( There's a grim sort of humour he feels, marrow deep, hearing that voice, the heat and strength and emotion of the man at his back. So few are as intensely contained and overflowing as his husband; a thought that slides past not long after it occurs.

The grimness does not fade. )

Away. Because if I did not, they would reap the living, and this arena would become a battle the likes neither of us wishes to see. My control is stronger without those Lords of Death nearby. Given time, I can send them on.

( But he ignores the man at his back then, because there is nothing he can guarantee, and he won't lie about it: this is a time for managing disasters, and it isn't resentful energies broiling beneath them, it is bodies and black water and chaos and everything that will be made worse, if the new dead rend and kill as extension for their own endless confusion, their own trauma, their too recent pain.

It's unfair. Like it often is. )