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

by Wendy Heiss

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.

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.

Gabriel had not once kneeled before anything or anyone, king nor queen, God or Goddess, but for whatever he’d done to deserve her hate, he wanted to kneel before her and beg.

“I wonder,” he said, watching her chest rise and fall faster and faster the longer he remained there so closely to her. “I wonder how long you have known that I watch you, too.”

“Sweet dreams, my ruin,”

A chuckle sputtered out of her, and she put a hand to her mouth. His eyes dropped there. “You think I will steal all the babies in the world and sacrifice them for my eternal youth if I see you smile just once?” he asked,

counting all of the things she could lose if she felt.

Silene’s lungs couldn’t handle the way she was swallowing air. Like she was mad for it. She was wondering the furthest her mind had taken her in a very long time—she was wondering if she could also bleed.

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

Silene could almost swear that somewhere in there he was drowning, just as she was.

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

“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?”

He didn’t wish to ruin this memory of her, the first thing so close to what humans called a religious experience.

“I need some space.” His brows pinched with confusion. “Fine, pick a few stars or whatever else, and I will get them for you, what is the big fuss?”

“What would a ghost like me even need a hand for anyway?” She looked up at him just as a tear made its way down her cheek. “What’s the point of even having one if I can’t hold what I want to hold?”

Then there she was, my sad girl, alive and all mine yet not mine at all.