built for me, and even those who worship me seldom know my name, only my powers. But I have been healing for as long as mortal empires have reigned. It is one of the few things I am good at, part of who I am, what I do. Failure is unacceptable.

“There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be effective,” I burst out. “I know the flower’s properties. I know how to use it. It can alleviate any pain in the body, unless—” I stop short, seized by another possibility. “Wait. Take off your robes.”

He’s so visibly taken aback by this that the venom in his features vanishes for a second, leaving behind the surprising softness of his widened eyes and parted lips, and he looks almost boyish, almost human. I would laugh aloud if I weren’t too focused on proving my point.

“Your robes,” I say, impatient.

His disbelief sharpens into suspicion. There is another emotion, too, burning in the black coals of his gaze. “What do you intend to do, exactly?”

“A more thorough check. Just— Let me—” Giving up, I grab a fistful of his collar and tug it down, then press my palm flat over his chest, right above his heart. I can feel it thudding furiously beneath my hand, with all the insistent force and speed of a battering ram. But that is not what I’m trying to find out. I listen with my power instead, the invisible energy humming between us, both his and mine. It is like listening for the echo of a dropped pebble in a vast cave. Then, to be certain, I grip his wrist and pull him toward my bed.

He stiffens. “What are you—”

“Sit,” I instruct, forcing him down by pushing on his shoulders.

“You dare—”

I flip his arm to show the inside of his wrist and locate his pulse with two fingers. “Stay still.”

The room falls silent, save for the rhythm of his blood, beating faster and faster. I proceed to check his other vital points, confirming my new theory. “The pain is not in your body.”

The Death God frowns at me. “That makes no sense. I can feel it—”

“The pain is real. But your body is not the source. It is a curse of the mind.” I tilt my head, considering him. “We would need a different approach entirely. There must be a root to it: a significant event, something terrible that has happened. I believe the curse is trapping you within those moments, so every time you feel the pain, it is not current, but an old pain you are reliving over and over again. If we can identify it— If you could show me your memories, I can help purify them—”

He recoils as if I’ve suggested that he cut out his own heart for me, then springs back up onto his feet. “No.”

“No?” I repeat with incredulity. “You’re the one who’s desperate for a cure. Now that I know how to help you—”

“In case you need the reminder from very recent memory, your previous suggested cure did nothing,” he hisses.