Page 3 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

A moment was all it took for a wedding to turn into a funeral.

The groom’s soul watched it all unfold, kneeling beside his almost wife who was clutching his cold body to her chest and screaming. He whispered words of love to her, trying to comfort her even in death.

After so long in her duty as a Reaper, Silene knew for certain that if love was all it took to save someone, they’d all be eternal.

When she took slow steps inside the room, the air veiled with death, every shadow pulling and twisting in her direction, regarding her with unwavering attention until she stopped before the groom’s soul.

He seemed to know her before she uttered any word. And instead of being questioned about his fate like everyone did in death or begged to be let go, he instead asked, “Will she be alright?”

To give comfort, you have to know comfort. Silene had never been good at comforting. “I don’t know of life, only of death.”

The groom shook his head as he watched his bride, tears welling in his strong eyes. “I can’t leave her. Not until I know she is alright.” He cried, and Silene’s unfeeling heart almost cried, too. “My poor love, how can I leave her?”

Silene’s shaking hands curled into fists at her side. “If you stay, you might not be able to ever meet her again in death or any other life. You will linger here for eternity. Aimlessly. Eternally.”

His mouth quivered as he tearfully smiled down at his bride. “But I might get to see my unborn son. I might get to see her raise him. I might get to see them together.”

“You might.”

Tears skittered down his face. “Aren’t you supposed to convince me otherwise?”

“We don’t stop being human after death. Your will remains. I’ve never dragged a soul to the afterlife.”

“How many of those you were sent to take have stayed behind?”

“None,” she truthfully replied. “Because remaining to see and not be able to touch what your heart burns to have is worse than leaving them behind. And I can say that for certain.”

“You’re like me?”

“I am. But unlike you, I was not fortunate enough to have that choice. My fate has sentenced me to linger, to haunt, to be a ghost of the unkindest nature.”

Silene had not been used to pity, not from humans at least, so it took her aback when he asked with such a gentle, worried voice, “Why?”

“Because I took something I was not supposed to take,” she said, closing the timekeeper and stepping aside, waiting for the groom to make that decision.

And like she’d expected, the man followed.

Yearning was a disease with a cure. Those strong enough would survive it. They’d conquer it.

Once she made sure the groom’s spirit sat on the boat that would sail through the river of Lethe that ran through many worlds to Asphodel, she looked over her shoulder at where Gabriel had leaned against a wall, watching her. “You’re still here.”

“Fascinating work.”

She threw a glance around Asador. “Can’t say the same. It is such an unfortunate affair when you hand a paint brush to someone who has no clue how to handle art.”

“An artist’s job is to create, Silene. How their creation ages and dies is in the hands of the beholders. But you,” he started, and Silene braced herself for what was to come, “so strangely, you I have no memory of ever creating or of the beholding hands I put you in. I only know of you…in death.”

Maybe because it had been the only significant thing in her vapid life. “I wasn’t a memorable existence.” Silene was sure that the only piece of memory she might have left behind registering her existence was an obituary. It might as well be all. Her body had started rotting before she’d died. She’d already been a corpse before the night she’d died, and the house she had lived in had always been her grave. It was since then she knew men were not beyond desecrating graves, that they were not even trusted with the dead. For in their hands, she’d always been a corpse, and they still had violated her.

His eyes paced between hers. “Impossible. I would have remembered you.”

Silene did not know which God or Fate she owed her thanks to for having shielded her violent life from his eyes. “Why are you so curious out of the sudden?”

“I was there that day,” he said, stopping for a moment to look at her before he added, “when you arrived at my brother’s gates.”

“I saw you as well,” she admitted. “Across the river.” He’d been the last thing she thought she’d see in death. So close to her. Watching her. Silene could have sworn that when he’d taken that one short step towards her, he would have reached to grab her. But something had stopped him. Something had made him step away, and from then on, never step closer ever again.

His head tilted back, regarding her so strangely. “You swayed a little on your feet when you saw my handsome face.”