4. Four o Clock

The morning after she'd met Gabriel had been strange, she'd woken exactly at sunrise. Not a second after or before. It had been a gentle wake. And Silene never woke up gently. She was always grappled awake by nightmares of the unkindest nature, those made of still memories. Though she could no longer feel tire or rest, she oddly felt rested that morning, full of energy she did not know a creature like her could feel any longer.

But the strangest thing of all?

Silene had seen a meadow. In her dream she'd been in a meadow, staring directly at the sun. She'd felt herself smile at it, even felt its gentle and kind rays warm her skin.

Then she'd woken up.

Feeling like something was missing and with a strange sensation in her chest that reminded her faintly of longing.

A letter was left on her kitchen table. Only a sentence written in neat handwriting across it.

Did you dream about me?

"No, you creep," she muttered to herself, shaking her head and narrowing her eyes around her house, wondering how he'd managed to get it in her home.

She could have sworn she'd heard his laugh reverberate around her home. A shiver trickled down her spine when new letters started appearing on the paper. Liar.

"Arrogant creep."

You forgot to add handsome in there.

"Stop it."

You're the one talking to a piece of paper, Silene.

After making sure to tear the letter to tiny little pieces and then feeding all of them to a candle fire, she got her garden clothes on and headed outside.

Silene stood still, unable to move by Lethe, carrying the bucket of water she'd collected from the river for her flowers, holding it tightly to her chest as she looked at where Death stood almost every morning and all nights, staring at the bright gates of life across the river, waiting for the human woman who he'd left his heart with to sail through them and back into his arms.

It was a love Silene wanted to envy, but she could never quite allow herself to. Because love had been a fault. Her greatest weakness. She loved hard, unconditionally. If anything, Silene had found it hard not to love, for she had been made with a heart so able, a heart that forgave all faults and saw no wrong, a heart that justified those that hurt it. It was a condition she'd been born with. One without a cure it had seemed.

"How must it feel to be loved by a God," she whispered as a warm gust of wind swept the meadow of daisies—a meadow that had been nothing but charcoal and dust before Azriel had spent seven days on a human realm and had found the love he now couldn't see, nor touch, only wait upon.

"Like a curse," someone answered her. Someone who had a lot of answers for her lately.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes. "You could just let me have this one."

"You are late for our meeting," Gabriel said, grabbing the bucket from her hands and holding it to his side. It was the most ridiculous sight Silene had seen, and she fought the urge to laugh at the most powerful God she knew holding a bucket of water.

She looked down at her timekeeper strung on a silver chain around her neck, but it showed her what she expected to see. She was not late—not at all. "You know time rarely exists the way we want it to exist. It doesn't exist at all sometimes even," she said, looking up at Death again. "Like when you look at someone you love but cannot yet have."

"I'd hoped you would forget him in time."

Silene couldn't help herself from turning to him, surprise colouring her expression. "Forget who?"

"My brother." A harsh look had fallen over his eyes again. "I understand the fascination with him from afar, but when you get up close he's a real prickly bastard. Not every girl's dream per se."

She snorted, bringing a hand to her mouth to cover her laughter that was turning just a little maniacal at this ridiculous misunderstanding. "I don't love your brother like that, Gabriel. He is my friend, and he reminds me of someone I once knew." She took another glance at the God who had sentenced her to five hundred years of haunting. "Someone I sometimes have wished time would help me forget. But the best time can do is pass. I hope it has passed for him, too. Taken him some place where our memories don't haunt him anymore."

"I can find him for you. You only need to ask me."

She shook her head, heading towards her lone cottage. "I won't haunt him anymore. He needs to be free of the ghost of me. It was all he knew anyway."

"Who was he?"

"No one, I suppose. In whatever lifetime he is living, I hope I'm no one to him. Ever again."

He followed her home, just at the very edge of Asphodel, lowering her bucket of water on the small pavement around her garden, and throwing a glance up at her cottage. "You live pretty far from the city of Asphodel."

"I've never liked people, and most don't change in death," she said, filling a watering can with some of the river water and spraying it over her lilies. "And I thought you never crossed the river?"

"I do not."

"Yet here you are."

