Page 36 of At The End There Was You

She felt her eyes prickle with tears. He’d lied to her.

“Come in, Winter,” he called to her from where he stood in the middle of the library, looking up at the glass ceiling that had framed the oddest waning red moon.

Azriel, no, Death stepped into the darkness hidden from the moonlight, the creatures of the library following right after him. He raised a hand in the air, and they vanished, leaving Winter alone with the dark God. This is why they had always obeyed him. Why the spook played only when he allowed and why the fiends never did anything more than follow her around.

He stood under the faint glow of candlelight, but she couldn’t see his eyes. “How about I tell you one last tale, Winter.”

She turned around and prepared to run. Only that she couldn’t. The room around them was no longer the library, it was a vast space of black with no end and no beginning, illuminating only them two. He’d trapped her and she had nowhere to go.

“You will want to hear this,” he said, stepping closer and stopping when she stepped away from him. “It will help you finish your task. Don’t you want answers?”

Winter didn’t say anything, refusing to look up at him entirely. Her voice was small and defeated when she said, “Yes.”

“Seven days ago,” he began, idly circling her. “Something that had never happened before occurred. A twelve-year-old boy showed at the gates of my land holding his four siblings by their hands. I’d not asked for their souls; they hadn’t been sent sickness or despair either. Their lives were dedicated by the fates to be long and rich and bearing fruit that would contribute to healing your world. But their father had sent those five souls to me. He’d beaten them all their lives, marked them with bruises older than time itself. He’d starved them. He’d sold their bodies. They had not been able to bear the pain and they came to me. They asked for me, to meet me. They seeked my protection. Who seeks protection from Death himself? No one has ever before. No one has ever looked at me as if I were their salvation. No one has looked at me with pure adoration. No one is supposed to. But I gave them protection, and I went after their father’s soul though I’d promised to never interfere with any course of life. But it wasn’t enough. I breathed the air in this world, and it suddenly dawned on me that it had changed from when I’d first stepped foot in it. The scent was severe. When I walked the streets of your cities, I saw the filth that was tainting it. Humans. All of them. I saw murder and abuse, I saw women, men and children being raped and being made slaves and spare parts for the filthy to use. I saw—I saw what I couldn’t unsee.”

Tears emptied down Winter’s cheeks, her chest hurting at his words, the shake of his voice rattled her entirely. The story broke her heart. The cruelty of it suddenly painted black over the grey of her world. The children’s pain, his pain, she could feel them both. Winter hated pain. Especially seeing others in pain.

“All this time, these people had lived out of my mercy,” he continued. “Mercy I'd not offered or desired to give them but had unintentionally done so by looking away from them. I’d had my eyes closed all this time. My brother, too.” He stopped moving and stepped a little closer to her, and even closer when she didn’t back away from him. “Why should a realm exist to waste away when I can simply claim it before every soul that steps my gates reeks of rot. How many can I send away before this realm becomes the land of the haunted, not of life. How long until I am forced to fill my hell until the brim.”

She swallowed hard, the words still coming out choked when she asked, “Why seven days?”

There was one small moment of silence between them where he was looking at her like she’d spoken for the first time ever, and while she was trying her hardest to come to terms that that moment might be the last she’d see him. “I gave my word to my brother that I’d look for a reason why I should spare you all.”

“And have you found it?”

His jaw ticked and he looked away from her, glaring at the darkness surrounding them as if it bore the fault of everything. “I found a reason to spare only one.”

“Let me go,” Winter whispered, her voice shaking.

And he did. The walls of darkness bursted into thin dust, vanishing in the air, and letting the glow of the library fill the space again.

Winter didn’t look at him one last time as she wanted before she turned away and left. But her feet halted against her wishes and better judgement, and then turned towards the healers’ quarters. Even her arms did not obey her, they picked bandages, alcohol, thread and a needle. When she returned back to the library, she found him sitting on a chair, hunched over, his hands cradling his head.

His attention whipped to her as she wordlessly approached him. He only watched her. Silently. Not moving at all. Not even blinking.

Not either of them said anything as Winter kneeled before the dark God and took his arm in her hands. He made no sounds of pain either as she cleaned off the blood and the wounds in his arm, or when she began stitching the cuts up.

“You came back,” he said.

“You were bleeding.”

“You came back.”

Her throat thickened with a cry. “It would have gotten infected.”

“I can heal my body in an instant.”

She faltered, trying to move away from him but failing when she got pinned by his dark gaze. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I am trying to cheat the fates of every moment I can have with you.”

It hurt her and Winter couldn’t bear the pain. Winter hated pain. “You lied to me.”

“Would you have stayed that first day if I had introduced myself by the name your kind has given me?”

“Yes.” No. Yes. Maybe. She didn’t know the exact answer. Maybe because it didn’t matter. Not anymore. Not after all that had happened between them. Because at the end there was him. At the end there would always be him.

“But you would have been afraid. Like you are now.”