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When Nox stole him,
Chase was eighteen.
Eighteen was an age for mortals.
An age of unfinished thoughts.
An age where people insisted they knew themselves.
An age where they were usually wrong.
Now he was nearing twenty-five.
The age scholars claimed the mind finally settled into itself.
The age where roads stopped splitting endlessly.
The age where a person could finally look in a mirror and recognize who stared back.
Unfortunately,
Chase was no longer certain he was becoming a person.
He might be becoming a god.
Again.
It didn't happen all at once.
There was no lightning.
No divine proclamation.
No chorus of heavenly voices.
Just change.
Slow.
Persistent.
Impossible to ignore.
Sometimes he could feel it beneath his skin.
Not pain.
Not exactly.
A sensation without a proper mortal word.
If he was forced to describe it, he would compare it to bees.
Thousands of them.
Tiny workers crawling through his veins.
Patient.
Methodical.
Eating what he had been.
Building something new from the remains.
Cell by cell.
Memory by memory.
The red blood of a mortal gradually surrendering.
Giving way to ichor.
Golden.
Immortal.
Ancient.
He imagined the bees carrying pieces of him away.
A mortal heartbeat.
A mortal weakness.
A mortal limit.
Replacing them with things that belonged to gods.
And that frightened him.
Not because he hated gods.
He lived with one.
Loved one.
Shared a bed with one.
But because Chase remembered the last time.
Remembered becoming useful.
Remembered becoming wanted.
Remembered becoming less a person and more an idea.
A muse.
An inspiration.
A beautiful thing for others to possess.
Sometimes he would lie awake at night and count his heartbeat.
Still there.
Still human.
Still his.
Then there were nights when he swore he heard something else beneath it.
A second rhythm.
Older.
Golden.
Waiting.
Growing.
The bees working.
Always working.
Until one evening he cut his finger while tending roses.
A tiny wound.
Nothing dramatic.
Yet for a brief moment,
before red appeared,
he saw gold.
Just a glimmer.
Just a flash.
Gone almost immediately.
But he saw it.
And he sat there among the flowers,
staring at his hand.
Twenty-five.
Not fully mortal.
Not fully divine.
Caught between two versions of himself.
The bees continued their work.
Patient as eternity.
And somewhere inside his changing body,
ichor bloomed like honey filling an empty hive.
Waiting for the day it would finally call him home.
Or perhaps,
the day he would choose what home meant for himself.
Chase wandered the Palace of Thieves alone.
Nox was gone.
Not forever.
Just away.
Stealing something.
Rescuing something.
With Nox it was often difficult to tell the difference.
The palace was quiet.
Filled with treasures.
Every hallway contained something lost.
A crown that no kingdom claimed anymore.
A tapestry woven in a language nobody could read.
Statues from cities erased by war.
Paintings salvaged from burning museums.
Entire rooms dedicated to things history had misplaced.
Chase loved them.
That was the problem.
He loved them.
He would stop in front of a forgotten vase and wonder who had made it.
He would find himself staring at a ruined manuscript and imagining the hands that once turned its pages.
Sometimes he sat for hours in the palace gardens while stolen monuments shifted around him.
Admiring them.
Admiring the beauty.
Admiring the craftsmanship.
Admiring the stories trapped inside them.
And every time he caught himself doing it, something uncomfortable settled in his chest.
Because admiration was complicated.
Admiration was dangerous.
At least for him.
As a god, admiration had never felt like kindness.
It had felt like hunger.
People admired his face.
Admired his voice.
Admired the way he inspired them.
Admired him so much that eventually they stopped seeing him.
The Muse became more important than the person.
The idea became more important than Chase.
He remembered worshippers speaking about him as though he weren't standing right there.
Remembered artists discussing the curve of his smile the same way they discussed the curve of a statue.
Remembered feeling less human with every compliment.
Less real.
More owned.
And now here he was.
Standing in a palace full of beautiful things.
Admiring them.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
Chase paused before a painting.
Not one of his own portraits.
Something older.
A landscape from a civilization long vanished.
The brushwork was extraordinary.
The colors still vibrant despite centuries.
"It's beautiful."
The words escaped before he could stop them.
Immediately he felt guilty.
As though he had done something wrong.
As though admiration itself had become poisoned.
Chase frowned.
The painting remained silent.
It demanded nothing.
Expected nothing.
Wanted nothing from him.
The realization struck slowly.
A painting did not care whether it was admired.
A crown did not ask for devotion.
A tapestry did not demand pieces of his soul.
The difference wasn't admiration.
The difference was entitlement.
Chase sank onto a nearby bench.
The thought lingered.
When people admired Nox's treasures, they admired what had been created.
Not what could be taken.
Not what was owed.
The treasures weren't expected to keep giving.
To keep smiling.
To keep inspiring.
A soft laugh escaped him.
Perhaps that was why Nox collected lost things.
The God of Thieves never asked his treasures to become anything else.
He simply kept them.
Protected them.
Remembered them.
Even the stars in their bedroom.
Dead stars.
Forgotten stars.
Double-dead stars.
Nox loved things after the world had stopped demanding anything from them.
The thought made Chase smile.
Because for all of Nox's possessiveness, for all his flaws, for all the ways he referred to Chase as mine
Nox never asked him to be a muse.
Never asked him to inspire.
Never asked him to become useful.
Only Chase.
Just Chase.
The man wandering stolen hallways.
The man drinking tea in the afternoons.
The man who occasionally ruined gardens.
The man who was slowly becoming a god again and wasn't sure how he felt about it.
Outside, the palace shifted.
