Page 4 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

Her jaw twitched. “It was you who swayed.”

“What can I say? I like sad, pretty girls who look at me like they wish nothing more but to bury my existence six feet under.”

“You really must be bored.”

“Unbearably.”

Silene finally looked up at him, doubting her ears that had never heard such melancholy bleed from the voice of the man who beheld everything. “And do I entertain you?”

He shrugged a wide shoulder. “Grab a couple plastic balls and give it a try.”

A chuckle escaped her, the most unadulterated thing she’d allowed herself to do in front of someone she loathed more than anything, and she regretted that moment of weakness almost immediately.

Without a word, she turned and headed her way down the street to find another boat that would take her back to Asphodel.

“Why are you always in such a rush?” he asked, appearing right in front of her. “Scared you might actually have some fun or enjoy yourself for once?”

“If you say so,” she answered, pocketing her watch.

He reappeared ahead again. “You’re always so vague, Silene. Always so mild and plain. So boring.”

Silene simply raised a middle finger at the irritating God.

He only grinned back at her.

Before she turned to leave, she mustered the energy to utter a few more words, “Your brother misses you.”

“Aw, Isn’t that cute? My baby brother misses me.”

As she rolled her eyes and made to go on her merry way, something else forced Silene’s step falter and turn to him again. “So you came only because you wanted me to give the couple a few more minutes?”

“Unsure if I am being accused or not.”

“Why this one?”

“Why not this one?”

“Because you’re a selfish bastard.”

His smirk turned serpentine. “Your honesty charms me.”

She fashioned a bow at him and then turned on her heeled boots towards the invisible river flowing over the busy streets filled with cars honking angrily at the traffic, so clueless how close they stood to the afterlife. That the gates to beyond were so paper-thin.

Just before she reached the boat that usually sailed her back and forth the worlds, she stopped on her tracks, glaring at the presence that was haunting her worse than a Reaper usually haunted spirits. “This has been most unpleasant. Let’s not cross paths again.”

“Liar!” he shouted back.

And as Gabriel stood there, watching the pretty Reaper vanish into the fog of the invisible river that would carry her back into his brother’s lands, a grin stretched across his face. “Silene, Silene,” he murmured, testing the forbidding syllables on his tongue—a name he’d not allowed himself to call upon until this very day. Each and every vowel and consonant belonging to that name seemed new to him even though he was probably the one who knew her the longest out of every single creature that had ever existed.

Two o' Clock

Asphodel was like any other realm, maybe even prettier than most realms she’d visited. Except that light was not exactly light, the wind was truly not wind, but night somehow remained the same—filled with haunting dreams.

One thing about being dead that had not changed for Silene was the nightmares. Except that when she woke up now, there was no one there to let her know the nightmare was gone, that it wouldn't chase her, that it was not real. But he was gone, and she’d never find that comfort again.

There was only one person in her life she had truly loved, and she had loved him to her death. His, too. She couldn’t have left her brother behind, alone, afraid, in pain. So she had tried to take him with her, only to fail, for there was no fairness in death either, and her love had turned into a curse. A curse she had lived through the past five hundred years for she had taken what was not hers to take—two lives.

So Silene had lived accepting that her nightmares were never gone, that they were chasing her, that they were real.