Page 34 of Storm Front

“Yes. The, ah. There’s a necklace, behind that rotted chest in the corner near the painting where someone poked the eyes out of the gentleman on his noble steed. She brought it for me.”

Azaiah smiled. “I didn’t know her, of course. But that’s nice, that she brought you gifts.”

“You don’t think it was bad, her robbing graves? She was Death’s companion.”

Azaiah shrugged. “What need have the dead of a necklace?”

Avarice’s laugh sounded, as ever, like pieces of a priceless vase hitting the floor and becoming useless shards, impossible to repair. “I like you, Azaiah. You’re strange. Pretty, and weird, but I suppose you’d have to be. So you have a companion, hmm? Are they as pretty as you are?”

“No,” Azaiah said, because objectively, Nyx wasn’t. He ignored Avarice’s laugh and continued. “But I think he is handsome. He is brave. A soldier in the emperor’s army. His soul burns hot, and he has even won a few hands of Winter against me.”

“Finally someone has. You’re a menace,” Avarice muttered. He seemed bored by the rest of it, playing with his trinkets as his new crown began to rust. “So you’re going to fuck him forever and ever, is that what I’m hearing? Hmm.” Avarice shook his head. “That seems a bit stupid. How do you know you’ll want him in a year, in three, in three thousand? Honestly. How?”

“I suppose Idon’t know, but I’ve never wanted someone like this before. And he’s suited for it. He is a good man. Compassionate. He cares for the fallen—”

“Boring,” Avarice said cheerfully, though his tone was brittle and barbed as a sea urchin. “Yes, yes, he’s a paragon of virtue, how tedious… and appropriate for you, winter flower. What is it you want to ask me, then? It can’t be about companions. I don’t have one. I’d have toshareall of this.” He waved a skeletal hand, though he was once again cloaking himself in shadow.

Azaiah sighed. “I wish you would show yourself. I think you are beautiful.”

“I know you do, but it’s more enjoyable to not do what you want. That’s just mynature,darling. So, yes, your paragon is going to walk beside you and cradle the dying and cry on them. How does he feel about grave robbing?”

Azaiah laughed. “I think he might not care, but we haven’t discussed it. I need one, though, don’t I? A companion. Ares said I did, but Pallas disagreed.”

“Stop asking Pallas anything. She doesn’t know shit. And Ares’s idea of a companion is someone who will run into a fire with a sword just to see if he can conquer flames or whatever, so… it’s good that you’re asking me. I’m the oldest, after all.”

“I thought Leviathan was the oldest,” Azaiah said.

“Yes, yes, but he doesn’t… Do you want the answer or not, Azaiah?”

“I do.” Azaiah smiled. “Please.”

“Ugh, you’re no fun. You’re toopolite.If I’d been Death, this entire world would be nothing but trinkets floating in a sea of bones.”

“Isit important for me to have one? A companion?”

Avarice leaned forward again, skeletal face a hint in the shadows he wore the way Azaiah wore his cape. “More so than some, I’d say. Every Death I’ve ever known had one eventually. If you don’t, you forget humans matter and go about slaughtering them all… like Ares, but not, because there’s no fight or conflict, just a huge flood that starts it all over again. And honestly, as someone who was here from the beginning, I’d rather not.”

“So I can be corrupted,” Azaiah said slowly, reaching for a pebble on the ground. He thought how best to pose his next question. “I asked Pallas, and she said I didn’t need to worry about it.”

“She’s not you, and she should stop giving advice she isn’t willing to take. You need it, she needs it, because both of you… you can’t exist without people. Me, either, but it’s too late for me. They made me, and now they’re stuck with me.”

“So you are corrupted?”

“Of course I’m corrupted.” Avarice rose to his feet in all his skeletal glory, his scrap-heap throne rising behind him, the iron crown already turned to rust on his brow. “Look at me. I started as Desire, which is… like Death, Azaiah. Natural. It is natural to want things, to yearn for them and seek them out. It is not natural to slit the throat of your sister’s baby to ask to win the mayoral election for your tiny fucking village that a flood will wipe off the face of the earth anyway, so no one remembers you existed. You see the end of humanity. I see them in the middle of living—and it is depressing asfuck, Brother. No one could be me and not be corrupted. People didn’t manage it, so fuck it, neither did I.”

It did make sense, even with the colorful language and the tinge of anger in Avarice’s voice. “Could you board my boat, if you wished it? Choose a successor?”

“No. That’s the fun part of being me, Brother dear. I can’t die until all of humanity decides they’re fine with what they’ve got—and that will never happen. A companion wouldn’t cure my corruption, only keep me from boredom, and I’m not sure a human exists that wouldn’t make me want to string them up for the sharks within a week.”

Azaiah leaned back on his hands. “Why would Pallas say that, then? About it not mattering to her. Although she did say she is about to make a bond with her sculptor.”

“What?” Avarice’s laugh came again, brittle as old bone. “The fuck she is. She’s been saying that since before Mora madeherbond. Somnus mopes about it constantly. Talk about the world’s most annoying god. Next time, we need a Lord of Dreams who isn’t really that into art.”

“They are connected,” Azaiah reminded him. “Like I am, to Ares. Like you are, to our brother Leviathan.”

“We’re all connected. You can’t have gods without humans, is the thing. You can’t have humans without death. If you lose your connection to those worms and maggots, we have to start this all over again. Pallas should know that. I don’t know why she wouldn’t, it’s not like she’s new. So I have no idea why she would have said that. As usual, my advice—that, please remember, you came here to ask me for—is… don’t listen to that fluff-brained paintbrush. You need a tie of some kind, to people, so you don’t forget that you care about them.”

“Does itneed to be a companion?”

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