Page 17 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“We can do it twice if not thrice as fast, and you’re not rich on time to lose doing something this stupid.”

“It isn’t stupid.”

And that is how she’d ended up by his side, painting over her cabinets for almost two hours now. For someone who had never shut up in her presence, he was being oddly quiet. He’d not said a word almost the whole way through the first coat of paint, nor had she, but they had shared the bottle of liquor between them, silently passing it to the other while they were sat cross legged on the ground and stained all over with paint.

“Why…beige?” he suddenly asked.

“It’s a well-liked colour.”

“It’s boring. The sage green was nice. The yellow on the walls is nice, too.” He looked at her. “I’m so confused.”

“About what?”

“You love colour so much, why do you never wear it?”

“What makes you think I love it?”

He arched a brow at her. “My mistake. The rainbows behind my back confused me.”

Lifting her brush from the bucket, she flicked it in his direction, splattering paint on him. She froze, a hand flying to her mouth, shocked at what she’d done.

Ever so slowly, his head turned in her direction and he wiped the paint from his cheek. “So mature,” he said, brushing just the very tip of his paintbrush on her jaw and smearing paint on her face.

Silene’s mouth dropped open, and his brush came under her chin, nudging it shut again, smearing more on her skin. “You are inhaling all the paint fumes. Can’t be good for you.”

“Prick,” she hissed under her breath, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve.

He only chuckled, shedding his black leather jacket and throwing it over a chair.

“Colour is for things that are alive,” she confessed, carefully painting around a golden cabinet handle, and straining her eyes in an attempt not to glance at the tattoos curling around his thick biceps and all down his arm.

“Didn’t know colour discriminated like that.”

“What’s the point?” she muttered under her breath.

“What’s the point of anything, Silene? Why does anything have to have a point, or make sense, or have worth, or anything like that? Why can’t it just merely exist?” He shook his head, taking a big gulp of the liquor and handing the bottle to her. “Humans are obsessed with putting prices and worth on anything. Valuing and devaluing things that were never meant for them to value or devalue. Anything for the sake of greed, right? Anything for the sake of power? Ingrained on them from the very first breath they take.”

“If you loathe humanity so much, why do you help it?” she asked, pressing the bottle to her lips and taking a small sip.

“Because I haven’t lost hope in them. They’re not all despicable. They’re not all deplorable.”

“Azriel would say the opposite.”

“Someone has to still have faith in them.”

“Can’t even begin to fathom such a terrible burden,” she said quietly.

“There are those who make it nothing but my greatest pleasure.” Grabbing a towel, he wiped the paint droppings from his hands. “Let’s let that dry. I will come back tomorrow to do the second coat.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“But I want to,” he said, reaching to swipe the towel down her jaw and wipe away the paint he’d smeared on her.

Silene waited for a heartbeat, ignoring the gooseflesh starting to spread on her skin. “How did you know about my yellow coat? I must have worn it out like twice, maybe three times.”

“It suits you,” he told her, reaching closer to wipe under her chin. “You look pretty in yellow.”

Azriel materialised in the middle of her kitchen, startling her to her feet. “Get off my realm,” he said to his brother, fury painted across his star face. “That river is there for a damn reason, Gabe. To not be crossed.”