Page 23 of Patron of Mercy

It was cleaner than he’d left it—thank the gods for Mis—but it was still clearly lived in. Obviously his space.

“I thought you said there were two bedrooms,” Thanatos said.

Lach laughed. “You didn’t see it? It’s off the mess?”

Thanatos scowled.

“The dining-room bench?” Lach suggested.

“Ah. Obviously. Coziest bedroom I’ve ever seen.”

“But you’ll be sleeping in here,” Lach hastened to add. “If you want. I’ll stay out there. That’s what I was thinking, anyway.”

Damn, he wished Thanatos would say something. Lach watched as he walked around the room, brushed his finger over a side table.

“Can I get you anything? I’ve got beer, water, orange juice—” Lach asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Okay.”

Thanatos had moved on to look over his movie collection, lined up on the shelf under the flat-screen television on the wall. Lach didn’t know what to do, so he stood there and watched, his tongue thick and awkward in his mouth.

“Okay, so... I guess I’ll go ship us out. Do you want to come watch?”

“I think I’ll stay here,” Thanatos said mildly, never turning around to look at him.

“Sure. Okay. No problem. You get settled in, and we’ll be on our way.” It was the coward’s way out, but Lach had to escape. Thanatos had caught him off guard; he’d retreat, regroup, and land the approach next time.

Up on deck, Lach grabbed his beer on the way to untying the ropes. It’d gone a little warm, but it was better than no beer at all.

When he got to the tiller, he sat down and took another swig. “You did me dirty, Mis.”

There was no response but the gentle movement of water under them. He sighed. Maybe the night hadn’t been a resounding success, but Thanatos was there. Assuming he didn’t scare Thanatos off—even if he couldn’t travel to the boat in a godly fashion, he could disappear from it in an instant—he’d have until they got to Santorini to make a connection. By the time they got the scythe, Lach would prove he wasn’t the same man who’d broken Thanatos’s heart.

That night, Lach didn’t sleep well on the bench, but that meant he was up early enough to make breakfast. He had a folding hot plate. He set it up on the dining table—kitchen space was virtually nonexistent—and turned it on while he prepped the pancake batter and chopped up fruit.

Once he’d gotten everything on a plate, he looked over his handiwork. It wasn’t great. The pancakes were uneven in size, and he’d cut the fruit in bite-size chunks.

Chunks! Thanatos regularly ate ambrosia. He wasn’t going to appreciate lopsided melon chunks.

“Mis, do we have a melon baller?”

A drawer of utensils flew open, but he didn’t see anything inside that might work. He stuck his hand in to rifle through it, and the drawer snapped shut, narrowly missing his fingers.

Lach hissed. “It’s a reasonable thing to have,” he protested, but when he pulled on the drawer handle again, it stayed stuck shut. Apparently Mis disagreed. After all, when in his life had Lach used a melon baller?

The battle lost, Lach looked over his handiwork. He had done his best and come out the other side with lopsided pancakes and melon chunks.

With a sigh, he picked up the plate and went to knock on the door to the master bedroom.

“Thanatos, you up?” A few quiet seconds slipped past. “I made breakfast.”

Topsy Turvy

Thanatos stared at the wall, horrified, incredulous, and... queasy.

There was only one possible explanation: this wasn’t happening. Maybe he was hallucinating, or it was a nightmare, or maybe he was dead and Zeus had imprisoned him in Tartarus for some infraction he hadn’t realized he’d committed.

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