Page 29 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“You have no idea, Silene,” he muttered, trailing the tips of his fingers down the long veil. “Are we keeping this one or will you try another one on for me?”

Her eyes went wide. “I can keep it?”

“Why not?”

She contemplated it for a moment, trying to bite her smile down as she studied herself in the mirror, the pretty high neckline decorated with pearls and sparkles and the long silky train that followed the curves of her body, floating and pooling down at her feet. She looked like one of the women from the human magazines. “Fine, thank you. Will you unzip me?”

“Keep it on.”

A ridiculous laughter left her. “I’m not walking around in a wedding dress.”

They stepped outside the shop and into the streets. Silene giggled at herself the whole time they walked, spinning in her dress and fluffing the veil around until a kid gasped and pointed straight at her. “Mommy! A princess!”

Ice cold water washed over her skin, her smile fading, and she almost hid behind Gabriel. “Why…why can he see me? He’s not dead.”

“Pretty things should be seen, Silene.”

He’d made her visible. After five hundred years, humans could see her again. And that thought…did not scare her as much as she had thought it would. “I’m in a wedding dress. I look ridiculous.”

“You look exquisite.”

If her face had not gone red from embarrassment, it surely had done so from his frustrating words. “Gabriel.”

“Yes, my Silene?” he asked, standing right in front of her and pulling the veil down her eyes. “There. Now no one can see you. You’re invisible again. Now come.”

How did he know how to soothe her so well? Even from before when he’d been just a flame in a candle. “The river is the other way around.”

“We will make a stop somewhere else before.”

“A stop? Where?”

A chapel stood before them after a few turns around the buildings and many pointed looks later. Small, hidden between two massive buildings like a tattered, forgotten book in a library shelf between brand new ones.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked, studying the decor as he led her inside.

“You’re in a wedding dress. It would be such a pity to waste all of it away,” he said, backing away towards the altar lined with seats and standing right at the spot where the groom usually waited for the bride. “Walk to me, Silene,” the odd God called for her.

Her heart had pooled down her stomach, pulsing so violently that she almost felt sick. “I can’t…we can’t.”

“It’s all pretend. It’s all it can be anyway. Pretend. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Silene could think of a thousand terrifying things that could happen if she did. Still, she took a step forward.

With a swift flick of his hand, the grand organ piano played the tune every human bride walked to in this realm. Another flick of his hand and white roses bloomed through the walls, over the benches, along the altar, hanging overhead into arches, their thorned vines twisting around anything and everything, turning the chapel into something of a sweet, perfumy dream. And as he raised his hand in her direction, beckoning her to him, a swift yet gentle wind swept across, snowflakes pouring out of the roof of the closed chapel, bright crystals gleaming as they fell on her dress, on the flowers and the red carpet. She smiled as the cold flakes touched her lips, coated her lashes, and turned the tip of her nose a little red, her cheeks probably, too.

She fixed her veil as she closed the distance between them, a bouquet of white flowers appearing in her hand, withering almost immediately from her touch. Despite it, this was the most magnificent thing she’d ever been part of, better than any daydream of hers.

He stood there, too, just like a dream, just in jeans and a black t-shirt instead of the ornate suit grooms usually wore. This time not faceless either.

“How did I do?” she asked, stepping in front of him.

He reached for her veil, lifting it over her head and looking at her somewhat stunned, his chest raising fast. His lips parted and then closed again a few times, and she waited for the words that didn’t come for a long while.

She jokingly smacked him in the chest with her dried and dead bouquet, chuckling. “You aren’t so dashing yourself, your great grandness.”

He reached to pull a lifeless flower from her bouquet, the carnation coming to life immediately at his touch. Silene jumped a little when he tapped the tip of her nose with it. “Liar, liar. Pretty liar,” he cooed, giving her one of his most charming grins and guiding the carnation he held over her cheek and then down her jaw, making her shiver and gasp, a puff of mist escaping from between her parted lips being kissed by flakes of snow.

He brought the flower down her chin, using it to gently lift her face up to him. “How do the vows go, my ruin?”