A stolen city became a stolen forest.
A forgotten monument disappeared from one courtyard and appeared in another.
The treasures endured.
And Chase sat among them, wondering if perhaps admiration wasn't the enemy after all.
Perhaps the enemy had always been the belief that admiration entitled someone to ownership.
A thing could be beautiful without belonging to the people who admired it.
A person could be loved without becoming public property.
The thought felt strangely comforting.
So Chase remained there a little longer.
Admiring the painting.
And for once, allowing himself to do so without guilt.
As Chase grew closer to godhood, the palace changed around him.
Not dramatically.
Subtly.
Forgotten songs echoed through empty hallways.
The stars in the bedroom seemed brighter.
Sometimes Chase would wake knowing the name of a city that had been dust for three thousand years.
Sometimes he would speak a word and realize nobody alive had spoken it for centuries.
The returning divinity frightened him.
The returning memories frightened him more.
Which was why he was deeply suspicious when Nox announced:
"We should get married."
Chase stared over the rim of his teacup.
"We are married."
"We never had a ceremony."
"We absolutely had a ceremony."
"There was cake."
"That does not make it a ceremony."
"There were witnesses."
"The witnesses were stolen kings."
"They count."
"They absolutely do not."
Nox looked offended.
For approximately three seconds.
Then he smiled.
A dangerous smile.
The sort Chase had learned to fear.
Several days later he discovered why.
The ceremony took place in the palace gardens.
Or rather, every garden the palace had ever stolen.
Forgotten orchards.
Lost temple courtyards.
Ruined royal parks.
All woven together beneath a sky full of double-dead stars.
No guests.
No priests.
No audience.
Just Nox and Chase.
The way Chase preferred.
The way Nox secretly preferred too.
Chase arrived expecting vows.
Instead Nox began speaking.
The first language was unfamiliar.
The second was worse.
The third sounded like music played underwater.
"Nox."
The God of Thieves continued.
"Nox."
Still speaking.
"Nox!"
Finally he stopped.
"What?"
"What are you saying?"
Nox blinked.
Then looked genuinely surprised.
"The vows."
"Those are vows?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand any of them."
Nox looked around.
As though seeking confirmation from the universe.
Then pointed out:
"Nobody understands them."
Chase folded his arms.
"That isn't helping."
The thief smiled.
"It helps me."
Unfortunately that was probably true.
Chase listened again.
The language flowed strangely.
Beautifully.
Like water over ancient stone.
A language worn smooth by centuries.
Then another followed.
And another.
And another.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds perhaps.
The realization arrived slowly.
Then all at once.
These weren't random languages.
They were dead.
Every single one.
Languages with no living speakers.
Languages lost to conquest.
To time.
To famine.
To war.
Languages whose final words had vanished thousands of years ago.
Chase stared.
"Nox."
The God of Thieves finally stopped.
"What?"
"These are dead languages."
A soft smile appeared on Nox's face.
Not mischievous.
Not teasing.
Something gentler.
"Yes."
The answer carried no shame.
No apology.
Only certainty.
Chase looked around.
The stolen gardens.
The forgotten stars.
The lost cities visible beyond the palace walls.
Suddenly it made sense.
Of course Nox would use dead languages.
The God of Thieves collected lost things.
Protected lost things.
Remembered lost things.
Nox reached for his hand.
Carefully.
The way he always did.
As though Chase might disappear if held too tightly.
"They deserved to be spoken again."
The words settled softly between them.
"A language dies when nobody remembers it."
Nox's thumb brushed across Chase's knuckles.
"So I remembered."
Chase felt something tighten painfully in his chest.
Because the vows had never been for the gods.
Or for tradition.
Or for legality.
Nox had spoken wedding vows in languages the world had forgotten.
Simply so they could exist once more.
One final time.
For a moment Chase couldn't speak.
The stars above them shimmered.
Dead stars.
Double-dead stars.
Names nobody remembered.
Languages nobody spoke.
Treasures nobody wanted.
And Nox loved them all with the same stubborn devotion.
Finally Chase laughed.
A little helplessly.
"A normal person would've used flowers."
"I stole those too."
"A normal person would've written a poem."
"I stole several."
"A normal person would've learned one language."
Nox considered that.
Then shrugged.
"I am not a normal person."
"No."
Chase squeezed his hand.
"You really aren't."
The God of Thieves smiled.
And beneath a sky filled with things history had abandoned, Chase thought that perhaps nobody understood the value of being remembered better than the man who refused to let anything be forgotten.
Nox kissed Chase and Chase felt it was amazing to have Nox's tongue inside his mouth
This tongue that spoke dead languages
This tongue that resurrected them.
"How can you love me," Chase asked Nox.
"What do you mean?" Nox gently asked Chase.
"I gave my body to other men," Chase told Nox. "Mortal men, but they drew me nude. I didn’t think it was weird but mortals...nudity is different and they made me feel disgusting for trusting them. "
"Chase,"
"You've collected every potrait done of me," Chase reminded Nox. "How can you still love me after that? Knowing every piece of me has already been exploited."
Nox kissed Chase
"You are my husband," Nox reminded Chase. "I don't care who've seen you nude. I don't care who've you've been with I just care that you are safe now."
"I want to be safe," Chase told Nox. "With you."
"Then you have me forever," Nox told Chase.
"I don't want to be a Gd," Chase told Nox.
"You'll be a different God," Nox comforted Chase. An entirely different God." Nox told Chase.
It came to passed that shortly after his twenty- fifth birthday
Chase did become a new god.
A god to matched the god of thieves.
The god of restoration