"Yet here I am," he said, filling up another watering can and heading to water the rest of her lilies.

"Why?" she found herself asking, still a little stunned at the fact the God of Life himself was watering her flowers.

"I thought you wouldn't come."

"I would have come." She'd given him her word.

"Pretty," he said, staring right at her. "Your garden."

Her lashes fluttered fast. "Oh, thank you."

"Lilies."

"The only ones I can touch," she told him. "Oddly they used to be my favourite flowers when I was alive. Azriel will not tell me why I can still touch them."

For a second, the corner of his mouth lifted into barely a smile. "Oddly."

Yes, very oddly. "How did you get that letter in my room?"

"If I tell you I might have to kiss you."

She snorted, nearly laughed, too. Clearing her throat, she asked, "Tea? I keep some for Az when he comes around."

"Does he not have tea in his own damn home? Or is he too busy mopping around to make some himself?" he asked, almost sounding bitter.

"I like making tea for him." She gave him a look when he made to speak, and said, "No, it is not because I am madly in love with him."

Still looking like he did not believe her, he followed after her into her home that no one else but Az and her had stepped in. It was nothing grand or fascinating, but he took every single detail with such admiration, studying the paintings on her walls, the trinkets scattered around, running a hand over her sage velvety sofa and the furniture which she'd mostly assembled herself from scratch.

"Black or green tea?" she asked, reaching for the kettle.

"I had another idea," he said, putting a bottle of liquor on her kitchen counter. "I've never had a drinking buddy. My cat is more of a milk kind of guy."

Silene was overtaken with surprise. "You have a cat?"

"He's more of a deity, really, considering he makes me clean his shit and all those lovely tasks."

A chuckle sputtered out of her, and she put a hand to her mouth.

"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, uncapping the bottle of the amber coloured liquor.

Again, she only lifted her middle finger up at him.

"Come here," he beckoned her, sprawling in one of her kitchen chairs, the space around her suddenly seeming so small with him in it, so mundane and pale now that he was there.

Silene's eyes dropped to the clear bottle of golden liquor as she sat beside him. Though she could, she had never touched any human object when she'd entered the living panes, everything she owed was gifted or given by Azriel, which meant they had lost human value to have ended up in his possession—just like humans, objects had an expiration date. They, too, ended up in graveyards of their own. "I should get glasses."

Before she stood entirely, something pulled at the edge of her thin scarf. "Why make them dirty?" he asked, wrapping a finger around the material and slowly pulling her to sit back down.

Briefly, her gaze rose to his dark one before she reached her trembling fingers to wrap around the bottle neck. The glass was surprisingly cold against her skin. Silene didn't know she could even tell how things felt. Maybe her skin was cold. Maybe it wasn't the bottle. Maybe she couldn't feel anything at all anymore and everything felt cold to her.

Her fingers came loose, and she pulled her hand back to her side, staring at her palm in fear she'd somehow become human again, or something as feeble and breakable as that, as she had once been.

It was because of him. Life had made her feel like the most fragile thing to behold. And death had made her into an entity worth the fear of many.

Silene reached for it again, counting all of the things she could lose if she felt. The total came to nothing. There wasn't really much to lose anymore.

She felt it. The drink. Even though she wished she hadn"t because of the disgusting taste, she felt it. She even felt it burn her throat and then sour her stomach. She could feel it. And when she was done gagging and coughing, she smiled and then giggled like a lunatic, holding like it was the greatest invention of Gods and humans alike.

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.

The realisation struck her so fast that the bottle slipped from her hand, but he caught it before it could splinter on the ground.

"That bad, huh?" he chuckled, pressing the bottle to his mouth and taking one long drink.

"Disgustingly so," she muttered, coughing.

He pushed the bottle to her again and pointed to the corner of her kitchen. "What's with the cans of paint?"

"I'm redoing the kitchen cabinets. If I have time, I want to paint over the yellow walls. Azriel tells me they are atrocious every chance he gets, and apparently yellow is not a preferred colour to many."

"It's yours. Who cares."

The bottle lowered from her lips, and she rolled her eyes to his. "And how would you know that?"

