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The corpse bowed, letting his bowels smack against his naked kneecaps. “Thank you, Master.”
“Yes, yes, yes, now hush your mouth and let the gods talk.” Yarin swatted the air until the man stepped back. “Please make him pretty again.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the corpse, naked aside from the thin gold chains decorating his cock. “Whatever do you want with this man?”
Yarin chuckled. “Brother, a god ought to have a preference, and mine is… none. I have no preference. You should try it some—”
Eilam kicked his legs and flailed his arms, heaving in a breath as he wiped his hair from his face, his pitch-black eyes boring into me. “You dare do this to my form?”
“Rude.” Yarin tsked. “Everyone keeps interrupting.”
“Mortals call this drowning,” I said. “One of the better ways to die from my experience, since I am the one bound to my form and all the pain it can endure. Come near my wife, and I shall call upon every bone in the ground until the earth shakes and the land cracks once more, raising an army that will raze kingdoms, continents, the entire world… killing everything that breathes.”
Eilam coughed up a final swell of water, his arms shaky from centuries of avoiding his form. “My brothers’ fondness for mortal bodies confounds me greatly.”
“Ah, yes, spoken like a true virgin who doesn’t know where to put his cock, mostly because he has yet to figure out just where it hangs.” Yarin tapped my shoulder, guiding my attention back to the corpse. “Here is a fantastic proposal from your favorite brother… na, na, na! Hear me out! Fix him, and I shall make your wife love you.”
My molars ground together until my jaws ached. “Why would I want that?”
“Because you’re half enamored with her already,” he whispered, letting my spine adopt the stiffness of the rock behind me. “So unpredictable. Love. If you do not stir it one way, it may just stumble another. Ah, how Njala’s soul called out his name when it came to me… Joah. Joah! Oh, where is my beloved Joah?”
The name pounded inside my skull like a never-ending echo, heating the blood in my veins until sweat dampened my forehead. “Do you have a wish to drown as well?”
“Who would have thought that the very man who stole her away from you would gain her heart and affection during those months you searched for her? Chased her into her death, really. So unwilling was she to return to you, the father of the child growing in her belly, she instead chose to die at Joah’s blade. Tragic. Oh, so… tragic.”
I pushed down the rage, the bone-deep fury that caused the stalactites above to vibrate. Yes, a tragedy, how my companion had sworn me her love from the sweetest of lips… wicked, wayward mortal turning a god into a fool.
But it would not happen a second time.
I shook my head. “I have no need for more illusions.”
“You are so difficult to negotiate with,” Yarin said. “Very well, no illusions. New offer. Fix him, and I will not make your wife love you. Instead, I shall give you… let’s say… fifteen words.”
“Fifteen words?”
“To relay to your wife, forged to penetrate her in a place that might take you centuries to reach, if ever. Do not send a spike of bone through me for saying this, beloved brother, but your understanding of a woman’s heart equals Eilam’s ability to find his genitals.”
His offer roused a flutter around my organs. Hmm, fifteen words to reach into her soul, stoking affection for me. She would adore me; she would love me.
That damn muscle would give.
Against the hairs rising along my arm, I fixed the corpse with a mere thought. “Fifteen words.”
“Plus, one of advice, because you are truly my favorite of brothers,” Yarin said. “Deliver those words during an act of kindness, giving her something she desires. It will touch her so deeply. And if it fails…? Well, you can always slit her throat and replace her with another mortal, like you have done before.”
I turned my head and stared at him. “The mortal Joah Mertok slit Njala’s throat.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” he said with a chuckle. “I just never figured out if he was alive when he did it, or if he was already dead.”