Page 61 of Patron of Mercy

That seemed to catch Hephaestus off guard. “You’re siding with Hera over him?”

“Chaos, no!” Thanatos threw up his hands to ward off the notion of taking any side in the eternal war between the goddess of marriage and her errant husband. He liked her rather better of the two, and if forced to take a side, it might be hers, but he always thought himself better off out of it. “This isn’t really about them.”

Hephaestus gave a wry laugh. “Don’t tell them that. They might die of shock.”

They might, at that. The two were well matched in their enduring belief that the universe revolved around them. Really, they were well matched in everything, and Thanatos didn’t understand why they weren’t happy together, unless they simply didn’t want to be.

Of course, given the situation with Lach, Thanatos was starting to realize how little he understood anyone.

“Come on, then,” Hephaestus said, when Thanatos spent too long trying to gather his thoughts. He waved for Thanatos to follow and led him into the living area of his home. It was simply decorated, with a sturdy wood-and-steel table that somehow managed to look both simple and like a piece of modern art. The chairs matched in a way that was rhyme more than precision, as though they were the table’s varied children.

“Sit down. Have a drink.” He poured two goblets of water from a decanter, putting one in front of Thanatos and downing the other before refilling it. He settled himself into one of the chairs and threw his feet up on another, looking comfortable as he only did when he was in his own home and in the company of someone he trusted.

The level of comfort he displayed was a reminder that while Thanatos was there to ask for help, he and Hephaestus were not at odds. He had rarely disagreed with the god of the forge, if only because Hephaestus was singularly sensible among his brethren. Thanatos often felt as though they were just different generations of the same weird uncle no one wanted to hang out with.

He picked up the goblet, sipped, and sat down in one of the chairs. It was strangely comfortable for a thing of metal and wood, almost like it was made to hold him.

“What are you doing on Thera?” Hephaestus asked after they had been sitting there for a few moments.

Part of Thanatos wanted to answer the question with a question—ask why Hephaestus had evacuated people from the island. Instead, he sighed and nodded. “I suspect it has something to do with your evacuation. They were your worshippers?”

Hephaestus nodded, a bitter smile turning up the corner of his lips. “Of course they were mine. How better to choose a place that’s not important to my father?”

“He asked you to activate the caldera?” It was almost more of a statement than a question. He wasn’t sure, but it was all starting to make sense. “It’s where he defeated Cronus, isn’t it?”

Hephaestus rolled his eyes but nodded again. “The scene of his greatest triumph. It’s a wonder it took years to occur to him that it was a bad idea, telling his sons that his greatest moment was destroying his own father.”

Thanatos winced. It was very like Zeus to see only his own side of a situation, and doubtless, he thought it obvious that Cronus had been the enemy, while he himself was the hero of all stories. It made a person wonder if he realized most humans thought of him as a force of nature at best, and often as an outright villain.

It was also very much in Zeus’s nature to think himself smarter than everyone else, and that it was terribly clever to leave the scythe in the most obvious place: right in the spot where it had fallen.

Thanatos sighed and downed the rest of his water. “He didn’t want to move the scythe, so instead he buried it.”

Hephaestus gave a deep, exhausted sigh, and nodded. “Right in the middle of the battlefield.”

“But then it resurfaced?” It was a pointless question. Thanatos could see it all so easily.

Zeus had put the scythe underground, because to a creature who adored the clouds as he did, it was the worst possible place to be. But the scythe was an object of massive power, and like its wielder, it didn’t want to be hidden. Unlike a prison in the underworld, an earthen grave wasn’t enough to hold something that powerful. It had found its way back to the surface and forced Zeus to deal with it again.

“He demanded that you bury it, right there, by whatever means necessary.” Thanatos spoke as softly as possible, but Hephaestus still winced.

And why not? He’d never been the most widely worshipped of gods, and he’d had to take his followers out of their homes, make unreasonable demands of them, on the whims of his father.

“You can say it,” Hephaestus said, his voice low and filled with self-loathing. “I’m like an abused dog. He kicks me whenever I come near, but I keep coming when he calls.”

Thanatos set the goblet down on the table so hard that it let out a metallic clang and water sloshed over the side, but it didn’t even make him hesitate. Clearly, Lach had been rubbing off on him. And would’ve giggled like a child at that double entendre.

Hephaestus, seven-foot-tall mountain of muscle, god of volcanoes, flinched. It made Thanatos feel awful for a fraction of a second, before he reminded himself that the flinch hadn’t been his fault. It wasn’t about him.

He turned to stare at Hephaestus. “And do you blame the dog for that? For being so loving that they can forgive anything?”

“It’s different for them. It’s in their nature. A god should be made of stronger stuff.” The words had the feel of something repeated over and over until it had lost all meaning.

“The ability to forgive doesn’t make you weak,” Thanatos insisted. His mind immediately related it back to Lach, of course, because he was all Thanatos could think about anymore. Forgiveness wasn’t a weakness unless you allowed yourself to be taken advantage of, and Lach had changed. Whether he had changedenoughremained to be seen, but dammit, Thanatos had let himself wallow in bitterness for too long. “And a man who kicks a dog is no kind of man at all.”

“I shouldn’t forgive him.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Thanatos agreed. “He’s used up more than all of his chances to have a relationship with his least annoying son.”

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