"Because you have a yellow kitchen. A yellow picket fence. You always wear a yellow raincoat when it rains and on the wall there is a yellow umbrella with a bunch of bees on it, your white curtains have yellow daisies on them, your centre pieces are also yellow, there are daffodil paintings all over your living room and around the skirting boards." He took another massive gulp. "Would you like me to continue?"

"No," she muttered, throwing a look around her apparently overly yellow kitchen.

"Why are you redoing it?"

"For whoever will come after me. I want this house to bring them as much comfort as it has brought me."

He simply stared at her, forcing her to look away. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you pity me," she said quietly, biting her tongue.

"Maybe I do."

"Well, I pity you, too."

His head angled in her direction. "Why would you pity a God like me?"

Tapping the head of the bottle to his chest, she said, "Because a God like you can be anywhere, do anything, be anyone. Yet, you're here with me. You're really even more pitiful than me."

"You're making some sense," he mused, staring down where she was still pressing the bottle to his chest.

"And you're not. What do you really want with me, Gabriel? You promised to tell me today."

He drank another long gulp. "Companionship?"

"Why mine out of all?"

"I have everything to give and no one to give it to. Use me."

"That does not sound like companionship."

"We can overlook it."

"I don't have friends," she admitted. She only had one friend, Az. And only because he had not let her be and tagged along nearly most days even when she had not wanted company.

"I wouldn't go around shouting that. There isn't a great pride in loneliness."

"Pride is for the living. Besides, you have a brother."

Dropping his head back, he sighed. "As you always seem to remind me."

"You don't have to be alone."

"Then you know nothing about having a sibling."

"I had one," she admitted. "I had a sibling. A mother and a father. Just like you do." She had it all. In name—only in name. "He was the only friend I've ever needed. My only friend. I think I was his only friend, too, but he used to lie to me so I wouldn't worry about him being alone at work when he left for entire days and sometimes weeks to dig up the mines for whatever little coin they would give him." Silene had never felt the wound she'd thought had closed as raw as she felt it at that moment. And that was the most Silene had spoken of her one life she'd been granted and lived so little, for so little, so lifelessly. Though she had once dreamed of forgetting every agonising moment of that life, she was thankful Death had punished her with the curse of never forgetting a single moment. Silene did not know who she was without pain, and she was afraid—Silene was afraid that if she didn't remember the violence, she would forget who she was. Silene was afraid to live without remembering the pain. She was afraid that she might forgive herself for what she had done.

"You haven't tried to find them?"

She shook her head, taking the bottle and bringing it to her mouth, letting the liquor burn down the ball of longing in her throat. "I'd like to think two out of three are burning in a deep part of Azriel's hell. Over and over."

"And the third?"

"I'd like for him to think I'm burning down there with them."

"What could you have done for your brother to wish that?"

Silene's throat clogged with a sob. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters," he said, heading towards the cans of paint on the corner of her kitchen. "What if you're a murderous psychopath?"

She snorted, her nostrils burning from the liquor she'd had inhaled. "Maybe I am," she said, running a sleeve over her mouth.

"I want to be afraid. If only I could be."

"You're a murderer's dream victim."

He picked a can of paint and two brushes. "Is your brother the one you wish you were no one to? The one who Azriel reminds you of?"

Her tongue darted to lick her lips and his attention dropped there. "I don't think I want to tell you. You're not my friend."

"Can we not be friends?"

Silene took one stuttering inhale. "We can't."

"What if we pretend?"

"We can. Doesn't mean we should."

"We should," he said, standing over her. "We should pretend."

"And what do I get?" she asked, tilting her head up to look at him.

"The lovely experience. Come on, get up. I will help you paint the stupid cabinets."

"I don't need your help."

"We can do it twice if not thrice as fast, and you're not rich on time to lose doing something this stupid."

"It isn't stupid."

And that is how she'd ended up by his side, painting over her cabinets for almost two hours now. For someone who had never shut up in her presence, he was being oddly quiet. He'd not said a word almost the whole way through the first coat of paint, nor had she, but they had shared the bottle of liquor between them, silently passing it to the other while they were sat cross legged on the ground and stained all over with paint.

"Why…beige?" he suddenly asked.

"It's a well-liked colour."

