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It was strange that Aven still remembered. The resistance she had to being dead was stronger than Tuonen thought.
“You lived in London?” Tuonen asked. He knew he shouldn’t, was already cursing himself for doing so. He wanted her to forget, not remember.
“Live,” she corrected him, taking a seat on a bench. “I still live there.”
Tuonen smirked at her stubbornness. He waved his hand at the snowy banks of the shore as they came into view. “And this? What do you make of this? If you still live in London, how are you here?”
She looked at the snow as the boat glided past, the river a stark, inky black against all the white as the snow started to fall harder.
“And you may have noticed, it’s snowing,” Tuonen said. “Which is normal in the Frozen Void, where it’s always winter, but you’re only wearing a summer dress. You don’t wonder why you’re not cold?”
She shook her head and brushed the snowflakes from her arms. “I’m dreaming. Or I’m drugged.”
“Okay,” he said, playing along. “Let’s just say you are dreaming or someone drugged you. Back in London, right? Can you tell me what you did the day before all of this happened?”
Aven rubbed her lips together in thought. It was obvious it wasn’t coming easily to her.
“I can’t,” she eventually said. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“What else do you remember about your life?”
She gave him a look of surprise. “Everything. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Do you still go to school?”
She had to think about that. “No. I don’t. I graduated with a degree in history. It was useless.”
Tuonen laughed. “My father always says that education is never useless.”
“It is when you don’t end up getting a job in your field.”
“And what job did you get?”
She blinked, feeling resistance. “I…I don’t remember. But later, I opened a shelter. For dogs. I love dogs, I wanted to help the strays…”
Part of Tuonen’s heart pinched. Helping animals—that was admirable. She would be going to Amaranthus for sure.
Which meant he would probably never see her again. While Tuonen had free reign in the city, he never went to Amaranthus.He left the good people alone. Their world was happy and pure and he, being the Son of the Death, was a blot on their light. They didn’t like to be reminded at all that they were dead, and his dark personality and energy would violate everything they deserved in that world.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-five.” She said this without hesitation.
He smiled. “And you opened your own animal shelter? To save dogs? I know that, in your society, to do that by the age of twenty-five is most impressive.”
She shrugged. “It’s my calling. It was hard, but I did fundraising, I saved up. I did what I could to get the money to open it, and it’s still hard. It’s emotionally taxing, constantly trying to get these dogs a home, to raise awareness. It’s a twenty-four seven job, but I couldn’t do anything else. If I don’t do it, who will?”
Another pinch in Tuonen’s heart. Who would take up her role now that she’s dead?
“So when you say I’m dead, well, I know that can’t be true,” she continued, a spark in her blue eyes. “I can’t die. I have so much life ahead of me. I have so much left to do. I have my parents. They need me. My mother is recovering from breast cancer, and my father is blind. They depend on me. I have my dogs; I need to keep giving them homes. I have…so much to give. I know that dying wouldn’t be fair to me, to anyone, to the world.”
Tuonen nodded slowly. The more she said, the deeper he felt himself falling, like the hold she had on him was deepening. For a moment, he actually feared she was a shaman and had tricked him, as the shamans often did when they snuck into Tuonela in search of treasures and magic.
But she wasn’t a shaman. She was just a girl with a lot left to live for.
For the first time in his existence, Tuonen felt bad that Aven had died. In fact, he started to think there was some kind of mistake.
But the Creator never made mistakes, or so they said. When your time was up, your time was up, and there was nothing you could do about it.
