I push myself onto my feet to get a better look at them.
“What are you doing?” the horseman asks, beginning to rise as well.
I place a hand on his shoulder to keep him sitting. “I’m looking at your injuries.” Lightly I trace around one arrow’s entry point, the surrounding feathers congealed with blood.
“Would you like me to remove these?” I ask.
Thanatos goes still at the offer. Finally, he glances over his shoulder at me. “Is that an honest offer?”
I hold his gaze. He’s so used to my tricks and the pain I inflict, that I can tell this throws him.
Slowly, I nod. “It is.”
Thanatos stares at me for a bit longer, then faces forward, draping his arms over his knees.
“Then yes,” he says. “I’d … like that.”
He stays still, his face turned away from me. I continue to study the arrows piercing his wings, feeling around them a little before I start. Death’s feathers make his wings look thicker than they really are, but the flesh itself is no more than a thin membrane.
Since that is the case, the easiest thing would simply be to pull the arrows all the way through. I grab the first arrowhead. Something about my grip has Death’s wings hiking up.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he says, turning his head a little towards me.
Slowly, I pull the arrow out through the hole it made in his skin. He doesn’t react to the sensation, though I can’t imagine it’s pleasant.
“I do, though,” I insist, giving the projectile one final tug to force the back end of it through. “I wouldn’t be pulling arrows out of you if you hadn’t agreed to my plan.”
It’s quiet for a few long seconds.
“You have an exceptional heart, Lazarus,” he finally says. “You shouldn’t apologize for it.”
I stare at the back of Death’s head, swallowing down the strange mixture of emotions rising in me. I see the best in humans, and he sees the best in me, and I’m not sure whether we’re both fools for it.
It’s intimate work, removing the arrows. Death’s wings jerk when I jostle the projectiles, so I’ve taken to smoothing my hand over his feathers. More than once I’ve heard the horseman sigh out a breath; he hasn’t said it, but I think those touches are soothing to him.
“What is it like, having wings?” I ask as I lift one to get at a trickier arrow. I watch in fascination as Death’s primary feathers splay out.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” he says. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”
I pull the arrow out as fast as I dare, making sure to keep my hand steady, even when his flesh catches on the projectile’s fletching.
It grows quiet again as I concentrate on my work, my hands slick with the horseman’s blood. I’m down to the final wound.
“Why did you do it?” Thanatos asks out of the blue.
“Do what?” I ask distractedly.
“You jumped in front of an arrow meant for me.”
Now I pause. Death is looking straight ahead, but I can sense his entire focus is on me.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“Why?”
Because this is only supposed to be one-sided.
I pull this last arrow out a little too harshly.
“Because I don’t,” I say, tossing the projectile aside. A pile of bloody arrows now litter the road. “I’m all done.”
Thanatos stands, opening and closing his wings as though to test them. He turns to face me, and I can practically feel his dark power pressing down on me.
“Remember our game last night?” he says. “Tell me your unguarded truths.”
“That was your game,” I tell him, “and we’re not playing it anymore.”
Death takes a step closer to me, his blood dripping from his wings. “Why did you take an arrow meant for me?” he asks again. “You know I can’t die.”
“I can’t either,” I bite back.
“Lazarus.” He says my name like he’s calling to my very essence.
I sigh. I’m too weak to bicker and too tired to care anymore. The world is ending. What do my feelings matter?
“I don’t know,” I say. “Truly, I don’t. I saw that arrow coming and all I knew was that I’d rather get hurt than watch you suffer.”
Thanatos rears back a little, his eyes scouring my face, presumably to look for the lie. When he doesn’t find it, he looks … he looks very pleased by my words, though I’m more than a little uneasy.