Page 18 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

Gabriel dropped the towel and stood, throwing an arm over Azriel’s shoulders before smacking a loud kiss on his cheek. “You used to be so much cuter when you were younger.”

“And you used to be somewhat saner,” his brother said, throwing Gabriel’s arm off his shoulder. “Don’t know what happened along the way.”

“You put a stick up your ass while I politely refused to join your particular kink for woes and misery.”

Silene snorted.

“Leave,” Azriel told him with finality, throwing Silene a betrayed glance. “You know very well what you’d do to my lands if you remain here long enough.”

Gabriel turned to her. “Come with me. There is someone I want you to meet.”

She worried her lip between her teeth as she contemplated the offer that she had the strange urge to automatically say yes to. Looking at Azriel, she asked, “Can I go with him?”

He looked the most taken aback she’d ever seen him be. “Why are you asking me?”

“You don’t give me days off. What if I get in trouble?”

Azriel rubbed a finger over his temple and turned to leave her property, muttering all sorts under his breath.

The kettle screamed and roared behind Gabriel as he stood there in the middle of his kitchen, in a house where no one but him and his stupid cat had ever stepped in, mouth agape, staring at the most unusual thing he’d ever witnessed in his existence:

Silene, sitting on his couch, stretched over it while she used a scratch toy to pet his twenty-five-year-old cat that he was most certain was deathless, eternal, probably even immune to her touch. And when she cooed, murmuring all sorts of praises to the bag of hairy skin and brittle bones by the name of Tommy, he found the irresistible urge to cut that fraction of a memory and play it over and over and over.

His attention returned when she jumped from the couch, walking backwards as Tommy slowly prowled in her direction, meowing and possibly wanting some closer affection. “No, no, no, don’t come closer.”

“Tommy,” Gabriel called, and hauled his archaic cat up to his chest, scratching behind his ears and pressing a kiss to his little pea brained head. “Silly, old thing. We don’t chase pretty girls away. Not how we flirt these days.”

“I could have hurt him,” she said, voice low and a little shaken.

“Nah, Tommy is basically immortal.” Reaching a hand to her, he said, “Come here.”

He hated how she shrunk back into a corner. “I can’t take that, and I’m fine standing just here.”

His hand lowered back to his side. “Come here, Silene.”

Reluctantly, she did as he’d told her, still not coming as close as he’d wanted her to be. “Pet him.”

Silene’s eyes shot wide. “I cannot. Unless you are offering him as a sacrifice or something strange like that.”

Gabriel could not contain his laughter. “Bet I’d not even get candy if I offered his old bones to the God of Abundance himself.”

“The cat can hear you,” she scorned in a whisper.

“He’s used to me by now.”

Her fingers opened and closed into a tight fist at her side before she slowly raised her hand and rested it just above Tommy’s head, shaking midair.

She let out a squeal when Gabriel lifted Tommy up to her hand. “There. See. Immortal cat.”

“How?” she asked, trying to bite down her smile as she scratched Tommy under his wrinkly and hairy neck.

“You know how many times this little pile of old bones has been touched by death before I forced him to become a house cat?” When she gave him a sneer, he added, “I keep him alive.”

Her hand froze and she pulled it to her side. “You seem to do that a lot. Keep alive things that don't want to be alive.”

“Tommy loves being alive,” he said, lifting the animal up to smack a dozen kisses to his fat belly. “Don’t you? You’re just a little stupid.”

“What will you do when his time comes?”