"It's boring. The sage green was nice. The yellow on the walls is nice, too." He looked at her. "I'm so confused."

"About what?"

"You love colour so much, why do you never wear it?"

"What makes you think I love it?"

He arched a brow at her. "My mistake. The rainbows behind my back confused me."

Lifting her brush from the bucket, she flicked it in his direction, splattering paint on him. She froze, a hand flying to her mouth, shocked at what she'd done.

Ever so slowly, his head turned in her direction and he wiped the paint from his cheek. "So mature," he said, brushing just the very tip of his paintbrush on her jaw and smearing paint on her face.

Silene's mouth dropped open, and his brush came under her chin, nudging it shut again, smearing more on her skin. "You are inhaling all the paint fumes. Can't be good for you."

"Prick," she hissed under her breath, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve.

He only chuckled, shedding his black leather jacket and throwing it over a chair.

"Colour is for things that are alive," she confessed, carefully painting around a golden cabinet handle, and straining her eyes in an attempt not to glance at the tattoos curling around his thick biceps and all down his arm.

"Didn't know colour discriminated like that."

"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?" He shook his head, taking a big gulp of the liquor and handing the bottle to her. "Humans are obsessed with putting prices and worth on anything. Valuing and devaluing things that were never meant for them to value or devalue. Anything for the sake of greed, right? Anything for the sake of power? Ingrained on them from the very first breath they take."

"If you loathe humanity so much, why do you help it?" she asked, pressing the bottle to her lips and taking a small sip.

"Because I haven't lost hope in them. They're not all despicable. They're not all deplorable."

"Azriel would say the opposite."

"Someone has to still have faith in them."

"Can't even begin to fathom such a terrible burden," she said quietly.

"There are those who make it nothing but my greatest pleasure." Grabbing a towel, he wiped the paint droppings from his hands. "Let's let that dry. I will come back tomorrow to do the second coat."

"You don't have to do that."

"But I want to," he said, reaching to swipe the towel down her jaw and wipe away the paint he'd smeared on her.

Silene waited for a heartbeat, ignoring the gooseflesh starting to spread on her skin. "How did you know about my yellow coat? I must have worn it out like twice, maybe three times."

"It suits you," he told her, reaching closer to wipe under her chin. "You look pretty in yellow."

Azriel materialised in the middle of her kitchen, startling her to her feet. "Get off my realm," he said to his brother, fury painted across his star face. "That river is there for a damn reason, Gabe. To not be crossed."

Gabriel dropped the towel and stood, throwing an arm over Azriel's shoulders before smacking a loud kiss on his cheek. "You used to be so much cuter when you were younger."

"And you used to be somewhat saner," his brother said, throwing Gabriel's arm off his shoulder. "Don't know what happened along the way."

"You put a stick up your ass while I politely refused to join your particular kink for woes and misery."

Silene snorted.

"Leave," Azriel told him with finality, throwing Silene a betrayed glance. "You know very well what you'd do to my lands if you remain here long enough."

Gabriel turned to her. "Come with me. There is someone I want you to meet."

She worried her lip between her teeth as she contemplated the offer that she had the strange urge to automatically say yes to. Looking at Azriel, she asked, "Can I go with him?"

He looked the most taken aback she'd ever seen him be. "Why are you asking me?"

"You don't give me days off. What if I get in trouble?"

Azriel rubbed a finger over his temple and turned to leave her property, muttering all sorts under his breath.

The kettle screamed and roared behind Gabriel as he stood there in the middle of his kitchen, in a house where no one but him and his stupid cat had ever stepped in, mouth agape, staring at the most unusual thing he'd ever witnessed in his existence:

Silene, sitting on his couch, stretched over it while she used a scratch toy to pet his twenty-five-year-old cat that he was most certain was deathless, eternal, probably even immune to her touch. And when she cooed, murmuring all sorts of praises to the bag of hairy skin and brittle bones by the name of Tommy, he found the irresistible urge to cut that fraction of a memory and play it over and over and over.

His attention returned when she jumped from the couch, walking backwards as Tommy slowly prowled in her direction, meowing and possibly wanting some closer affection. "No, no, no, don't come closer."

