Page 36 of Patron of Mercy

He fell asleep to the steady breathing of a god who never tired, the soft glow of a reading light, and a sense that he had half a shot in Hades of having more perfect nights like this.

In the morning, the second cabin was gone.

Sweet Red

Thanatos had been to Ibiza before, of course.

It would be difficult to find a corner of the world Thanatos hadn’t visited hundreds, maybe thousands of times. He had never sailed into Ibiza just after dawn as he watched Lach eat some of the last bits of food in the ship’s cupboard. He’d never imagined that crackers and jam could be sexy, but watching the man nibble a cracker was more distracting than he cared to dwell on.

One of the things that hadn’t changed in the transformation from Glaucus to Lach was his keen awareness of food. The way he kept trying to feed Thanatos was a reminder of it, and he almost wanted to kick himself for how he’d forgotten.

Glaucus’s family lived their entire existence in the shadow of starvation. His brother had been sickly for many years because of malnutrition, and it had almost certainly shaped Lach into the wiry, but never bulky, man that he was. Not like his bull of a father, or his brother, who’d grown to have broad shoulders and heavy muscles when their island had become prosperous.

Lach had been the one who chose to go without so that others could have, even to the point of trying to offer Thanatos the last of his breakfast. To the point where the threat of people starving was the most important thing in his universe.

More than once during their trip, he’d allowed himself to think, rather uncharitably, that Lach was less worried about their mission and more worried about what he could get out of it. He’d even allowed himself to think, just for a second, that maybe Lach had some ulterior motive for wanting the scythe.

Sure, he worked for Gaia, and finding the scythe to make the plants grow was in keeping with her agenda. That didn’t mean Lach didn’t plan to use it for himself somewhere along the way.

But that wasn’t it at all.

The way he kept trying to press the last cracker from his breakfast into the hands of a god who didn’t truly need it; that was the way Lach thought of food. Lach needed everyone well fed, always, and putting anyone but himself last made him uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, humans might not be starving yet, but the concern that they would be made Thanatos hesitant to accept those crackers, whether Lach needed them or not. Perhaps his consumption wouldn’t take food from someone who could have used it better, but there was no way to know that.

Thanatos was half distracted from his brooding as he watched Lach go through the steps to moor the boat, or dock it, or whatever that was called. His lithe form flowed through the motions like the water beneath his feet. Anyone who watched him would know that he’d done it thousands of times. He grinned up at Thanatos when he finished, satisfaction and pleasure written all over his face.

Thanatos, despite his comfort with his own form, was not going to jump off the boat and trust that he would land on his feet. Lach was practically born to the sea, and Thanatos was definitely not. He stepped onto the dock hesitantly, and strangely, when his feet hit stable ground for the first time in ages, he felt even more wobbly. The wood planks beneath his feet seemed to roll like the deck of the boat always had. Was this simply his new state of being, the rolling of a boat beneath his feet?

“You’ll be okay,” Lach told him, seeming to read his mind but probably just noting his awkward body language. “It’s always like that for a little while.”

“I’m fine.” He nodded as though to punctuate the sentence, but the motion made him a little dizzy, so he stopped and stood there for a moment.

Lach pretended not to notice. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and waved it around. “I’ve gotta stop and make a call before we get going, but then Ibiza’s all ours.” He lifted his free hand as though to take Thanatos’s, but then his gaze skittered away, and his hand dropped limply to his side.

He turned half away and fiddled with his cell phone for a while. Thanatos wondered if he struggled to get a signal on the thing. In cell-phone years, it was as old as Thanatos himself, and it was a wonder it still got a signal at all. Maybe that was Thanatos’s own problem. He was so old that his receiver was broken.

“—yeah,” Lach said, grabbing his attention. “We’re in Ibiza, so we’re a couple of days out yet. Find what you were looking for in Brazil?” He turned, and when he found Thanatos watching him, he gave a cocky wink.

Thanatos had to bite his tongue to keep from commenting on the return of the snarky sailor. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, though. Lach had always been different with other people than with him. Back then, he’d thought it made him something special.

“Do you need someone to pick you up in—” Lach flinched and sighed. “Yes, I know you’re perfectly capable of getting there yourself. I was offering to help is all. Okay! We’ll see you in four days. Santorini. Yep.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and stabbed the end-call button harder than Thanatos suspected was necessary.

“Not your biggest fan?” Thanatos asked.

Lach sighed. “Nah, it’s not that. Sometimes in the field, after a while of every guy offering to help because they think she can’t do her job, Martina gets defensive.”

“So you offering to help was suggesting she was incompetent.”

That earned another sigh. “Yeah, pretty much. My fault. I know better.”

Thanatos considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Or maybe she should know you better.”

He didn’t know why he was feeling protective of Lach—okay, he knew exactly why—but he didn’t feel like censoring himself on it. Lach was one of the only men he knew who probably deserved the benefit of the doubt in matters of sexism. Chaos knew that most of the gods didn’t.

Lach gave another shrug. “It’s fine. I think she’s tired. And it sounds like her last job didn’t go so hot.”

Thanatos was about to launch into another defense, but he stopped himself. For all he knew, this woman was a lover or someone else of importance in Lach’s life, and there was no reason to jump in. Instead, he turned to look at the island before them. “Where do we start?”

---