Page 24 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

Silene knew. At some point, she had not wanted to be saved. She’d seen no point in seeking him, and hating him had been a comfort—a way for her to justify the end she had been planning. “For so long, I’ve been wanting someone to blame,” Silene finally said, free of the truth. “You were the perfect one to blame. For everything.” Her eyes squeezed shut, and she swallowed that ball of glass shards down her throat until it settled in her stomach, tearing her insides instead. “Sometimes I wonder why I couldn’t find it in me to blame my father, why couldn’t I try to kill him instead, why did I keep justifying him.”

“Because he stole something from you. Something I should have helped you find again.”

“What?”

“Hope.”

“I don’t think I wanted hope. It just seemed…easier to let him have it. My brother,” she said, smiling at the few happy memories of him she still clung to with all her might, refusing to let them be drowned by the rest. “My sweet brother, he was a dreamer. His dreams used to give him broken bones and bruises. I was never as brave as he was. It’s why I chose to be a coward in the end.”

“You were not a coward, Silene.”

“Don’t,” she choked. “Do not tell me that what I did was nothing but cowardly.”

He simply looked at her, and she’d already heard every word he did not say out loud.

She shook her head. “Don’t do that either. Don’t give me back my hope. I don’t want it.”

“I want to give you everything, Silene. Let me give you everything.”

“Why?”

“I want to bring you to a theatre full of people and for you not to fear them.”

For a moment, Silene remained frozen, letting his words wash over her. She’d never been so scared as when she asked, “Am I the girl?”

“You are.”

She walked mindlessly through the dark streets of Asador starting to quiet down with the rising violet dawn tainted by smoke and shielded by the towering buildings, his tall shadow following after her turn after turn, offering her a comfort she could not even begin to fathom—a comfort he’d been offering since long ago, without her even realising.

His jacket was again thrown around her cold shoulders, and somewhat of a twisted smile crossed her face at the chilly wind that blew across her face as she skipped over puddles. She had missed feeling the wind, too. Silene had not realised she could miss such a mundane thing. She wondered when she had ever regarded the wind in her past life. If it had meant so much to her before. Why…why was it filling her heart with so much…so much…cravings—to dance it in, to run her fingers through its chilly strands, to let her hair billow in it, to close her eyes and trust the darkness behind them.

“You can stop following me now,” she said into the wind, hoping it would carry her words to the God behind her.

“I want you again. Let me have you another day.”

Silene did not like how her heart began racing. Fear or excitement, she did not know. She’d been dead for far too long to remember exactly the difference between the two. “Beg,” she said, spinning to him. “Get on your knees and beg for it. Maybe I will consider it.”

Instead of the anger and refusal she expected to be flashed, the God was struggling to hold back a smile as he took his hands out of his pockets and went down to his knees before her.

Silene’s eyes went wide, and she looked around them as if someone would see and condemn her to many lifetimes of punishment for what she’d done, for bringing a God to his knees.

“Any other request, my great misfortune, my beautiful demise?” he asked, no longer holding back his grin. “Or can I have you for another day?”

He’d lost his godly mind. And she’d lost her voice, maybe her mind, too, staring astound at the God at her feet, looking up at her like she’d never been looked at before.

She took a few steps back, putting distance between them again and praying her heart would go silent and cold as it had been for so many years. Silene could not understand if she entirely loathed the way her existence defrosted in his presence. And that terrified her. “Request denied. You can stand now.”

His teeth dug on his bottom lip as he looked up at her. “I quite like it down here. Have come to realise why humans get on their knees to pray. Certain things do look like quite something to behold from down here.”

Her chest rose fast with breaths she didn’t know she could take, with breaths she shouldn’t be able to take in death, but somehow when she was close to him, she could breathe. She wanted to relish into that sensation until she remembered that in his presence she could hurt, too.

Unable to find any of her words, she decided to turn and leave him there.

“Am I picking you up or are you coming to me tomorrow?” he shouted from behind her.

“Neither,” she replied over her shoulder. “This has been exhausting.”

“Deny me, my ruination,” he called as she stepped into the boat over Lethe. “It makes begging all the more enjoyable.”