Page 34 of Patron of Mercy

“Thanatos?” Lach asked as the sky turned from purple to an inky, dark blue.

Thanatos swallowed around a bite of toast with strawberry jam heaped on top and straightened his shoulders. “Yeah?”

“What’s it like to die?”

On a slow exhale, Thanatos relaxed. “I don’t actually know. I’ve never done that part. I can tell you about afterward though. It’s peaceful. People spend their days doing what makes them happiest. Families are reunited.”

Lach hummed. He’d never been at peace with the idea of death. Even when he’d been mortal, he’d expected to go out hard—starvation or violence would be his undoing.

“Only if they’re all in Elysium,” Lach said.

Thanatos shot him a measured glance. “You don’t think your brother and father made it?”

Lach laughed. At their family’s most desperate, his father had never been anything but a good man. Philon had been safe and comfortable for most of his life, while Lach had never been able to trust their blessings once they got them. “No. I am completely sure they both made it to Elysium.”

Thanatos only stared at him, blinking his wide, gorgeous eyes. “You don’t think you’d go to Elysium?”

“Do you think I would?”

“Of course!”

Lach crossed his arms and leaned away. “Thanatos, I’ve stolen, murdered, pissed off more than one god. Every faith in the world is pretty clear on what kind of person I am and where I’d end up.”

A faint line wrinkled the smooth skin between Thanatos’s brows. “I wouldn’t let you go to Tartarus.”

Lach started and uncrossed his arms. “I appreciate that.”

Once, Lach had thought Thanatos might top the list of people who wanted to watch him suffer, but he’d always been so much better than Lach could understand—much, much better than he’d ever deserved.

Thanatos’s genuine decency terrified him. The people he’d let down—his father, Philon, Thanatos—were always so damnably good. Always deserved better. And, as always, Lach crumbled under the weight of their acceptance when he’d never lived up to it.

“Guess I haven’t lost all my skills in the sack, if you’d do me a solid like that.”

With a heaving sigh, Thanatos pushed himself off the bench and shoved his dirty plate on top of Lach’s. “Good night, Lach.”

While he watched, Thanatos disappeared down below one stair at a time. Made sense. Hell, it was something of a relief to know he was still exasperating.

For a while longer, he watched the stars brighten. When he got up, he cleaned their dishes—even peeked around the corner to see Thanatos had shut the door to his room.

Now that there were two cabins, there was no reason for Lach to be so uncomfortable. He made his way to the second one.

At first, he pressed his hand down on the mattress, testing Mis’s patience. Nothing happened, but when he sat down, it became clear that she’d decided he had no right to the extra bed. It folded up toward the wall, leaving Lach to scramble off the side and tumble onto the floor or become part of the ship.

For three nights after that, Lach tried the bed. Mis didn’t give an inch, and he wound up sleeping on the bench in the mess every night with a crick in his neck, thinking about the god in the other room, wondering if he was sleeping. Maybe he was making his way through3rd Rock from the Sunwith the sound turned down and the subtitles on—who knew?

On the fourth night, Lach was staring at that bench after dinner. He hadn’t wanted to displace Thanatos from his bedroom, and apparently, it hadn’t occurred to him to leave. That almost felt like a victory in itself—Thanatos preferred to stay in Lach’s space, in Lach’s bedroom, in the middle of Lach’s things. Only he hadn’t asked Lach to share it with him.

That left Lach with two options: he could ask to sleep in his own bed, offering Thanatos the empty cabin and potentially kicking him out of the room he’d stayed in since they started this trip, or he could continue to sleep on that blasted bench.

All trip, he’d picked the path of least resistance, afraid that if he asked for a little, it’d be too much, and Thanatos would leave. If Thanatos had wanted him in his bed, he would ask, right?

But maybe, if Thanatos meant to go, he would’ve already gone. He wouldn’t care if Lach wound up in Elysium or Tartarus.

Stepping softly on bare feet, Lach made his way to the rear cabin and knocked on the door.

“Come in.” Thanatos’s voice was muffled, but when Lach opened the door, he was sitting up in the bed, wearing Lach’s pajamas. Of course Thanatos had dug deep into his drawers to find the matching set of flannel pj’s that Lach never bothered with. That explained some of how his clothes always looked so fresh; Mis took care of them at night.

He set a book down on the nightstand. Lach didn’t have many of them, but he had a few. He leaned toward the bed to get a better look.

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