Page 26 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“No,” the same voice said, now from behind her. “But I did.”

She almost dropped from her chair when she spun in his direction so fast she got dizzy. Gabriel stepped forward as if to catch her, his hands freezing merely inches away from her body before he pulled back, fingers curling into tight fists as they returned to his side.

“Why are you here?” she asked, her hand flying to her throat out of instinct, to make sure the scarf was there, hiding her scar—a scar he’d already known about.

“There is something I can’t stop thinking about,” he said, circling her room and stopping to inspect a bunch of little trinkets she had carved out of wood back when pottery had been a miss. Five hundred years was a long time. One could not have too many hobbies. Or make enough carved figurines, so there were…a lot…everywhere, almost annoyingly like glitter speckles. She was a hoarder, and so what.

“Like what?” she asked, looking down at herself to make sure her pyjamas were not askew while he wasn’t paying attention.

“You,” he admitted, leaning against her vanity, right there, not even a foot from her. “And it doesn’t help that you won’t let me see you.”

She was hoping to the stars her cold corpse could not blush because she might have…would have. “You can’t come into my home like this.”

He moved to her window, trailing his fingers down the curtains she’d made, pinching the trimming between his fingers, and for some reason smiling down at it. “The door was open.”

“The door is always open.” No one came to her home.

“Maybe you should start closing it,” he said, reaching for a vase filled with a bunch of roses she’d made out of copper wire, and grabbing one, studying the detailed work that had gone into shaping the second kind of flower that could never wilt by her touch. “How does everything you touch turn out so perfect? The garden, the home, the clothes, the little paintings on the walls, these,” he said, taking a figurine and turning to look at the rest of her room with a strange sort of awe. “Everything on here.”

A little flustered laughter left her, and she looked away from him, narrowing her eyes on the mirror and scrutinising the unusual flush on her cheeks. “They’re not perfect.”

“One day,” he started, his voice languid, “I watched you sit on a wood stump just outside your home, holding a pair of trousers nearly shredded and a threaded needle in your hand. If I had not been so distracted by how happy you looked doing something so menial, I might have been able to find out the secret to how you made them look brand new.”

Her insides gripped in a fist. “They were my brother’s,” she said, smiling while hot tears rimmed her eyes at the memory he’d just invoked. “He’d always tear them up in the mines. I couldn’t wait for him to get home to show him how I’d fixed them. He’d call me a witch and haul me around until I’d admit I possessed magic he wasn’t aware of.”

“Why were you outside that day? You barely left your home, and it was wintertime. Why did you sit in the cold?”

All of the sudden she felt overtaken by a sense of hollowness. “It was easier to run,” she muttered. “He was home, my father. Not drunk enough. Somehow, his worst evil always came when he was sober. The kindest he was to me was always when he was drunk.”

The wind blew her windowpanes back so hard the glass shattered against the wall, making her squeal and jump from her seat. The concept of weather did not really exist in Asphodel. There was no such thing as rain or wind or even really sun at all.

Her hand came to her startled chest, and she startled even more when she felt her heart bang against the breastbone. “Please leave now,” she begged, starting to back away in her seat. Silene did not want to know what else his presence would cause to her or Asphodel.

“See me in the morning,” he said, coming to stand right before her, and she sucked in a stuttering breath as she stared up at his face, carved out by so many shadows, suddenly so grave and terrifying under them.

“Why should I? Are there any more lies and secrets I should know about?”

“None was a lie or a secret. You’ve just never asked. You’ve never even let me get close to you. I can’t even count the many ways you’ve avoided me.”

“You’re such a frustrating creature.”

He smiled, and it melted the ice forming around her again. “Tell me that you will see me tomorrow.”

“I don’t like how you make me feel.”

That smile started to slowly fall. “How do I make you feel?”

The most worthless form she had ever been. Human. And that was not even the worst part. “Go away, please,” she said, turning to the mirror and starting to take the rollers off her hair. The actual terrifying part was that Silene might have enjoyed it. The very small things she was starting to feel. The things she had never really thought about. Every little reaction her body gave suddenly felt amplified. And she was breathing differently—she was breathing how she’d never breathed before.

“Why won’t you talk to me, Silene?”

The way he said her name, how every letter left his lips bewitched the very air she inhaled, almost leaving her heaving. “I hate that I have to look up at you every time I do so,” she lied.

He stepped close to her, almost making her drop from her chair again when he got down to his knees right there at her feet. “Now talk to me.”

The stars had a wicked sense of humour—so wickedly cruel. How…why were they tempting her like this? Silene didn’t wish to trust his intentions, she’d never had trusted his intentions even when she’d been alive. But she was finding it hard not to. Maybe, apart of her wanted to trust them. Maybe just this once. Just this once she wanted to try…to try how it felt—how it felt to be alive. What would go wrong? She was already dead. This was her best bet of ever knowing fully.

Reaching for a small shelf on her vanity, she pulled a piece of paper she had scribbled on, folded and unfolded about a thousand times, contemplating this very moment.