2. Two o Clock

Asphodel was like any other realm, maybe even prettier than most realms she'd visited. Except that light was not exactly light, the wind was truly not wind, but night somehow remained the same—filled with haunting dreams.

One thing about being dead that had not changed for Silene was the nightmares. Except that when she woke up now, there was no one there to let her know the nightmare was gone, that it wouldn"t chase her, that it was not real. But he was gone, and she'd never find that comfort again.

There was only one person in her life she had truly loved, and she had loved him to her death. His, too. She couldn't have left her brother behind, alone, afraid, in pain. So she had tried to take him with her, only to fail, for there was no fairness in death either, and her love had turned into a curse. A curse she had lived through the past five hundred years for she had taken what was not hers to take—two lives.

So Silene had lived accepting that her nightmares were never gone, that they were chasing her, that they were real.

Silene's mind was like the ocean. There was never an ending where she'd go into the ocean and the ocean wouldn't drown her. But Silene had always managed to find a way to stay afloat, even when she'd been alive and the ocean had not been an ocean, but a deep abyss where many real monsters lived. Monsters she'd never been able to slay, who's filthy, soot-covered hands she still felt on her unfeeling corpse of a body she now lived in.

She'd found a way to float into the ocean, sometimes by baking food that she could no longer eat, mostly by sowing and knitting the pretty clothes she wore, often even planting pretty flowers in the garden of the home Azriel had gifted her long ago, a small cottage sitting on a lone hill surrounded by an empty horizon of fields planted with daisies and overlooking Lethe.

Silene often allowed herself to wonder, she wondered if the ocean would let her float like this for long, if it would cease to be merciful to her one day despite the branches she'd been hanging on. The only comfort to the thought was that soon, Silene would no longer wonder. After she would collect four more deaths, she'd be set free. A freedom she didn't really know if she wanted, but one gifted by Death, nonetheless. It would be her price for her service to him. A price that many spent on a new life, a new beginning clean of memories of any past life, a fresh start.

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. A wish she was not sure he'd grant her as the balance of souls would tip against her favour. A wish with a cost she was sure she would not be able to pay for she had nothing to give but riches made of wretched memories.

The small garden metal gate creaked open, but she did not stop ploughing the spot where she would plant her white lilies, the only flowers that did not die from her cold touch that was now a mark of death, the same hands she had used to mark her own death. There was only one who'd ever visited her, only one who had ever stepped inside the place she called home.

Every spirit and entity allowed into Asphodel knew nothing of Silene but of this one thing:

She could not stand to be touched or looked at or spoken to because none of those had ever been a choice for her before death. Her body nor her mind had never quite been her own, not once her father had figured a way to use both to bring him money to spend on liquor he'd later use to wallow for the misfortune that had befallen him for having to resort to selling his own child. Somehow, he'd always been the one who'd needed comforting after the coin he'd received from the men who had violated her body in ways she had never known a body could ever be violated until she'd been in their hands. And Silene, having all the love one could bear, had let him take that comfort. Sometimes almost letting him beat her to death, sometimes by letting whoever would pay him to beat her almost to death. But dying meant leaving her brother behind, so against every single desire of hers, she'd resisted death. For him, for her brother Luke. Because if she had died, it meant her fate would be passed to him. It was the only inheritance and legacy Silene could leave behind. That rotten fate. For his sake, she'd held on. Until one long night of pain when she'd been barely able to crawl with a pair of broken limbs, bloodied eyes and an entirely shattered soul.

A shadow fell over her and she tipped her head back, pulling her garden hat off to look at Death much less welcomingly than when she'd looked at him the night she had died. She frowned up at her oldest friend who never once had frowned back at her despite the fact that he frowned at almost everything else. "You're stealing light from my flowers."

He thrust his hands in his pockets, regarding her with somewhat of a strange look—the look he'd started giving her once she'd reminded him how near she was to fulfilling her duty. "The light in question belongs to me. How is that stealing?"

She rolled her eyes. "What do you want?"

"I have another death for you to collect."

