The Magnificence of Death

by Rhea Rainwater

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." Agatha Christie

I didn’t know it then, but the price of life is death, and I had traded his soul for hers. Even now, I cannot regret it. If I had known, I would have made the same choice again. And that’s the sin. One day, I woke up and decided to play God.

His presence was powerful and intoxicating, but in the way of a great and terrible danger. It was a snare that you couldn’t help but get caught in.

Grief was my constant companion, its echoing halls my home. The place where love once dwelled, before Death was cruel enough to steal it from me.

Death. Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The real thing. The raw, ancient presence of it. Time stopped, because he willed it.

“Astoria Devlin Tempest, what have you done?”

“What are you?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself. “What are you?” he countered, his eyes devouring me beneath a quizzical brow. “You are what I am not. I am not what you are.”

Death was the omen that plagued all of humanity at birth. It was the ticking embedded in our ribs, the expiration sealed in the soft spot of our skulls. It was an inheritance, silent and absolute. Not a man with a blade, but a law. A rule that never changed. He doesn’t come for you. He’s always been with you.

Motioning me over, he took the brush from my hands and snapped his fingers so that the soft voluminous curls I’d just tamed into place reversed to their disorderly chaos of red trailing down my back. “I like it better this way.”

If her sorrows no longer held her down, would she burn like her hair? Would she light up the world, leaving a trail of broken hearts in her wake? Would she—could she—become something even more dangerous?

But a dark, treacherous part of me wanted to keep her, wanted to wrap myself around her and never let go.

“You came,” I said in a hush—trying, but failing, to hide the relief in my voice. “You called,” he replied, as if it was that simple.

“Astoria Tempest…” he choked out. "I’ve never known a curse quite as formidable… or as bewitching as you.”

“If you had a heart, I’d drive a knife through it.” I tilted my head. “If I had a heart, I’d offer you my own blade.”

Deep down, buried in a place I wasn’t ready to excavate, I knew the truth. There was more to our story than a curse.

You not only cheat Death, but you stole from Time, and you blinded Fate. A few weeks ago, Death appeared and asked me to show him your curse, and this just appeared.”

I told her forever was a long time, but I never explained that—It. Wouldn’t. Be. Enough. Not for me. Not for us. Not when she’d somehow burrowed her way inside me.

She was a curse, yes. But she was also something more. Something that threatened the rigid order I had always clung to. I could feel it in the way she moved, in the way she looked at me, in the way she made me question everything I thought I knew about duty and balance. And that terrified me.

I envied the living, for they could die, and because they could die, they lived.

She didn’t know it, but she was everything I couldn’t have. Everything I wanted. She was the one thing that made me feel as though I wasn’t trapped in an endless cycle.

“I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m around you. I’ve spent eternity mastering patience, keeping balance, maintaining distance. But with you... I lose track of time. I forget what I'm supposed to be.”

now I think it’s because that’s what you represent to me.” “A star?” “Not just a star. The star. The one thing bright enough to make even Death look up.”

My darling curse. My sweet night. Wild, unruly girl, with emeralds for eyes… I fear you may be my undoing.

"I don't want your firsts," he said, the words agonized. "I want your lasts. Your last kiss, your last laugh, your last life… your last breath.”

"Your darkness has always felt like my light," I confessed, my voice breaking apart between us.