10. Ten o Clock

Azriel remained quiet for a long while after her request.

A request she had never thought she'd ever make.

"Krune is no more, Silene," her oldest friend said.

She did not know what struck her first at the news of her old town's fate. Relief or sorrow. "How can a town be no more?"

"It might not be for me to say."

Dread pooled in her stomach. "I should have asked sooner. About my brother, too. About why I didn"t see him when I arrived." She hugged her arms around her middle. "I was just hopeful it was a good sign that he wasn't. That he'd gone somewhere nicer, maybe been reincarnated already."

The quiet that fell between them had Silene's ears roar with noise of terror. "He did not die that day with you, Silene. He died a day later. Along with all of Krune. Then the entirety of your old realm followed."

Her feet swayed, and she braced her hand on the dark wall of his gloom filled home before she'd collapse. "What?"

"The poison you gave him did not take."

No, Silene had made sure. Silene had made so sure he'd go with her, she'd even used half her potion on him, too, so he'd go painlessly and faster than her even. "Then…then h-how did he die?"

Silene"s spine steeled straight when he lowered his head and went quiet, her hand flying to her mouth to muffle her cries. What had she done? Had she left him in her father's hands?

The man who sold her the poison had promised it would be quick and that it would not hurt. Even though her brother had hurt all his life, hurt was all he had known, she had not wanted him to hurt. She'd put more on his plate, so he'd leave without pain. She'd put her own half in it, too, when she had fed him that one last meal that evening—a meal they had never had before, one she'd given too much in exchange of the little coin she'd gotten only to make sure her brother at least had one good meal before his death. "How did he die, Azriel!"

"It took the strength of many. Luke died a God." His dark eyes met hers. "He'd found out about everything that morning when he woke and you didn't. When he'd gone to bury you and been told the truth by a passerby. He died avenging you. I found him amidst many deaths, hundreds and thousands. But the blood spilled was owed to him for what those people had done to you, had witnessed been done to you and remained quiet, so I left his soul behind, and someone else found him."

"W-Who?" she asked, a prayer more than anything—a prayer than nothing worse had found him.

"My brother," he said, and Silene swayed. "Luke had prayed for him. To bring you back in exchange for the price of his own soul. A request my brother did not have the power to grant because—"

"Because what?" she asked. "Because what, Azriel!"

"Because I took you away from his reach forever."

Her hand went to her throat, to the scar that had once been a wound—her last wound. A wound she'd had to inflict upon herself after she'd woken at dawn sick to her stomach and realising her portion of the poison had not been enough to kill her. A wound she'd opened with the very same knife she'd cooked her brother his last meal. "Is it because I…because I—"

"No, Silene. It was because of him. He made a bargain with me."

"A bargain? Gabriel made a bargain with you?"

"He did. And now he forever pays for it."

A bargain, Azriel's words whispered in her ear long after she'd left his home and travelled to a world she'd sworn to never step in, one she would not haunt. A world where Azriel had promised that her brother was happy. That was all Az had told her. She was to find out the rest—to piece the puzzle on her own.

Her feet remained rooted on the spot behind a tree trunk as she watched from afar a small wooden cottage surrounded by towering conifers, clouds of smoke pouring from its chimney and the hearth of fire in front of it.

At the small wooden table in front of the house sat a woman, probably in her mid-twenties, rosy hair, wearing a colourful dress scattered with bright flowers all over, and swinging her feet back and forth as she laughed because of something someone from within the house said to her.

Silene stumbled a step back when someone who painfully reassembled her younger brother stepped out into the garden, laying two plates of food on the table. He was much older though, face scarred, so much taller, shoulders filled with muscle she could never imagine her brother having from how little they were allowed to eat and how much he was forced to work in the mines.

A bright, teary grin spread on her face when she realised there was nothing left of the man she used to know. That he'd become better, grown, was happier.

She was about to turn and leave, happy with the closure she'd gotten, when the rosy haired woman screeched as he howled her over his shoulder, "Luke! Put me down!"

A sob escaped her, and she spun fast in his direction, losing footing and collapsing to the ground, her eyes filled with too many tears to see her brother clearly no matter how hard she tried to wipe them away. Why had she called him that name?

