Page 48 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“No, my ruin, to your luck you won’t. But I will be there. In the sun, the flame of a candle, city lights and every single moon beam. I will always be with you.”

“What if you can’t find me again?”

“I’m never losing you again, Silene. I will rake through every world I know to find you. You will not see me, you will not remember me, but I will be there, you have my word. Will you stop sulking and let me look at you now?” Pushing himself to his elbow, he carefully reached with the back of his finger to push the white strands of hair back from her eyes. “Don’t cry, my ruin, my beautiful damnation, or I might not let you go.”

“Then don’t.”

“You deserve better than my wretched heart that can’t even love you properly, closely. You deserve someone who can hold you.”

She turned and pressed her face to her pillow, her shoulders shaking from the loud sobs.

“Please,” he begged, not even able to touch her, to comfort her in his embrace because his words no longer seemed to. “Please, Silene. Please, my ruin.”

But she only cried harder.

He did not know how he’d dragged her out of her room, or even out of her home at all and into a very tiny fishing boat in the middle of a lake, holding a fishing rod with both hands and standing stiffly on her seat out of fear they’d top over in the water.

This had been her last demand.

She wanted to go fishing, but apparently, she had no clue what fishing entailed at all.

“They were smiling with all their teeth and gums in that human magazine,” she grumpily muttered, tightening her hold on the fishing rod until her knuckles turned white. “And it stinks in here.” She nudged the bait box with the tip of her heeled boots. “Throw that over.”

Gabriel shook from laughter, and she squealed when the boat rocked, “Stop laughing, I hate swimming.”

He leaned to fold back the brim of the huge fishing hat she’d insisted on wearing and was covering more than half her face. “This is ridiculous.”

“I wanted the full experience.”

“Did you now?”

After giving him one long look, she sighed and looked away, her shoulder slouching.

“What was all that for?” he asked.

“I want to sit in your lap and kiss you.”

He grinned at her. “I want that, too.”

“Give me a bargain then, just like you’ve given the others.”

“Silene—”

“Take anything you want, anything at all, just make it so I can have you at least in one lifetime. Any lifetime. Hundreds and thousands of years from now, or at the end of all times, just once, even if it is just for a day. Make it possible. You can do that.”

“I can’t, Silene.”

Her mouth quivered as she looked away at the distance surely to hide her welling eyes while she muttered, “Useless God.”

It should have hurt him, but her words only made his heart well. “You can be cruel to me, my ruin. I do not mind.”

“You had no business bringing me back then. Wasting a bargain on such a useless thing.”

“I was going to give you everything. When you’d wake, I was going to lay the heads of those who hurt you like cobble stone for you to walk on, with their blood I would have painted a bright red path for you to follow towards a new life, a better one.”

Still looking at the distance of the glittering, sun kissed lake, she muttered, “Something would have been missing.”

“What is that?”