Levi thought about the way Iason reacted every time he showed any hint of his power or influence as a god. “Yes.”
“Good. So you can… check that off the list, in a sense. But you do have this form as well, and—were you listening to what I said before? It’s important for him to choose you in all your aspects. And, brother, you can’t be bound to a human if you insist on denying you have any real connection to them as a species. That was a very long time ago, when you helped Arwyn. I hadn’t even made my bond with Nyx when you pulled the islands from the sea.”
Time was meaningless to Levi. Most things had been, until recently, hadn’t they? He drifted on currents more than he stirred them. He slept in deep underwater crevasses and curled up for years-long naps in caves hidden beneath islands no one knew existed, even farther north than Lukos.
“I’ve never been a man,” he repeated, handing a perfect conch shell to Azaiah. His brother held it up, making sure there were no small creatures living inside, before he slipped it into his voluminous cloak. “But if I am to be bound to one, I need to walk among them, as you say. I suppose I hadn’t realized how long it’s been, until you brought it up.”
“And you can’t just leave them when you’re done with them,” Azaiah said, waving his hands helplessly. “They’re not children’s toys to be played with, then left on the floor and forgotten about.”
“You may censure me, because you are the kindest of us, but I would remind you, brother, that I am not of humanity as you are. Humanity came from my storms, my seas, the life my rains and my fires brought and cultivated.” Levi turned, the sea at his back, the waves rising as his temper flared.
Azaiah, as calm as ever, only smiled. “I know that. You create and you destroy. You are the beginning, and you will be the end. But what have you created, or destroyed for that matter, since you brought islands up for our brother Arwyn?”
Levi thought about that. “I’ve become too removed, is what you’re saying.”
“I’ve seen your shrines across Iperios. They’re not as well-tended as some others. Mine. Astra’s.”
“I refuse to believe I have smaller shrines than Ares,” Levi huffed.
Azaiah’s smile was sad—he’d always been the closest to War, as one would expect Death to be. “All of Arktos is a shrine to Ares. I’m not saying you should rise from the depths and demand sacrifices, hmm? I don’t know what force originally called you into being, only that I am, of course, pleased that it did, as I love you very much. But I don’t think you were meant to sleep on the ocean floor like one of your downed ships. I think that might eventually… end you, in a way I never could. I think you were dying as a dragon, Leviathan. The concept of you. I think that might be the only way you’ll ever truly die.”
Levi thought about this. “You may be right,” he said, at length. “I began as a storm, but I did not exist until I knew myself to be one.” He knew this didn’t make much sense to Azaiah, who—no matter how long he’d been Death—had been born a mortal.
“You have a companion bond with a man, and you should know yourself as a man,” Azaiah said. “That seems reasonable. If you wish to keep the bond, of course.”
That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Azaiah had said that, at present, Iason could die if he chose to, because his bond was that of a wizard to a god’s power, not a man with a god. That seemed too simple, but he supposed that was sometimes the way of things. “I don’t want him to keep the bond if it makes him hate himself until the end of everything,” Levi said. “That seemsverytiring for both of us.”
Azaiah shook his head. “That’s more consideration than you gave your last mortal lover, I suppose.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that Angel was my lover that made him different. He was… I don’t know. Different. He wasn’t pious; he didn’t tremble before me. He… laughed with me, told me jokes, spoke to me like—like—”
“Like a man?”
“Like he wasn’t a supplicant. Like Nyx speaks to you, like Declan teases Arwyn. An equal, even though he wasn’t, of course.”
“Of course,” Azaiah murmured—as close to sarcastic as his brother ever got.
“Anyway, I didn’t ask you here to talk about a man who died centuries ago,” Levi said. “The issue at hand is Iason.” Who, come to think of it, also wasn’t pious, stood his ground, even poked fun at Levi. “And I think maybe I don’t want anything to happen to some of the people here. Not just Iason and Sophie; they’re mine now. But the others—I didn’t want to drown any of them just to summon you.”
“That seems… like a very good start, Leviathan,” Azaiah said, in the tone of voice a mother might use with a small child who was on the verge of a tantrum and chose a nap instead.
“Levi. I like Levi, when I’m in this form.” He scanned the water, his moodiness having abated, and the storm with it. And then, standing with his brother in the shallow waters of a Mislian beach, he understood. “I was becoming corrupted because I forgot I was a god. I was a dragon, but that isn’t what I truly am any more than this form is. I chose to be flotsam carried by a current, chose to sleep in deep caves while storms whipped the seas above me to a frenzy. Iamthe current. Iamthe storm. I was afraid of a mortal taking my godhood, as if they ever could. Maybe they gave me the idea of myself, but they didn’t makeme.”
“There you are.” Azaiah patted his shoulder again, beaming. “And you’re a god with a companion bond, if you want it. But only if he does, too. That’s how we have companions who are equals—as equal as they can be. It’s still his choice, Levia—Levi. That, I don’t think you can change.”
Levi shrugged. “I could if I wanted to, I think. But I won’t. I wouldn’t shackle myself to an unwilling partner for eternity.”
Azaiah nodded. “Good. And having a companion will… temper you. Not tame you, never that,” he added, when Levi turned a glare on him. “But it is not good for us to be too much in the worldortoo much out of it. It seems to me that we find our companions when we need them most. I thought I lost Nyx in the moment he chose vengeance for those mortals he’d loved over walking as my companion, but now… I think he had to burn away the idea that vengeance everwasa choice. That’s what happened the day I found him in a clearing in the rain. He had no reason to stay his hand. They didn’t even know he was going to, the man on the altar or the one ready to die for him. That choice was the one that mattered. The same is true for Arwyn, I think. You can’t choose to give someone else what they want instead of having it for yourself, if you don’t ever know what it is to want anything at all.” Azaiah kissed him on his forehead, lips as cold as the rest of him. “I wish I could be of greater help.”
Only Azaiah would say that, after showing up mere seconds after Levi had his wizard-companion summon him and then giving Levi every answer he wanted. “You helped. We thought the bond was trapping my true form, and that’s why it had to be undone.”
Azaiah shook his head. “No. It’s not trapping you, it’s freeing you. You always say you’re not really a dragon, but a storm. And, though I would not call your wizardwild, there is a storm in him, too. I think that’s what drew you together. Be what you truly are, and I think you will find your dragon again, brother.”
He supposed that made some sense. Thinking of himself as a shipwreck was infuriating, but truly, whathadhe done since drawing the islands of Diabolos from the fires of Pandemonium and the seafloor? Not a dragon as much as a piece of driftwood. “If I don’t make this bond with him—”
Azaiah held his hands up. “You can’t force it. Trust me. It won’t work. I hated every moment I was separated from Nyx, but… we came together when it was right.”
“Try telling you that eight hundred years ago.”