Where the Light No Longer Follows (Blue Fairytales, #3)

by Wendy Heiss

In a sense, death agreed well with her. It had made her invisible. Untouchable. It had made her everything that she had wished to ever be. Somehow, though, to her deepest chagrin, she was still not invisible to life. To him. The one she’d wished the most to be invisible to.

“We can still love things that don’t love us back.”

That was her curse. It wasn’t her lethal presence that had been gifted by Azriel hundreds of years ago when she’d stepped on his lands. Her curse was to feel guilt she didn’t deserve to carry. It wasn’t her fault. She was merely a messenger. A guide. But she was taking—she was taking something that didn’t want to be taken. She’d been cursed to take, just as she’d taken from him, the one who was neither man or God and was standing so closely to her.

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.

“Because remaining to see and not be able to touch what your heart burns to have is worse than leaving them behind.

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

But Silene wanted to vanish. She wanted her being to be erased from existence. She longed to feel herself disappear, to suspend into nothingness, to be so light from memories and existence itself that time would carry her so easily afloat into someplace where she was between nowhere and nothing.

In her worst moments, life had just kept going. And Silene never quite forgave him for that. A grievance he seemed to know about, too. One she did not want him exploring.

Death and life could only meet so close because they never meant to find a middle. It was one or the other, circling the orbits of one another.

Life had a penchant for cruelty. Cruelty only he could deliver. Cruelty she’d witnessed.

Life was beautiful. He’d just not been beautiful to her.

Nothing could hurt Silene. Nothing but him. Nothing could ever make Silene feel human again. Nothing but him. She could not allow him to get any closer.

Despite never falling for any of it, he’d still been wary of how he loved his brother. Gabriel was afraid—he was afraid to love his brother properly. Truth was, Gabriel was afraid to love anything at all. The only way he’d ever loved had been from afar. As they were now. A river apart and both standing on different sides. He could only love his brother like that without hurting him.

“You could hurt her. Really hurt her.” Something cracked in his chest at his brother’s words. “Never again.”

here. So close to a new life.” So close to forever slipping through his fingers, burned out of her memory, burned out of his, too. Once she would fulfil her service to his brother, that’s when his punishment would start.

But one can die many other deaths without one's life being taken.”

“I was more afraid of living. It is such a burden we are given. Life is such a burden.”

“To keep living is a burden when you find no meaning in it, to keep watching years go by as you rot away body and soul with the only thing that could hurt you intact all the way through. If I’d lost my mind, it might have been easier. It would have been a kindness, you know, for you to have granted me that at least.”

The very few prayers she’d made had been for his demise. And demise had found him. Right at her feet. It had taken him one curious glance at the woman who had made him laugh with her hate, only to find himself not wanting to be hated.

“Why not hate me if I have been so cruel to you?” “I think I wasn’t made capable of hate. All of it might have been easier if I had just found a way to hate. If I had clung to it, I might have found some meaning in living.”

“And love? Did you not love?” “I did. To the point of suffocation. I should have loved a little less, maybe I could have been able to hate more.”

He wanted to remember her. Everything about her. He wanted everything about her engraved on his skin, for the ink to take root on his bones, for them to feed into his marrow.

It was a love Silene wanted to envy, but she could never quite allow herself to. Because love had been a fault. Her greatest weakness. She’d loved hard, unconditionally. If anything, Silene had found it hard not to love, for she had been made with a heart so able, a heart that forgave all faults and saw no wrong, a heart that justified those that had hurt it. It was a condition she’d been born with. One without a cure it had seemed.

“You know time rarely exists the way we want it to exist. It doesn’t exist at all sometimes even,” she said, looking up at Death again. “Like when you look at someone you love but cannot yet have.”

It was because of him. Life had made her feel like the most fragile thing to have ever been created. And death had made her into an entity worth the fear of many.

Though she had once dreamed of forgetting every agonising moment of that life, she was thankful Death had punished her with the curse of never forgetting a single moment. Silene did not know who she was without pain, and she was afraid—Silene was afraid that if she didn’t remember the violence, she would forget who she was. Silene was afraid to live without remembering the pain. She was afraid that she might forgive herself for what she had done.