Panic embraced her in a suffocating hug. "It's my day off." She'd never quite imagined time would pass so fast. Silene had so much to do before she'd leave. Her garden was not finished, and she'd only re-done half the window curtains for the upstairs floor and her kitchen needed a second coat of paint since a few dozen years had passed since she'd done it last.

Azriel chuckled. "You don't have days off."

"I request one."

"Request denied."

"These are unfair working hours."

"Complaining is welcome."

"I want to complain."

"Complaint received," he said. "Get your timekeeper and head to Asador."

"There again?" Her eyes were already sore from last time. Cement and glass were the last thing she wanted to see at the moment.

"People die every day, Silene," he said with a flare of dramatics so unlike him.

"So not funny," she muttered between her teeth, sneering at him. "Why me? You have about a thousand other Reapers. Why torture me?"

"Because this death is being held hostage, and you seem to be the only one my brother can't get through to."

Silene had no pulse, but something raced against her veins. She swallowed. "Well, if you didn't want him to get through things, you could send a wall."

"He can go through walls."

Her eyes narrowed on him. "Why is he interfering?"

Death stared at her with such a pale regard, never quite allowing himself to make his pity seen because he knew Silene was too proud to accept it kindly. Just like Gabriel had told her, Azriel had strangely not known of her existence either, not until he'd been there to welcome her into his world, where she'd found him watching her life over the reflection of Lethe, the clear waters that bore memories of the dead it carried. "I think you already know. I think you've known for a while."

Because of her, he had meant to say. He's interfering because of you.

When Silene had taken what was not hers to take, she'd fallen into debt with another unforgiving God. In a way entirely different from the way she was indebted to Azriel. She'd robbed Gabriel. While she could pay back Death, there was no way for her to pay back Life. Nor did she want to. In her account, he was indebted to her in ways he also could not pay her back.

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.

"Don't send me there," she said, lowering her pride just this once. "Please."

"He can't hurt you, Silene."

"You know he can." His presence was like a beacon, a fiery hearth. The closer you got to him, the more alive you felt. It defrosted the very air of death around her; it made her feel human again—in the worst ways possible.

"He won't harm you," Azriel assured. "Never. And you know that, too, Silene."

A box. She'd been sent inside a big, dark box with flashing colourful lights that made her almost nauseous. One where they were playing pounding noise they shamelessly called music, while jumping up and down to it. That's where the residents of this dull world found most fun. That and at the bottom of a liquor bottle or a small pill which took their minds out of their bodies, and usually their guts, too.

But Silene had lived too little to fully understand, so she took that moment to observe this side of humanity. The world she'd lived in had been very different from Asador, primitive and poor and sickness filled compared to this one, but in a way, its people were the same. Ghosts. Empty shells made of flesh and bones. Unfeeling. Determined to sink their claws into everything innocent and evil at the same time to find that high of being human felt. Always at the cost of others. Never thinking of their faults. They'd all learnt to justify their evil.

Silene's ears were pounding along the beat of the monstrous music blasting from the speaker devices overhead. Half of her other senses had also been made void from the rapid flashing lights that flickered in all sorts of colours.

The crowd of people all recoiled when she stepped between it, shivering and emptily searching for the presence they had unwillingly encountered and couldn't see, only feel. Silene was like an omen. One you could only summon once, and only when you grazed the precipices of living.

There, above a slightly raised floor over the club, sat on a big round table filled with glass bottles of alcohol stood Jenny, the young woman she'd come for tonight, her name already engraved on the stones of Asphodel.

Silene had never really hesitated. She liked to do what she was sent to do fast. But she was hesitating now. Standing frozen under the steps leading to her as she looked up at the God who had his arm thrown over Jenny"s shoulders, holding her time hostage for reasons Silene couldn't even begin to think of. All of them which seemed to revolve around her considering what Azriel had told her.

Gabriel had stilled, too, staring down at her under his lashes, the crystal glass filled with liquor held stuck to his lips. It was then she noticed how his chest had stilled, too, no longer expanding with a breath.

