Page 42 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

“Because,” he murmured, nipping at her lips and slowly drawing another breath consuming kiss out of her. “I finally get to know how it feels to be alive.”

Silene’s chin quivered, her hands reaching to cup his face, revelling in how he felt in her hands, just as soft and strong and warm as she’d always imagined. “How?”

“If I tell you, I might scare you,” he whispered back, pushing her hair behind her ear and pressing kisses all down her jaw before taking her lips again. “I don’t want to scare you.”

“I might scare you, too.”

“There is nothing more I want,” he said, hauling her onto his lap and letting her straddle his hips. “Make me afraid. Terrify me. I still have not made my peace with this fate. I don’t think I ever will. So make me fear. Help me fear it for I know the pain will forever haunt me if I don’t make peace with it. Tell me why did you kiss me.”

Silene’s heart had never broken as such before. Shattered to pieces. “I’m not scared of disappearing,” she confessed, taking his hand and bringing it to her lips, kissing each knuckle and then his palm. “I couldn’t think of a better way to vanish and leave nothing behind. Just like this. In your arms. Being held by you. It would be a dream. The dreams of dreams. I keep wondering how it would feel, this death.”

“Nothing at all? No one at all?”

“Yes, nothing and no one.”

“You heartless little thing.”

She raised a hand to his face, feeling his skin under hers. “It would be better. Better than this. The longing…it might kill me again.”

“This is all my fault.” His hand came to her face, his thumb moving over her cheek. “I did this.”

“It couldn’t be helped.”

His eyes drew shut, and a pained look grasped his features drawn up in shadows by moonlight.

“You should go,” she said with a heart so heavy it was weighing down to her stomach. “There is no point—no point at all to this.”

“Please,” he begged, but she didn’t know what he was begging, or who. “Please.”

Light suddenly filtered in her room and she could see the desperation in his eyes now, too.

“Take your hands off her and get out of here,” a dark voice called from her doorway. Death stared at his brother and then at her, shaking his head at them both. “You cannot come and wreak havoc in my world, brother. You cannot come and confuse my people, weaken the land, weaken your own kin, your own brother!”

“She did it first,” Gabriel said, burying his face on her neck and making Silene turn red from the tip of her hair and down to her toes.

Azriel’s nostrils flared, and he glanced around the room, his dark gaze fixing on a liquor bottle that did not belong to her. “You’re drunk?”

Gabriel murmured something intelligible over her skin and then held her tighter, sighing and pressing his mouth all over her shoulder, her neck, her jaw.

“I will take him back,” Silene said, trying not to shrink back under Death's harsh gaze or under the pain she was starting to feel now at Gabriel’s touch that had weakened in his brother’s presence.

“You cannot touch him outside of my world. You know I can’t keep you safe out there.”

“I can touch him for just a few minutes.”

“Silene,” Azriel warned.

“I know.” She gave him a quivering smile, tears filling her eyes. “I know.” And she wasn’t scared.

She was sure his already dark eyes went a shade even darker. “No, you don’t. You cannot even begin to fathom the depths of chaos you would plunge if he were to hurt you, the trial your souls could be put through if you cross the bounds of death. There are worse things than I in this universe, Silene. I suggest you do not tempt them.” Death cocked his head back, his dark gaze shifting to his brother still holding onto her tighter than anyone had ever held her. “I will take him,” he said with finality, stepping inside her room and attempting to peel his brother off her and failing. “Gabe!”

Her hand went to his hair, soothing it back and forth despite the painful rot starting to set in at the tips of her fingers, “You have to go now,” she murmured. “I will come and see you tomorrow.”

“You will?”

“You have my word.”

Then he was wrenched out of her arms like a band aid stuck to her fresh wounds, left there half bleeding, half torn, with no hope.