“What’s the point of anything, Silene? Why does anything have to have a point, or make sense, or have worth, or anything like that? Why can’t it just merely exist?”

“Humans are obsessed with putting prices and worth on everything. Valuing and devaluing things that were never meant for them to value or devalue. Anything for the sake of greed, right? Anything for the sake of power. Ingrained in them from the very first breath they take.”

“You’re asking me to let go of something I love just because they wish to be let go.” “It isn't for you to choose.” “How is it not? If they let me love them, why won’t they let me save them?” Her gaze shivered as it bore into his. “And if they don’t want to be saved?” “How would they know they don’t want to be saved if they’ve never been saved before? I’d rather take my chances,” he said, lowering Tommy on the sofa as he went to grab the teacups. “I’d rather they hate me. I’d rather they blame me and hit me and curse at me than continue to exist knowing I could have done something and didn’t.”

“What am I to do with a heart I cannot use to love her, Silene?”

“I want a victorious end, too.”

What was the purpose of my existence? Was I there just to suffer?”

“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 what kept him alive in there, do you know that? Do you know how much power you had, Silene?”

He simply looked at her, and she’d already heard every word he did not say out loud. She shook her head. “Don’t do that either. Don’t give me back my hope. I don’t want it.” “I want to give you everything, Silene. Let me give you everything.” “Why?” “I want to bring you to a theatre full of people and for you not to fear them.” For a moment, Silene remained frozen, letting his words wash over her. She’d never been so scared as when she asked, “Am I the girl?” “You are.”

“Have my heart. Wounded, sick, or scarred. In your hands not stolen or gifted but surrendered. Became a half when it met yours, so in the eyes of Gods let it become whole again,”

“My taunting eidolon, my lovely apparition, my beautiful phantom,” he murmured as a tear fell against the glass frame. “How many more nights must I mourn you?”

“All things die, Silene. All living things wish they could die by gentle hands. This rose will have the gentlest, kindest death of all. A mercy to wither in your hold.”

No colour had ever mattered to Gabriel. Colours were just colours. But her eyes. Oh, her eyes. The moment he’d looked into them long ago, every existing thing had held a breath with him in acquiescence. He was sure nothing to ever graze any realm, space and nook in the vast universe could replicate that very same colour. He remembered the very first thoughts that had crossed his mind back then. That he wanted to bottle it, to make it an elixir for the unexplainable heartache it had given him.

“You’re the only thing that doesn’t die by my touch,” she said.

“And you’re the only thing that dies by mine.”

Suddenly overpowered with a strange sensation that vaguely reminded her of grief. She felt as if she was leaving someone else behind—one she could not take with this time.

“Some live fast, Silene. Some live slow. Some live loudly, and some live quietly. Some have the choice, and some don’t. Some like the company of others, some don’t.”

“If I could steal anything—anything at all,” he breathed, “I’d steal just a kiss from your lips.” Harsh wind swept across the hill as she sucked in a breath before saying, “I would have given it to you.”

Why would they both be sentenced to such a fate? What had they ever done to deserve it?

“What’s the point of even having one if I can’t hold what I want to hold?”

“I should have obeyed the fates, I should have stayed away,” he said, pressing a hand to his head and grasping at his hair. “At least I couldn’t hurt you then.”

She bruised and bled like no other. So much so that her father had turned her into a spectacle for it. But why was he not laughing like her father and the monsters made of men had? Why was he staring at her as he was? Why had he never laughed?

“How am I even losing you?” he said, his mouth stretching into a trembling smile despite the tears in his eyes—tears that softened the very ground she stood on. Silene’s world had never been shaken the way it did just then. “You were never even mine.”

“I don’t know what I am without them,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I am without the violence.” “You’re Silene. My beautiful Silene with the gentlest, kindest hands. It wasn’t the violence that made you gentle, my ruin, it wasn’t the violence that softened you. You were kind and soft and gentle despite it. You won over all. In spite of all, you won. They could not change you, nor your heart—your kind, gentle heart. And what they could not change they hurt. So let me take it away. Let me rip apart those memories for you.”

“Why did you kiss me?” “Why did you?” “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.”