No. No. No. Luke Carver was gone. Luke was gone. He couldn't be Luke again.

She cried and cried, sobbing onto the hem of her skirt to stop herself from making any sound. What did this mean? Had he been sentenced to a fate like hers?

Az had to know. She had to ask Az.

When she braced a hand on the tree and pushed herself to stand, a branch cracked under her foot and the air went silent. Very slowly, as if afraid she'd startle some wild animal, she looked up at where the commotion had stopped, not expecting two pairs of eyes on her.

He was looking straight at her. Not through her as all humans did. No, her brother, or who had once been her brother was looking right at her. "Silene?"

She gasped, starting to back away, and dashing in a run through the forest that wilted under her forbidding touch.

"Silene!" Luke shouted, and she ran faster, her sobs bleeding out into the forest. "Silene, I know it is you."

Finally, she stopped even though the boat to Asphodel was only a few feet away. She'd left once like a coward, and though she did not dare ask for his forgiveness, he was owed an apology—for what she'd done to him, the brother she'd loved so dearly, harder than anyone.

"How is this even possible?" he asked, reaching for her, but she backed away, half astound at seeing her brother again and half terrified of what might have happened to him to be forced to remember her. Did he also have nightmares as she did?

Silene pressed a hand to her face and cried. No. No. No. She backed away even further. "You can't touch me. I don't even know how you can see me, but…you can't touch me."

"Why not?"

"Nothing I touch can live."

He frowned at her—her little brother frowned at her. Then he smiled. And as he did, she was struck, transported back in time. That smile was so like the brother she remembered. "You found me. That is all that matters."

"I never looked for you, Luke," she confessed, holding a shaky hand to her heart that felt as though it would fall through her stomach.

Her brother's face fell, as did hers when he said, "I looked for you everywhere, Lena."

The rosy haired girl appeared at his side, clinging to his arm. "You're his."

Luke looked between her and I, confusion marring his eyes.

"You're Azriel's," the woman continued. "That's why your brother could not find you."

"For what I did," Silene started, feeling time slip through her fingers. "Death wanted retribution."

Her brother's expression bled with fury. "I'm going to kill Azriel." Luke put both hands to his brow, shaking his head. "I'm going to kill him, Aurora."

The rosy haired girl, Aurora, gave a look of pity at both of them. "He would not be allowed to tell you, you know that, Luke." She turned to Silene. "As do you, I suppose."

Something struck Silene. "How do you know of him? How do you know Az?"

Luke would not look at her. "Because I am now like him."

"A God," Aurora said. "Vengeance. Gabriel gave him another life. In exchange—"

Silene tensed. "In exchange for what?"

"That he would haunt each and every soul with Gabriel's help and slay them for him."

"What souls?"

"Of those that hurt you," Luke told her.

He was there when she returned to Asphodel, right across the river—a river that felt like a thousand worlds apart as more seconds passed.

"You now know," he said.

"I do."

"What is your judgement, my ruin? Am I to be spared for what I have done?"

"And what have you done?" she asked, crossing the bridge to his side and kneeling beside him.

He raised a hand to her face, letting his finger ghost down her nose, her eyes, her lips. "Found you too late."

For the first time, Silene longed, burned to be touched. Her insides seared from desire to climb into his lap and bury herself in his chest. She'd finally picked her next grave, and the earth was so gentle to her this time. But somehow this time…she was afraid. She was so afraid, out of her mind with fear that she would not remember the earth she was buried in.

Silene found the need, the utter desperation to lean into his hands and let him do it, no matter the cost, but to her unfortunate luck, he pulled away.

"I've come to realise that I do not regret the life I had. It is the life my little brother loved me in," Silene admitted. "But I know I will regret the next one. Neither of you will be in it. I will remember neither of you either."

"Silene—"

"Please," she begged, and he stood, shaking his head. "You cannot leave me. You still have not given me my last demand."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "Fishing? You're really thinking about fishing at this moment?"

"I have no other tricks up my sleeve, Gabriel. How do I fool time any other way?"

"You will be happy, my ruin. You will be so happy, I promise you."

How could he not know? How could he not know that she was happy now?