She didn't understand the surprise in his eyes when he'd been the one to summon her there tonight.

He didn't look away from her as she rounded the dance floor and started climbing the stairs to him. Gabriel raked one too many long looks over her before those hollow eyes of his met hers, clinging to hers like a magnet.

It frustrated her. Not because she couldn't stand it. It was for a different reason entirely. It was like he could see right through her. Through every single thought of hers.

Gabriel was known for having a thing about skeletons and closets. He never left them alone. If anything, he loved digging up every single bone. He loved to piece them like a puzzle and then scatter them again over fire once he was bored. No story about him was kind.

He set the glass down on the table. "Don't you look pretty for me again, Miss Carver."

She almost reeled back at the name she had not carried since her death, a name gifted to her at birth by the man who'd sired her.

Even though he was far from her, she could almost feel his fingers over her skin, skimming down the length of her limbs for another bone to dig out of her flesh.

"Let go of her," Silene said, standing a few feet from them. He knew very well he couldn't interfere with her work. Yet here he was. Interfering again.

Gabriel only stretched back, pulling the woman even closer—the woman who should have been dead minutes ago. "If only you were a little bit more polite. You're polite to everything. From rocks and trees. You even apologise to ants for stepping on them by mistake. Am I so undeserving?"

"Yes."

Jenny looked around and then blinked up at him. "Who are you talking to?"

The odd God leaned in and flashed her a smirk even though his eyes had rolled in Silene's direction. "A pretty Grim Reaper with a strange, strange fetish for lace who looks like she wants nothing but to stab me to death," he whispered to Jenny, making her burst out laughing.

Gabriel liked games. For some reason, he was now wanting to play them with her. But the thing with dying was that it made one unbothered. Even by the most powerful God there was. Very little impressed Silene. Nothing as much as death did. "I have to take her. Her soul is already dead. If it starts rotting before her body does, we both will be in trouble."

"Then come here," he said. "Come take her."

"You know I can't do that." 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. There were consequences in stepping into one another's space. She'd challenge those rules if only not for the fact that she was now merely four deaths away from fulfilling her service.

The smirk he wore told her exactly what she needed to know. He was doing it on purpose. To test her limits or to just simply annoy her, she didn't know, and she wasn"t really up to finding out. "I will let you have her if you give me something in exchange."

"Or you can just give me her with nothing in exchange and we can cut this unnecessary interaction."

"I don't particularly want to."

To Silene's much unfortunate luck, she again had no choice when she was faced with life. "Fine. What do you want?"

He smirked as if she was in the possession of some grand power he'd always wanted for himself. "I want so much, Silene," he drawled. "But I don't wish to be greedy, so a day would suffice."

"What day?" she asked, frowning at him.

"One of your days. For a day, you're mine, not my brother's."

Silene swallowed, feeling taken aback at his request. His? What had he meant by his? "I don't even know if that is possible."

"It is."

"I can't serve you unless he lets me."

"Not serve."

"Then what?"

"Curious, curious, pretty Silene," he cooed. "Patience."

"What if he won't let me?"

"He will let you when I ask him."

Her lips parted without words. "Then why did you ask me when you can force me?"

He took a sip from his drink, his eyes still never leaving hers. "Because I'm a gentleman?"

Despite the many words she wanted to throw back at him, the five-hundred-year service Silene had completed under Death's wing was enough to know that any battle started with Gabriel was a lost one.

Life had a penchant for cruelty.

Cruelty only he could deliver.

Cruelty she'd witnessed.

"Fine, have your damn day," Silene blankly said, bringing out her pocket watch and flipping the metallic lid open to count down the seconds till the woman's lifetime would end. "Now hand her to me." The watch was still silent, the pointers frozen ten minutes to twelve as they had been stuck for at least a few hours now. This was how Silene had ended up there tonight.

Pushing from the velvety sofa, he stood and took slow steps in her direction, stopping only an arm length away from her, the closest he'd ever gotten to her. The space between them always seemed to grow closer and closer each time they'd met. "Tomorrow. Meet me on the rooftop of this building."

