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

by Wendy Heiss

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

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

“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,” was all she said.

Gabriel wondered—he wondered if she’d always sensed him, if she knew he’d always been watching her for years, for hundreds of them.

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

“It’s because of you, you know,” she said, looking up at him with such disdain. “That I am cold. I don’t get cold. I can’t get cold anymore. I haven’t been cold in five hundred years.”

“I kept wondering why out of all you’ve never come to me once in hopes I would grant you another chance at life or a chance at seeing someone you left behind. At some point, the dead always want a bargain with me. Always in death.” He chuckled a little. “They all love me more in death.”

“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.”

hand. “People like me never die violently.” “People like you?” he asked,

“People who have only ever known violence,” she said,

“What’s the point?” she muttered under her breath. “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?”

“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?”

“There was this one bargain I once made. In exchange for what I wanted, I had to give her up. The only way I could have her at all was if she wanted me to have her. I kept waiting for her to call for me, to ask for me, to want me. It was something unrequited in the end.”

“Who could possibly dare break your heart, Gabriel?”

“She did. Many times. The fault might be mine. I keep offering it to her, but she does not want my heart. Nor to break it, nor to bury it, nor to tear it up to tiny little pieces. She does not want it at all.”

“What am I to do with a heart I cannot use to lo...

“At first, I hoped that if I waited, I might begin to matter more to you. Only for you to matter more to me in the end.”

The next day he’d written: You will have to leave your room. Your lilies look like they need water. And the next day it read: I’ve watered your lilies, you cruel Reaper. And the very next: You must miss me. Surely, you miss me. Then again, the very next: Let me see you. Fine, let Tommy see you. And another: Come out of that damn home and glare at me, shout at me, come out and throw rocks at me, and tell me every single thing you hate about me, but just come out. Please. I can let you throw stuff at Tommy, too, if you’d like. PS: Your lilies are looking a little sad. Are their stems supposed to be bending like that?

“I hate that I have to look up at you every time I do so,” she lied. He stepped close to her, almost making her drop from her chair again when he got down to his knees right there at her feet. “Now talk to me.”

“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,” she said, dropping her gaze from his and blinking in at her surroundings. “I think that’s how it goes.”

“Smart little creatures humans are. To know of their worth. But wretched, for what they don’t deserve, they have sought to ruin.”

“You’re so beautiful, Silene. I wanted someone to think you’re mine. Anyone. Even if only briefly.”

“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?”

“A surprise,” he said, bringing a rose from behind him and brushing the soft petals against her cheek and down her jaw before offering it to her to take. “It will die,” she said, hiding her hands behind her back. “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.”

“Does that mean you’re up for keeps if he didn’t exist?” “That sounded like a very vague threat to your brother.” “It was.”

“To keep those I love safe, I would have accepted a life in a secluded box floating in the universe aimlessly.”

“Shouldn’t you be the pacifist of all Gods? The most docile of them all?” “What about me is docile? My power is violent, perhaps the most violent of all. Uncontrollable. It can grow a flower as it can grow a tumour. It can bring hope as much as it can bring ruin. Once life takes root, I no longer possess any control over it, it can either bloom or rot. The purpose of my existence was to give life, not to control it.” He dipped his finger on her buttercream and brought it to his lips, licking it off. “Weren’t you the one to tell me that I've never been the good guy? I’d rather you don’t grow fond of me, my desolation.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You both made unbreakable bargains, Silene. There are worse things than forgetting,” he said. “Remembering is one of them.”