Page 14 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

She shook her head, heading towards her lone cottage. “I won’t haunt him anymore. He needs to be free of the ghost of me. It was all he knew anyway.”

“Who was he?”

“No one, I suppose. In whatever lifetime he is living, I hope I’m no one to him. Ever again.”

He followed her home, just at the very edge of Asphodel, lowering her bucket of water on the small pavement around her garden, and throwing a glance up at her cottage. “You live pretty far from the city of Asphodel.”

“I’ve never liked people, and most don’t change in death,” she said, filling a watering can with some of the river water and spraying it over her lilies. “And I thought you never crossed the river?”

“I do not.”

“Yet here you are.”

“Yet here I am,” he said, filling up another watering can and heading to water the rest of her lilies.

“Why?” she found herself asking, still a little stunned at the fact the God of Life himself was watering her flowers.

“I thought you wouldn’t come.”

“I would have come.” She’d given him her word.

“Pretty,” he said, staring right at her. “Your garden.”

Her lashes fluttered fast. “Oh, thank you.”

“Lilies.”

“The only ones I can touch,” she told him. “Oddly they used to be my favourite flowers when I was alive. Azriel will not tell me why I can still touch them.”

For a second, the corner of his mouth lifted into barely a smile. “Oddly.”

Yes, very oddly. “How did you get that letter in my room?”

“If I tell you I might have to kiss you.”

She snorted, nearly laughed, too. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Tea? I keep some for Az when he comes around.”

“Does he not have tea in his own damn home? Or is he too busy mopping around to make some himself?” he asked, almost sounding bitter.

“I like making tea for him.” She gave him a look when he made to speak, and said, “No, it is not because I am madly in love with him.”

Still looking like he did not believe her, he followed after her into her home that no one else but Az and her had stepped in. It was nothing grand or fascinating, but he took every single detail with such admiration, studying the paintings on her walls, the trinkets scattered around, running a hand over her sage velvety sofa and the furniture which she’d mostly assembled herself from scratch.

“Black or green tea?” she asked, reaching for the kettle.

“I had another idea,” he said, putting a bottle of liquor on her kitchen counter. “I’ve never had a drinking buddy. My cat is more of a milk kind of guy.”

Silene was overtaken with surprise. “You have a cat?”

“He’s more of a deity, really, considering he makes me clean his shit and all those lovely tasks.”

A chuckle sputtered out of her, and she put a hand to her mouth.

“You think I will steal all the babies in the world and sacrifice them for my eternal youth if I see you smile just once?” he asked, uncapping the bottle of the amber coloured liquor.

Again, she only lifted her middle finger up at him.

“Come here,” he beckoned her, sprawling in one of her kitchen chairs, the space around her suddenly seeming so small with him in it, so mundane and pale now that he was there.