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I might have been immortal, but even I shuddered when Eilam loomed over my shoulder. “Yarin had an excuse but, if I remember correctly, I owe you nothing.”
“Aside from an apology.” Eilam stripped from a threadbare tunic that must have been centuries old, slipped into the water, and tilted his head back to soak his eerily white hair. “You stole the mortal woman from underneath me, turning her final breath into one of many more to come.”
My muscles tightened. “What is it to you?”
“There ought to be—”
“Balance!” Yarin emerged from the corridor with the gutted corpse of a man shuffling beside him, wedging a sigh from me. “How blessed I am to arrive at such time where I can listen to Eilam’s awe-inspiring lecture on balance. On my word, it gets more exciting with each century he repeats… Oh, are we bathing? I love to bathe!”
My temples already ached at his grinding chatter, but they pounded when he slipped out of his boots. “I do not recall inviting either of you.”
Eilam stared at how pearls of water ran down his arm, my brother so wholly unaccustomed to his form, something so simple as water running down his skin eluded him. “Continue to tip the balance, Enosh, and I shall not be so lenient a second time.”
My molars ground together. “Are you threatening my wife?”
“Enosh!” Yarin gave an exasperated gasp. “I believe he just threatened yourwife.”
“Death threatens your wife.” Eilam gave a lazy shrug. “She is only mortal, after all. Nothing but flesh and thought and breath. Insignificant.”
I gripped his hair and pushed his head underwater, letting the splash of droplets mingle with Yarin’s chortle. Bracing against the way Eilam struggled and fought, I hooked a leg around his, ripping him off balance, only to watch my brother drown. As equal as we were in strength, Eilam had the dexterous development of a child.
Only when he expelled his final breath and drifted seemingly lifeless on the surface did I let go. “Why are you here? Again?”
Yarin huffed. “Is that a way to welcome your favorite brother?”
“A thoroughly high-handed statement.”
“Considering that Eilam is currently drifting on the water, thinking he’s dead where he cannot die, I presume, gives me some leeway for said statement.” He slipped into the water uninvited, but at least he gestured for the corpse to stay back. “In any case, look what happened to my new toy.”
I didn’t so much see the man’s guts dangling from a gaping wound in his belly, but sense how it bounced and twisted with every shift in his balance. “You broke it.”
“I broke it,” he said, his tone void of any culpability over it. “Luckily, I happen to have a brother who can fix—”
“No.”
“—and I happen to know that I am his favorite, so he would never deny me this small favor.”
“No.”
“Your wife is quite right… What a bastard you are,” he said and leaned his head back against the edge, expelling a breath toward the gray stalactites looming above. “Let me tell you, Enosh, I am no man of casual infatuations, but I have grown quite fond of this one ever since Airensty.”
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.” Yarintsked.“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… killingeverythingthat 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.”
