Janos Rivel #2
“Your crown is the Bull. He kills his mother because he knows she’s done wrong in birthing him, even if she is still his mother.
He’s brutal in his morals. That is the state of your mind.
Your gut card is the King o’ Ravens. He’s…
” Janos felt silly explaining the card to the man it was based on, but he continued.
“He’s a leader. He’s intelligent and prepared, but to a foolish extent.
He thinks he can plan for a future out of his hands. ”
“Valos alive,” Urias muttered, tugging at his hair nervously. “How the hell does this stuff work?”
“Spirits know all,” Janos said with a shrug, but he couldn’t ignore that middle card.
He pushed it to Urias. “Your chest is the Three-Faced Beast, though. It’s a card of gluttony.
It usually means you’re chasing something that is destructive but craving it anyway.
It’s poisoning your ability to be a leader, and it’s damaging your morals,” he explained.
Urias’s face dropped bit by bit until it was drawn in horror. Then he grabbed the carafe of wine, filled his glass to the top, and guzzled the whole thing. Janos could sympathize.
“So, I’m fucked?” Urias asked.
Janos’s stomach twisted with guilt. “No.” Well… “Well, not exactly fucked. This is a situation you’ll have to pass through, but you choose how you confront it. You don’t have to let yourself be corrupted by whatever it is tempting you.”
Urias’s brow perked and he sat his chin on his knee, then shook his head. “What did you get last time you pulled these?”
Janos didn’t judge him for changing the subject. “The Maiden, the Viper, and the King o’ Ravens,” he said. “I’ll be faced with the opportunity to lie my way into something, and I’ll have to reason through it with all my senses or find myself useless against the machinations of others.”
“Ah.” Urias nodded. “These cards don’t know the word gentle, do they?” He seemed genuinely worried.
It was selfish of him, but Janos was amazed that he took it seriously.
While Janos asked these cards for guidance at his every turn, he knew most Micreans thought they were backwoods bullshit.
But Urias was so bothered by what they told him.
It made Janos feel strangely seen. Maybe he was just so used to having to prostrate himself to others’ gods that it felt good to have someone shaking at the feet of his.
“This set doesn’t, no. They were my mother’s. She was gentle when they refused to be,” Janos said, gathering the cards. He put them back in order, from eldest to youngest Wraith. “Say goodbye?”
Urias wrinkled his nose. “Goodbye, you terrifying creatures.”
Janos chuckled as he placed the cards back in their box and set them aside.
With the catastrophizing over, Janos was left once again to stare off into Urias’s eyes. They were obscene in the firelight, dark as obsidian and glinting. He cursed his inexperience. Perhaps if he’d run through all the stablehands and squires at home, he’d be better defended against Urias now.
The Wraith sighed and pursed his lips. He wasn’t ogling Janos with virginal lust, though. His throat bobbed. “You look like Omniel Asterou,” he rasped.
Janos’s chest stung. “I’ve heard that.” And hated hearing it, actually.
“But I look like my mother. She had my hair and my eyes. My father even says we sound the same.” Lukas would often throw his whiskey glasses across the room as he counted up all the traits Janos had stolen from Pomena—her hair, her eyes, her voice.
There was nothing valuable in Janos, he’d said, except the parts he looted from her.
Urias snorted. “Normally, someone would take that as a compliment.”
“I don’t really care for Asterou men,” Janos said with a shrug, finally tearing his eyes from Urias back to his mother’s Wraith-ska.
“Kak-sov and all.” Urias straightened at the title.
Now, Janos’s home was uncreatively called the Lake, but his Waldov ancestors called it Kak Un-sov, his people the Jas Kak Un-sov.
Decades of the colonizers’ tongue had polluted his people’s title to Kak-sov, often further bastardized to Cock-sov by shit-for-brains Micreans.
“Not alone in that,” Urias said. “Wraith and all.”
For a second, the men stared at each other. Janos drank, but the wine passed over his tongue without even leaving a taste. He watched the way Urias’s throat moved with his swallows, and couldn’t help but notice the tiny, inflamed script of the will on his neck.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Not now, no,” Urias said, taking another drink. “A cut is a cut. Valos, a cut is nothing when you’re old enough.”
“So, if you’re so old, are you a spirit?” Janos asked, his stomach twisting. Maybe Wraith-ska weren’t his only beliefs, but they were his.
