Page 38 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

She watched as his expression fell just slightly. “He isn’t entirely himself lately. I didn’t want to tire him.”

A sense of gloom settled in her stomach. “Oh. He’ll be okay,” she offered, joining his side.

“Yeah,” he replied, voice weak. “Yeah, he will. Both of you can’t leave me at once.”

She’d laughed to her heart’s desire when he’d started laying a blanket down under the shade of a grand willow tree and neatly placed food out on a tray. Her imagination was not rich enough to have ever conjured a more outlandish scenario than the one before her. “You should have tried a wedding dress the other day. Would have been such a lovely bride.”

“Glad I can make you laugh, my ruin,” he said, making her smile turn shy all of the sudden.

She cleared her throat and sighed, observing the world around her move and bolster alive with such a violence that she had never witnessed, such vibrance she did not know it existed. Children were screaming, running, playing and laughing. Adults were chatting and shouting to their kids to be careful. Birds and crickets were composing their own melodies, somewhat matching each other’s tunes. The willow branches hissed and floated in tender waves as the gentle wind picked them up, letting the sun sieve through them. Silene found a fervent urge to hum along that sound and reach a hand out to play with the strands of sunlight peeking through between the branches.

Resting her chin on her knees, she smiled, drunken from the spring air that was filling her lungs with more than just oxygen, with something else, with something equally peaceful as it was violent, something akin to…hope. With hope that it would be better. That everything would be alright. That she should not fear. It terrified her just as much as it pacified her.

“Why did you stop?” Gabriel asked.

“Something was missing. A sound was missing.”

“What sound?”

His voice.

Turning, she rested her cheek on her knee and looked up at him. “I love the sun. And the moon. I love yellow. And lilies. The wind and the sea, oh I love the sea. Cold wind, too. I love winter, but only when it is not raining. Spring is my favourite. I love spring. But mostly I just love the sun,” she confessed. “Azriel once told me to make a list of what I missed from back when I was alive. Besides my brother, I could not recall anything else. Now I can give him a list.” She waited a moment. “The lilies. It was you, wasn’t it?”

For a few seconds, he just looked back at her, his eyes pacing between hers. “Would you hate them if I said yes?”

She’d doubted. She’d doubted for so long it had been because of him. “Why?”

“I didn’t know how to bring you out of your house. You’d never leave it. Only would sit in a window and watch outside of it.”

“How did you do it? Something like me isn’t able to touch without killing.”

“I bargained.”

An anxious flutter settled in her chest. “And my dreams? You got my nightmares to stop a couple weeks ago.”

His mouth twitched. “You knew it was me?”

“You told me to have sweet dreams. And I did. What did you bargain for them?”

“Nothing of importance,” he lied to her, and lifted a plate full of some sweet treats to her. “Have one.”

“I don’t have to eat,” she said, watching the strawberries dipped in chocolate laid out with a pang of disappointment.

“Doesn’t mean that you can’t.”

“They will surely taste like nothing.”

Grabbing a strawberry, he held it up to her mouth. “You will never know unless you try.”

Reluctantly and very slowly, she leaned forwards, her teeth digging on the fleshy fruit, and she paused, rolling her eyes up at his that were watching her with such smouldering attention.

It was sweet. It was the sweetest thing she might have ever tried.

He then lifted a spoonful of sweet, flavoured yoghurt to her, and she opened her mouth again, letting him feed her, and watching as he brought the same spoon back to his mouth and licked the rest of it clean. “So?”

“Sweet.”

Satisfied, he grinned at her and laid down, stretching on the blanket.