Page 13 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“Sweet dreams, Silene,” he whispered near her ear before he pulled back.

Her brows slowly pulled together as he let go of the boat, expression filled with doubt more than confusion. Her head craned in his direction the whole journey down the river and until she disappeared down the mist.

“Sweet dreams, my ruin,” he murmured.

Four o' Clock

The morning after she’d met Gabriel had been strange, she’d woken exactly at sunrise. Not a second after or before. It had been a gentle wake. And Silene never woke up gently. She was always grappled awake by nightmares of the unkindest nature, those made of still memories. Though she could no longer feel tire or rest, she oddly felt rested that morning, full of energy she did not know a creature like her could feel any longer.

But the strangest thing of all?

Silene had seen a meadow. In her dream she’d been in a meadow, staring directly at the sun. She’d felt herself smile at it, even felt its gentle and kind rays warm her skin.

Then she’d woken up.

Feeling like something was missing and with a strange sensation in her chest that reminded her faintly of longing.

A letter was left on her kitchen table. Only a sentence written in neat handwriting across it.

Did you dream about me?

“No, you creep,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head and narrowing her eyes around her house, wondering how he’d managed to get it in her home.

She could have sworn she’d heard his laugh reverberate around her home. A shiver trickled down her spine when new letters started appearing on the paper. Liar.

“Arrogant creep.”

You forgot to add handsome in there.

“Stop it.”

You’re the one talking to a piece of paper, Silene.

After making sure to tear the letter to tiny little pieces and then feeding all of them to a candle fire, she got her garden clothes on and headed outside.

Silene stood still, unable to move by Lethe, carrying the bucket of water she’d collected from the river for her flowers, holding it tightly to her chest as she looked at where Death stood almost every morning and all nights, staring at the bright gates of life across the river, waiting for the human woman who he’d left his heart with to sail through them and back into his arms.

It was a love Silene wanted to envy, but she could never quite allow herself to. Because love had been a fault. Her greatest weakness. She loved hard, unconditionally. If anything, Silene had found it hard not to love, for she had been made with a heart so able, a heart that forgave all faults and saw no wrong, a heart that justified those that hurt it. It was a condition she’d been born with. One without a cure it had seemed.

“How must it feel to be loved by a God,” she whispered as a warm gust of wind swept the meadow of daisies—a meadow that had been nothing but charcoal and dust before Azriel had spent seven days on a human realm and had found the love he now couldn’t see, nor touch, only wait upon.

“Like a curse,” someone answered her. Someone who had a lot of answers for her lately.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes. “You could just let me have this one.”

“You are late for our meeting,” Gabriel said, grabbing the bucket from her hands and holding it to his side. It was the most ridiculous sight Silene had seen, and she fought the urge to laugh at the most powerful God she knew holding a bucket of water.

She looked down at her timekeeper strung on a silver chain around her neck, but it showed her what she expected to see. She was not late—not at all. “You know time rarely exists the way we want it to exist. It doesn’t exist at all sometimes even,” she said, looking up at Death again. “Like when you look at someone you love but cannot yet have.”

“I’d hoped you would forget him in time.”

Silene couldn’t help herself from turning to him, surprise colouring her expression. “Forget who?”

“My brother.” A harsh look had fallen over his eyes again. “I understand the fascination with him from afar, but when you get up close he’s a real prickly bastard. Not every girl’s dream per se.”

She snorted, bringing a hand to her mouth to cover her laughter that was turning just a little maniacal at this ridiculous misunderstanding. “I don’t love your brother like that, Gabriel. He is my friend, and he reminds me of someone I once knew.” She took another glance at the God who had sentenced her to five hundred years of haunting. “Someone I sometimes have wished time would help me forget. But the best time can do is pass. I hope it has passed for him, too. Taken him some place where our memories don’t haunt him anymore.”

“I can find him for you. You only need to ask me.”