Urias didn’t laugh. He gave Janos an apologetic smile. “I fear I’m just an old man who speaks to birds.”
Janos sighed. Some part of him was pleased that Urias was just a man. It felt sacrilegious to lust after one of his minor deities.
“Don’t look so pleased!” Urias said, mock offended. “What if I were some god?”
“Then I’d learn to pray. You’d have to teach me.” Janos grinned as Urias’s face went red. “How old are you anyway, old man?”
“Are you shaming me for my age?”
“No. I simply want to know the lifespan of a not-god.”
Urias rolled his eyes and leaned back. No one should look so enrapturing in a plain shirt and pants. “One hundred and forty-four.”
Janos choked on his wine. “Bullshit.”
“Yes, living this long tends to feel like bullshit.” Urias shrugged. He looked older than Janos, but nearly a century and a half?
Urias had seen Janos’s people thrive under Waldov control, then be ripped from their motherland’s hands.
He’d watched Omniel Asterou break Janos’s grandfather over his knee, and seen Janos’s uncle rebel.
He’d seen Lukas’s betrayal, too. All of Janos’s history, Urias had witnessed.
It was enough to have his breath gusting out.
“You’re making me feel old.” Urias blushed, looking away. “How old are you?”
“Thirty.” Urias had lived almost five of Janos’s lives so far.
“And almost a king. Impressive for your age.”
It was teasing, but Janos liked being teased in that accent. “What were you doing when you were thirty?” he asked.
Urias thought back, tapping a finger on his lip. “Slitting a man’s throat, I think. Then again, I’m so old, my memory is half gone.”
Janos’s chest hollowed out at the memory of doing just the same. He forced a smile.
“Is that funny, Prince? You dare laugh at an elder?”
“Just Janos is fine, Urias.” Janos didn’t mean for his voice to be so low or for his eyes to find the open button of Urias’s shirt.
He had no idea what he was doing, just that the twist in his gut told him to keep doing it.
“And you don’t count as old. You’re… fermented, like wine. Aged in a good way.”
Urias stared at him extra-hard, a slow smile curling his lips. “I’m like wine,” he said, holding out his glass. “Then I suppose you’re grape juice?”
Janos clinked their glasses, even as he cocked his head in confusion.
“Sweet,” Urias said, as their glasses touched.
Janos’s heart flipped. Urias wanted him, maybe.
Janos wanted Urias. They’d known each other for ten minutes.
People had ravaged each other in less. Was that what Janos wanted?
Ravaging? Or to sit here all night, draining a carafe of wine with an old man who spoke to birds?
Who respected his culture, even if it was bastardized?
Who called him sweet? Janos hadn’t been known as sweet in decades. He hadn’t been sweet in decades.
Before Janos could ask if they could do this forever, Urias drained his glass and stood. “You’ll need your sleep. The first trial is three days out.”
It was a bucket of ice to the face. Urias pushed a hand through his hair, looking anywhere but at Janos. Was it this face? This chin, these cheeks, and this head of hair—Omniel Asterou, no matter who he said he was. Was that blocking Urias from getting any closer?
Why did that make Janos hate the Asterou bastard more?
“You’re right, my aunt is tricky. Good to get a rest in before she swindles me,” Janos said, trying to lighten the conversation.
Urias smiled as Janos rose to his feet. “At least she’s your aunt.”
“I would hate to see what she does to a second cousin.”
Urias scoffed and closed his eyes. His smile warmed his face again, and Janos’s stomach gave another flip. He wondered if he could carve himself from the man he wore, be someone Urias could look at for more than a few minutes.
“Goodnight, Your Highness.” Urias’s voice was tight, but his eyes dropped from Janos’s for just a second. Not to his shoes, or his glass. To his lips.
“Call me Janos.” That felt like a demand, and there was nothing that screamed Omniel Asterou like a demand.
“I would like it if you did—call me Janos, I mean. It’s not like I’m noble.
” Technically, because of his family’s history of defying Omniel Asterou, he couldn’t be. And he was more than fine with that.
Urias sighed like something had loosened its grip on his lungs. He looked at Janos’s lips again. Lingered on them. “Goodnight, Janos,” he rasped.
He said the name like a prayer. Janos felt the need to answer it.