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Passed out on the grave and woke up with his face stained with a night’s worth of tears and the taste of vomit in his throat.
“I know. ”
“Forgiveness isn’t possible, is it?” There was a weight on his heart as he said the words, a weight he was sure would keep him pinned down forever.
“No, it isn’t. Not initially. ” Her fingers touched his jaw. Somehow she had the strength he lacked, though he felt as if his head was heavier than the world’s sorrows.
She lifted it, made him meet her gaze. “Redemption is. Payment for your crimes, acceptance of that burden. ”
He saw in her eyes that she had walked that path as well.
“When it’s true,” she said quietly, “when the debts have been accepted into your heart and paid, then there is forgiveness. ”
“From God?” His lip curled up, half derisive, but he knew it was a mask for hope.
“Yes, from all that is God. From your own soul, which is the part of God that dwells within you. You come home to yourself and to the Great Lord and Lady, whatever name you choose to give Them. You discover what drives the redemption, the justice, the forgiveness. The Constant. ”
“What’s that?”
“Love. Faith. They are one, for they’re inseparable. ” He swallowed, managed a scoff that came off like a sob. “I don’t have that, do I?”
“I love you. I believe in you. ”
“Because we’re soul mates. ”
“Yes and no. ” She cocked her head. “I don’t think the feeling that soul mates have is a biological imperative we have no control over. I think we’re matched because we chose one another, back when our souls were new. No more than babies, because babies understand everything. ”
He swallowed. No one loved him. No one ever had, and he’d done nothing since the realization to make himself more loveable. What could he have done, anyway? He’d started his life with a black mark over him. There’s something wrong with this one. Its mother didn’t want it. Why not throw such an infant on a refuse heap, let it go back to dust unnamed, rather than making him suffer through a life branded with the tearing pain of that knowledge? Perhaps that was the true secret of the tree of good and evil.
Adam’s and Eve’s eyes were opened, and they knew then they would suffer through pain. Their children and children’s children would be subjected to unspeakable evil because their Father truly didn’t give a shit. They’d simply been Play-Doh toys to amuse Him.
He didn’t want the bitterness to overtake him, rob him of this moment. “Please…
Will you say what you just said…one more time?”
She hesitated a moment, enough to warn him that what she was about to do wasn’t necessarily something intended. When she leaned over, she stopped just before she reached his lips and looked into his eyes. “I love you, Nathan. I always will. ” Then she kissed him. Not the brief brush he’d stolen from her in the beginning, but a full fusion of their mouths, her lips coaxing open his to tease him with her tongue, make him feel her need as well as his own.
Everything went away. There were no clothes, no piercings, no Hell, nothing. It was like they were back in the Garden again, only there were no forms. Just the feel of it surrounding them, the light of that sword a protective cocoon holding all of it in. No bindings kept his hands from her and yet he found he could not move until his Mistress gently closed her hands on his wrists and brought them to her waist. He touched her skin and more than her skin. He felt her body against his, but at the same time there were no barriers at all, as if his soul simply stepped into the light of hers. The Dona his eyes had seen all the time, the Goth Mistress of Hell with her red lips and dark-rimmed eyes, faded away. The disguise for her soul.
He nearly cried out at the flood of white light that poured into him, surrounded him, held him. It was like that poison ivy she had described, a moment of overwhelming craving for something before it melted into this. Contentment, peace, desire sated forever in nothing more than an embrace, in one kiss. He could almost feel the softness of her wings enfold him, the purity of her so strong he could no longer use vision to see her. He simply closed his eyes and kissed her back, kissed this beautiful spirit who was kissing him. He held her in his hands, held light as substance.
When she broke away and stood back from him, her eyes were wide, almost frightened. She was the Dona he knew physically, but so different. His soul knew her, knew things his rational mind did not understand and was already scrambling to hold, frightened of losing a grasp on them.
We may not have Eden. But we have this.
It was as clear in his head as if she’d spoken it. He saw it in her eyes.
“Dona, you…you’re an ang—”
You’re my soul mate.
He’d seen the movies where the elevator cable gave way, plunging the occupants into screaming terror. Suddenly the Garden was gone, the ground was gone and he dropped, tumbling into darkness. Dona dissipated before his eyes, her mouth open on a cry, perhaps a scream, as he fell…
Chapter Eleven
Cold stone. He was on cold, wet stone. He got to his feet in complete darkness, feeling off balance from the lack of a visual anchor. Dona hadn’t been in control of this.
He’d seen it in her eyes, the fear, the guilt. She’d broken some type of rule. At the thought, suddenly where he was and what was about to happen to him were irrelevant.