"Tommy," Gabriel called, and hauled his archaic cat up to his chest, scratching behind his ears and pressing a kiss to his little pea brained head. "Silly, old thing. We don't chase pretty girls away. Not how we flirt these days."

"I could have hurt him," she said, voice low and a little shaken.

"Nah, Tommy is basically immortal." Reaching a hand to her, he said, "Come here."

He hated how she shrunk back into a corner. "I can't take that, and I'm fine standing just here."

His hand lowered back to his side. "Come here, Silene."

Reluctantly, she did as he'd told her, still not coming as close as he'd wanted her to be. "Pet him."

Silene's eyes shot wide. "I cannot. Unless you are offering him as a sacrifice or something strange like that."

Gabriel could not contain his laughter. "Bet I'd not even get candy if I offered his old bones to the God of Abundance himself."

"The cat can hear you," she scorned in a whisper.

"He's used to me by now."

Her fingers opened and closed into a tight fist at her side before she slowly raised her hand and rested it just above Tommy's head, shaking midair.

She let out a squeal when Gabriel lifted Tommy up to her hand. "There. See. Immortal cat."

"How?" she asked, trying to bite down her smile as she scratched Tommy under his wrinkly and hairy neck.

"You know how many times this little pile of old bones has been touched by death before I forced him to become a house cat?" When she gave him a sneer, he added, "I keep him alive."

Her hand froze and she pulled it to her side. "You seem to do that a lot. Keep alive things that don"t want to be alive."

"Tommy loves being alive," he said, lifting the animal up to smack a dozen kisses to his fat belly. "Don't you? You're just a little stupid."

"What will you do when his time comes?"

"Nothing. Nor he or I have control over that. If it is his time to go, no one can stop it. Unless he runs under a car. That we can definitely stop."

"Isn't that changing fate?"

"There are so many paths to fate. We make choices every day that lead us to many new paths. They erase and form, erase and form all over with every choice we make. If Tommy were to run under a car, would you want me to save him?"

Her lips parted. "Yes. If Tommy wishes to be saved."

Gabriel took a deep breath and let out a sight. "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?"

"And if they don't want to be saved?"

"How would they know they don't want to be saved if they've never been saved before? I'd rather take my chances," he said, lowering Tommy on the sofa as he went to grab the teacups. "I'd rather they hate me, I'd rather they blame me and hit me and curse at me than continue to exist knowing I could have done something and didn't."

"I think I want to go back now," she said when he put a teacup on the table for her.

"It's just tea, Silene. Just have a cup of tea with me."

Slowly and very reluctantly, she sat at his dinner table. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Just once, I've wanted to do this just once."

"Do what?"

"Invite someone to my home. Make them a cup of tea. Let them meet Tommy."

Though she did sit down on the other side of the table from him, so close to him, she'd now put up a thousand new walls between them. Gabriel wished he'd never spoken. That he'd just kept quiet to keep her close.

"So, it's just you and Tommy," she asked, studying the open plane space of his penthouse.

"I've got another room if you'd like to move in. It's mine, but we can share."

Her hazel eyes rolled to him, and for the first time there was some amusement there along the perpetual resentment for the silent crimes he'd committed to her, the many crimes he was certain she did not even know he'd committed. "How many other women have you offered to lodge here with you?"

"One. Her name was Grace." He pointed his head in Tommy's direction. "His girlfriend. She has lived in my brother's land for four years now. Not had a girl here since then, that"s why he got all excited."

Silene leaned onto her elbow, pressing her knuckles to her mouth to hide a smile away from him again. "Your tea making skills suck by the way. I might have been dead for a while, but this is the worst tea I've tasted."

He blinked at her and then down at both their teas. "How can anyone fail at making tea?"

"Did you pour milk before or after you poured the hot water?"

"Before."

Her mouth parted agape. "Blasphemy."

"The hot water burns the leaves and it tastes bitter."

"It certainly does not," she said, laughing, not hiding it from him this time.

He wondered if it had been by mistake. "Next time, you make it."

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth for a while before she nodded.

And like that, he might have just secured another day with her.

Another day where he would get the chance to finally confess the truth. He had to. It was bound to come out at any point, anyway.