Page 23 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“You called. And I could finally hear you. After so long, Silene. After so damn long wishing I could.”

She felt exposed. Stripped even out of her skin, bones bare in front of the one God she’d wished would never see her desperation for the help she could not find to ask because of the spite she’d had for life himself.

“I did not call for you.” She did not know what she’d called at those moments, all memories that had been slightly warm had almost vanished from her memories to make space for all the terrifying ones that only kept growing in her mind like a malign tumour. But it had not been for him. She was sure she had not asked for him. She had asked for salvation. And the only salvation Silene ever remembered dreaming had been a kind death.

“My brother cannot hear the living, Silene. Only I can.”

“You shouldn’t have answered. I didn’t want you.”

“I know. I knew.”

“Was it fun?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Was it fun to hear about how I had bruised at the hands of my father? Did you laugh when I told you he’d sell me out to anyone who gave him enough coin for his next fix? Did you enjoy when I confessed about the first time I had to wash away the blood from between my legs after I’d been raped in my childhood bed. The one I never managed to outgrow because he barely fed me enough to wake. Or sometimes not at all so he could call it mercy and I would be unconscious and wouldn’t feel what they would do to me.”

His eyes drew shut and he took one deep breath, a tremble permeating his body. The entire earth shook with him, chairs and curtains rattling, the ceiling and chandeliers breaking and falling to the ground in a million pieces of crystals.

Her arms came around her body when the crashing sounds made her flinch. “Look at me!” she screamed, her throat swelling with a cry when he did look at her—when he looked at her with such anguish, such burning pain as tears slid down his face.

“There hasn’t been a moment ever since the first time I found you that I’ve looked away.”

She shook her head. “You hurt me!” she sobbed, finally breaking down in front of him just like she’d avoided doing. “Forcing each damned breath in my lungs. What was the purpose of my existence? Was I there just to suffer?”

Another silver tear slid down his face, and it was her turn to look away.

The both of them sat there in the dark silence. Eventually the earth did stop trembling, too.

Her voice was vacant and hoarse when she asked, “Should you not ask for forgiveness? One would ask for forgiveness, at least.”

“I don’t want you to forgive me, Silene.”

Her lips trembled as she breathed out a long exhale. “I never will.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Silene’s hand pressed to her brow, and she shook her head. “Why did that not feel good at all? I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a long time,” she confessed, wiping away her eyes. “I wish I could just hit you.” Reaching for an empty bottle of water on the seat next to her, she threw it at him, hitting him in the head.

He blinked at her.

She blinked back at him, lips pressed tightly together. She held it in for all ten seconds before snorting into her hand and chuckling, her tear-stained laughter growing the longer he just stared at her stunned.

When her body somewhat settled from the uncontrollable tremble, the mix between a laughter and a cry, she asked, “Why were you there when you knew I did not want you?”

“At first, I hoped that if I waited, I might begin to matter more to you. Only for you to matter more to me in the end.”

Silene remained frozen at his confession, unable to look away. She had been nothing. A rock had mattered more than her. A rock would have sold for more than her. She. Had. Been. Nothing. “Why?”

“That day I first saw you.” His eyes found hers like a polarised magnet, but drowned in such depths that they looked black entirely. “I learnt more about myself through you that day than I’d ever known about myself. What had I done? How could I have forgotten you? How could I have left you in those hands?”

She wiped a lone tear away. “You said you didn’t remember me.”

“Fragments is all I have. Fragments fates gave away to spite me. All I saw was you getting hurt. Then you’d vanish in and out of my sight like some mirage. No matter how many times I would rake through your world, I could not find you. Not unless you would let me in. And those moments were brief, so brief, Silene. They were enough though.”

“Enough…for what?”

He looked away, lowering his head a little. “I would watch you make things out of nothing.” A choked laughter sputtered out of him as if he was recalling some fond memory. “Anything, you could make anything out of nothing. You gave more life to things than I ever could. Simply by touching them. You were magnificent. The rarest thing I’d laid my eyes upon,” he said, and the very foundations of her mind shuddered. “You and your brother, neither of you had any hope, the both of you were hurting, but somehow you could give him courage and make him dream. Without them he would have never returned from those mines. It was all that kept him alive in there, do you know that? Do you know how much power you had, Silene?”

Her eyes drew shut as she silently sobbed. She missed her little brother. She missed him so much.

“I wanted,” he continued, “I wanted to give it back to you. All that you gave. But you would not let me. You would not let your brother either.”