"To do what?"

"What does my brother ask you to do besides this?" he said, raking his eyes all over her. "Besides tour guiding."

"Nothing."

"Then we will do nothing," he said, stepping even closer, and Silene held her breath, expecting pain or something else to strike her. "Do I steal your breath away, pretty Silene?"

"Maybe you stink."

He threw his head back and howled with laughter. Silene couldn't help but stare at the column of his throat marked by dark tattoos, she couldn't even stop thinking how it would feel to run her fingers down each of them and through his hair, too. She loved his hair. So soft, always glowing under sunlight, always casting shadows over his eyes to turn the vivid blue into an ocean of tempest.

Life was beautiful.

He'd just not been beautiful to her.

"What are we thinking of now?" he asked, his gaze snaring her. "The things I'd give to know what tortures you're thinking for me."

"I don't think of you."

"Let's not lie."

"Kindly," she added.

"There we are," he cooed, a hint of a smirk ghosting his lips. "Tomorrow, I want to hear every unkind thought you have for me."

"That meeting could be a letter. A very long letter, but I suppose I'd be able to find just enough paper to squeeze in the most important stuff."

"I'm more of a people person." He threw her a wink. "I will see you tomorrow, Silene."

Faster than she could react, the back of his fingers grazed hers as he went past.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he was gone, taking the stairs leisurely.

The spot over her knuckles where he'd touched had turned a deep purple bruise that felt sore when she raised her other shaking hand to touch the skin that still felt warm from the forbidden contact.

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.

"Are you glaring or staring?" he shouted over the deafening music when she remained rooted on the spot, watching him.

"Neither," she shouted back.

"Admiring?"

"Wishing."

"Wishing for what?"

"For you to take a tumble down those stairs," she muttered to herself, and then offered him the sweetest fake smile she could muster when he looked at her over his shoulder.

To her chagrin, he offered her a real one back. "Heard that."

Her lip tipped in a sneer and she wretched her attention from him just as the timekeeper in her hand started ticking once again. She sighed, smacking the lid shut and turning to the woman laying lifeless on the sofa. Her spirit stood right above her body, watching down on herself.

"Hi," Silene started, beginning to recite the same script she had memorised the first day she had been made to serve Death. "My name is Silene. You and I will take a little trip."

"A trip? Trip to where?" Jenny asked, hugging both arms around her unfeeling self. But just like a lost limb, even souls could feel the phantom pains of death a little after they had died. Silene knew it well. For her own phantom pains had lingered a while. Maybe they still did.

"Not far. Not near. A place you've always been close to, but just far enough."

Gabriel had retired to his home earlier than he had planned to, only so he could watch her.

The penthouse he shared with the grumpiest old man he knew overlooked the river invisible to the human eyes that coincidentally flowed over a busy street between two skyscrapers and disappeared down a square.

Tommy, his cat, scratched the glass wall, unbearably patient as always.

"In a minute, you old idiot," Gabriel muttered. "She will be there in a minute. You know she loves to chat them up first." He chuckled. "Probably telling the girl what a dick I am."

And like he'd predicted, she walked alongside the girl's soul, chatting about with her, the both of them laughing as Silene helped her onto the small boat that would take her to Asphodel.

He watched her wave at the girl's soul as the boat disappeared further down the non-ending river until it entered a body of mist that separated the worlds.

Silene remained rooted there, waiting for another boat for almost half an hour. She did not turn or look or take a walk. Patiently, she waited there, in one spot, hands laced at her front, not moving an inch. As did he. Frozen there at his window, he simply stared at her.

Gabriel bent to pick up his fat cat and brought him to his chest. "Look at her. Isn't she pretty like I've told you?"

Right at that moment, as if she had heard him, Silene turned around to face his building and tipped her head up, forcing Gabriel to hold a breath. She could not see them, that much he was sure about.

He braced when she started raising her hand up, nearly folding over from laughter when she gave him a middle finger.

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