Thanatos wavered, biting his tongue. He had a great deal of experience among mortals—but Death brought out great and terrible things in people, and that thing was not usually love.
He knew love—his own love, the only kind that a primordial personification of death was capable of. He knew that almost everyone he cared for would one day cross the river Styx by his hand, even the gods. Children grew up, and they were capable of so many things. A god in a fit of pique could doom an entire generation of humans. A human could, if given enough time and effort, bring about the downfall of a god. Thanatos stood as a witness to all such things, as was his duty.
But still, he knew love. He loved his brother. He loved Mother Nyx, the vast darkness from which he had been formed, though the goddess ha
