Chapter 12 #2
Sidney does this. Sidney reaches for things. The collar of Erath’s jacket. The edge of a blanket. The fabric of his shirt. Whatever is closest, whenever the world tips.
Erath blinks. Refocuses.
“That can’t happen,” August says.
“No,” Erath agrees. “It can’t.”
He tells them to keep their eyes and ears open.
To watch the Coven’s movements from the mortal side while he works the problem from below.
Vale nods, already strategizing, already running through Templar resources and patrol rotations in his head with the skill of someone who has spent centuries solving exactly this kind of problem.
August nods too, but his attention is split, and Erath can see the other thing building behind his eyes, the thing that has nothing to do with the Coven and everything to do with the name Erath dropped at the beginning of this conversation.
Erath stands. He thanks them for their time. He walks to the door.
“Erath.”
He stops. August is behind him, having followed him to the hallway, and Vale has stayed in the living room, giving them space.
The giving of space is deliberate. August wants this conversation to be private, which means whatever he’s about to say is personal, and Erath has a fairly good idea what it’s going to be about.
August’s arms are crossed. His expression is the combination of determination and discomfort that people wear when they’re about to say something they know might not be well received and have decided to say it anyway.
“Is Sidney safe?”
“He’s safer in the underworld than anywhere else right now.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” August holds his gaze.
He’s twenty-six and human and standing in front of the god of death in his own hallway in his sweatpants and he doesn’t flinch.
He has never flinched from Erath, which is something Erath has always respected about him and is currently finding inconvenient. “I’m asking if he’s safe from you.”
The silence is long. It fills the hallway and presses against the walls and Erath lets it sit there because the question deserves more than a quick answer.
It deserves more than a quick answer because the quick answer would be yes, and the truthful answer is more complicated than yes, because yes assumes that Erath knows what safe means for Sidney and he’s not certain he does. He thought he did.
“I have no intention of hurting Sidney,” he says.
“Intentions aren’t what I’m worried about.
” August’s voice is steady but his eyes are fierce.
The fierceness is not anger. It’s the intensity of someone who loves another person and is about to go to bat for them with the full knowledge that the person they’re going to bat against could unmake them with a thought.
“Sidney has a history with men who don’t know how to be gentle with him. ”
The sentence lands in Erath’s chest and doesn’t move.
“I don’t know what’s happening between you two,” August continues, because he’s not going to let the silence be the answer, “and I’m not going to pretend I can tell the god of death what to do. But he’s my best friend, and I need to know that he’s okay.”
He could say there is nothing between him and Sidney and it would be technically true and completely dishonest. He could say he has no claim on Sidney and that would be true too and equally dishonest. What is honest is that Erath’s daughter has bound them together and Erath has been falling since the night in the doorway and Sidney is sleeping in his house and taking care of his child and Erath doesn’t know what that is but he knows what he wants it to be and he knows that the wanting requires him to be something he’s not sure he is.
Gentle. He needs to be gentle. And gentle is not a thing that comes naturally to the god of death.
He is patient, yes. He is deliberate. But gentle requires understanding the landscape of another person’s damage and navigating it without adding to it, and Erath has already failed at that once and August is standing here asking him if it’s going to happen again.
“There is nothing between me and Sidney,” he says, and the words are ash in his mouth, “and there will continue to not be unless he wishes otherwise. And if he does wish otherwise, I will be careful with him.”
August stares at him. The stare has the quality of someone who has said what they needed to say and is deciding whether the answer is enough.
It’s not the answer August was looking for.
It’s not reassurance and it’s not a guarantee.
It’s the truth, spoken by someone who has been alive long enough to know that guarantees are lies and the best he can offer is the intention to do better than the men who came before him.
August’s jaw works. Then he nods, once, and the nod is acceptance without belief, trust without certainty, the best he can give and the best Erath deserves.
“Take care of him,” August says.
It’s not a request. It’s the closest thing to a threat that a human psychopomp can level at the god he works for, and Erath hears it for what it is: a man who loves his friend telling a god that the friend matters more than the god’s authority, more than the god’s power, more than the god’s eons of existence.
Sidney matters. The bartender with the smart mouth and the bruised face matters, and August is planting a flag on that hill and daring Erath to challenge it.
“I will,” Erath says.
He means it. He means it the way he means everything, completely, with the full weight of what he is behind it.
But meaning it and doing it are different things, and the distance between intention and execution is the distance in which every man who came before Erath has failed, and he is going to have to learn to close that distance or he is going to lose this before it starts.