Page 7 of Patron of Mercy

“Wait!” he called as Thanatos moved toward the door. “Where are we going?”

“We?”

“Yeah, Thanatos. I made promises.”

Thanatos scoffed. Lach tried to shrug it off. No matter what he’d planned, this wasn’t all about reconnecting with his ex. There were people to save.

“Just give me one second,” he said, holding up his hands like that could stall Thanatos. “I need a to-go box.”

The guy at the counter took way too long to notice him, but Thanatos lingered, tapping his foot. Lach dropped their three slices—Thanatos’s veggie, and Lach’s Hawaiian—all in the same box. When Lach rejoined him at the door, Thanatos was staring.

“So good you couldn’t leave it behind?” Bitterness pursed Thanatos’s full lips.

Lach licked his own nervously. “Um, yeah. I’ll—I’ll eat it later.”

Thanatos rolled his eyes and turned to go. But hey, at least he’d waited?

Growing a Plan

It didn’t make any sense. Thousands of years had passed. There was no reason that looking at the man should make Thanatos feel like there were a knife twisting in his gut. But Lach had to go and be everything he’d ever loved in Glaucus. Clever and roguish, with a quick smile and the most ridiculous, inane plans.

Going to see Cronus in Hades was possibly the worst idea Thanatos had ever heard, and Lach had been known for some awful ones back in the day. Cronus hadn’t been pleasant to deal with, even at his pinnacle, when he’d been convinced that he was going to stay in power forever. Thousands of years deposed, all of them spent imprisoned in Tartarus, were unlikely to have made him nicer.

On his best day, he’d have eaten Lach whole. Possibly literally.

Thanatos doubted Cronus had good days anymore. He thought it might have been a kindness if Zeus had simply destroyed his father and dispersed his component atoms to the winds.

He sighed and tapped his foot as Lach joined him at the door to the pizza place. Despite the less than ideal level of cleanliness and excessive grease, the pizza had smelled good. Thanatos liked a good pizza. Unfortunately, his stomach was determined to eat itself, so the last thing he wanted was food. He needed to get Lach the information he wanted and get away.

“Okay, so if we can’t visit Cronus—”

Thanatos snorted. “Visit? Do you think he’s going to invite you for a nice cup of tea? He’s in Tartarus, not a palace in exile somewhere.”

“So whocanhelp us? Someone must be able to.” Lach looked positively desperate, and it made something in Thanatos soften. Maybe he was the same old Lach, but he was trying to do something good. At least, he said he was. Lach had also always been one to play fast and loose with the truth.

It was a good thing Thanatos knew someone who might have insight into the problem, and she was easy to find.

Persephone’s apartment in DC was on the small side, since she spent relatively little time there. As little as possible, in fact. She saw it as a stopgap, a place to sleep during those months when she wasn’t allowed to go home to her husband and children.

Thanatos sent a quiet apology into the universe for leading Lach to it, but hopefully he’d forget he knew about it. Or more likely, Persephone would simply never be there if he came calling for more favors.

He knocked softly, hoping it wasn’t so late that she was already in bed. During her months aboveground, Persephone tended to sleep when the sun did, and he wasn’t sure how long it had been down.

She answered the door, and he sighed in relief. She was wearing soft green pajamas, hair pulled back, and her face bore signs of exhaustion. There were dark rings under her eyes, and a tightness around her mouth that he wasn’t familiar with, but she smiled at him. “Thanatos. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He frowned and looked over at Lach, then back to her. “I’m not sure pleasure is the right word, but thank you. It’s always lovely to see you.” He decided to get straight to the point instead of wasting her time. “Is the growing season really proving a failure?”

She flinched. “It’s early yet.”

It was a close-run thing, but he didn’t start banging his head against the doorjamb. He softened his voice further, knowing Demeter was a touchy subject for her, and asked, “Your mother?”

She pursed her lips, and the corner of one eye seemed to twitch with a mind of its own. “Not answering her calls.”

Dammit. Lach had been telling the truth, and there was a clear problem. A problem Cronus’s scythe might be able to fix, exactly as he’d claimed. However, that did not mean that going to see Cronus was the best option left to them.

“Has anyone managed to talk to Cronus since his imprisonment?”

She cocked her head and drew her brows together. “I don’t think so. Why?”

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