The nameless god felt his throat clog with tears. How unbelievably sad, he thought. He didn’t believe the Evil god, not for a second. Fruit was fruit, and he was himself. There was nothing poisonous about him. He didn’t understand why the Evil god thought so low of himself.

But still. He could not refuse to leave, in fear of angering the Evil god, but neither could he abandon him.

“I will return,” he said at last. “I don’t care if I have to travel through that forest a hundred times, a thousand times. I will return every day until you no longer want to get rid of me.”

The Evil god just inclined his head in acknowledgment, silently waiting for the nameless god to leave. So with a sigh, the nameless god took a deep breath and jumped into the pool.

It was like jumping in mud, thick and slimy, and it closed over the nameless god’s head like a solid sheet of ice, forcing him to go down, down, for what felt like ages. And just when his lungs started screaming for air, his flailing legs abruptly met empty air, and he slid out onto soft, bright green grass.

The meadow. He’d landed in the meadow between paradise and the venomous forest, surrounded by untamed grass, wildflowers, and buzzing bees. He took deep, gasping breaths, feeling like a fist had closed around his lungs. And just as the Evil god said, he felt incredibly weak. Dizzy, he tilted onto his side, inhaling the sweet scent of the flowers around him, listening to the gentle breeze ruffling the grass. The familiarity of it made his heart clench in his chest, not because he had missed it, but because the Evil god would never experience this. Would never be able to lay in the grass without being poisoned or cut or eaten.

When he returned to paradise, his family converged on him like a pack of hyenas, frantic, wondering if he’d been hurt, how he’d escaped from the clutches of the Evil god, and wanting to know how the Evil god had lured their sweet sibling into his domain in the first place.

The nameless god looked at his brother and sisters, listened to them cursing the Evil god, and felt sick. Angry enough to burn up inside, he yelled at them, telling them that he loved the Evil god, and that he would keep seeing him until the Evil god returned his feelings.

Stunned, his siblings went quiet. Nothing more was said on the matter, but the nameless god could feel their disapproval like spiderwebs on his skin. Irritating, but easily brushed aside, nonetheless.

The nameless god was true to his word. He returned to the Evil god the next day. Of course, he learned his lesson after the first time. He brought his sword with him, as well as food, water, and a gift he’d picked out just for the Evil god. He managed to find the palace without quite as many wounds.

The Evil god met him at the front gates of the palace, having called off one of his Sublime Ones before it could rip the nameless god to pieces.

The Evil god spoke first, a curl to his lip. “You’re back.”

“I’m back. I said I would be. And look, I’ve brought you something.”

He pulled the gift out of his pack, handing it to the Evil god with his head bowed, nervous now that he was being watched by those magnificent red eyes.

In the nameless god’s hands was a crudely made clay pot about as wide around as a dinner plate, and three hands tall. The pot was filled to the brim with fresh, dark soil.

“You said only poisonous things grow in the soil here. So I brought you soil from paradise and some seeds you can choose from. It is yours to do with as you wish.”

The nameless god waited with his head down but didn’t hear a peep from the Evil god. In fact, it didn’t even sound like the Evil god was breathing. Before the nameless god could gather the courage to look up, slender, pale hands came up to rest over his own on the clay pot. The nameless god trembled at the touch. The Evil god had avoided touching him as much as possible, even while dressing his wounds. This was the first time the Evil god had touched him without any obvious purpose.

His hands were rough. Calloused from a life struggling to survive in a hostile environment, and cold, but the nameless god was left breathless.

He looked up, slowly, and what he saw made his heart race. It was at that moment, that the nameless god decided he would have the Evil god, no matter what.

For the first time in his life, the Evil god was smiling.

The smile was small, barely noticeable, just a tilt of the lips, a hint of snow-white teeth, and curved eyebrows. The Evil god had no idea he was doing it, and it was unbelievably gorgeous.

That was where the relationship between the Evil god and the nameless god truly began.

The nameless god returned to the Evil god every day, true to his word. Each time, he brought a new gift. He created new plants and gave them to the Evil god in their own crude clay pots for the Evil god to tend. He brought new food the Evil god had never been able to taste, sweet wines, and books. One day, he even brought two children to the Evil god’s palace.

“This is Peace and this is Wisdom,” he said that day, one hand on each child’s head. “I created them. I hope to leave them in your care, so that you may not be so lonely by yourself in this palace.”

The children looked to be about eight years old, but had only been created a few days ago. They looked at everything around them with utter fascination, including the Evil god, who hesitated to accept this gift, unlike the previous ones.

“Would they not be better off with you?” the Evil god had asked. “Children should not grow up in this place.”

“You did.”

“…I did not have a choice. Peace and Wisdom should grow up with you and your family, where they are safe. I will not be able to protect them.”

The nameless god would not hear anymore. He bent and whispered something to the children, who brightened and immediately ran to the Evil god, throwing their tiny arms around him in a hug. Dumbfounded, the Evil god froze, arms held out as if afraid of touching them.

“It seems as though they like you. I think they would rather stay here.”

Reluctantly, the Evil god accepted this gift too.

Eventually, however, the nameless god’s visits were noticed by more than just his siblings, who tried everything they could to keep the nameless god home, with no success. They tied him up, knocked him out, laid traps for him in the meadow, but nothing kept him down for very long. Their desperation, and the nameless god’s long disappearances, drew attention from the highest authority in paradise.

Even gods had a hierarchy, and the god that had been chosen to lead the others was well-suited to his position. The god of Light and Creation – the exact opposite of the Evil god, and the one who had ordered for the Evil god to be removed from paradise when he first arrived.

The Light god caught on to what the nameless god was doing and went to the Evil god to tell him to break things off with the nameless god.

He appeared outside the gates of the Evil god’s palace, completely unscathed from the journey through the forest. The Sublime Ones cowered away from him, as though he were simply too bright to look at. Sensing his presence, the Evil god went out to meet him.

“Do not let him come back,” the Light god warned. “He has no business here.”

The Evil god was impassive…on the surface. But the Light god didn’t miss how the Evil god’s hands curled into fists at his sides, nails digging into his palms.

“I cannot stop him. If he wants to come, he will come. If you don’t want him here, then you should be the one to leash him, not I.”

The Light god shook his head slowly. “Love is more powerful than any restraint I could find. You must make him stop loving you.”

“And how exactly should I do that?” the Evil god scoffed, crossing his arms. “I do not control his heart.”

The Light god was silent for a moment, contemplating the devastatingly beautiful god before him. “Then you do not know what love is,” he said slowly. “You have his heart in your hand, bleeding and unprotected. I’m telling you to give it back to him, before it’s too late.”

The Evil god frowned. “Too late for what?”

“Your very presence is a poison. Maybe it won’t be today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, but eventually, you will corrupt him beyond saving. Let him go before he is lost to us forever.”

The Evil god was silent for a long time, lips tight, eyes narrowed. He retreated back into his palace without a word, leaving the Light god to stand there, hoping he would be eaten by a plant.

Half a year passed. The nameless god continued to visit the Evil god without fail. When he was home in paradise, the Evil god is all he would talk about, and he became easily depressed or enraged when he went too long without seeing the Evil god. His family had long since stopped trying to keep him from going, but they were getting more and more worried. The nameless god was changing. He was no longer the sweet younger brother they all loved dearly. He was obsessive, irritable, and cold.

And then, one day in the middle of winter, the nameless god went missing. He usually left very early in the morning to visit the Evil god, returning very late at night. But this time, he stayed out all night. His siblings immediately panicked, gathering together to send a party into the forest to get him back.

Except that he returned to them the next morning. Dead.

The Evil god appeared in the meadow, holding the nameless god’s corpse. It was still and stiff, a gaping open wound in his chest where his heart had once been.

The Evil god slowly set the nameless god down in the snow-covered grass, expression blank. There was a smear of blood across his cheekbone, his eyes empty.

The Light god was summoned from his own palace, appearing in the meadow before the Evil god, and the corpse of the nameless god. He did not sob or scream, as the nameless god’s siblings were doing. He simply looked down at the body for a moment in silence before turning his sorrowful gaze to the Evil god.

“What happened?” the Light god asked, voice low and rough.

The Evil god tilted his head, like a crow. “He became corrupted. I eliminated him.”

He took a step back toward the venomous forest, ignoring the outraged screams of the nameless god’s siblings, the threats they hurled at him, the insults. The Light god watched him but made no move to stop him.

“This didn’t have to happen,” the Light god murmured finally. “There were other ways.”

The Evil god shook his head, taking another step back. “There weren’t.”

And before any of the other gods could think to attack the Evil god for what he’d done, the Evil god turned and strode back into the venomous forest he called home, never once looking back at the corpse.

Once upon a time, a god with no name fell in love with the god of Evil, Darkness, and Death.

He was the last one to make such a mistake.