9. Nine o Clock

Unlike the many past nights of light and steady rest, something had overtaken Silene's body, placing her into another world and letting her mind wander there. She'd been thrust back in her dark world of nightmares all of the sudden after she'd taste peace.

When she woke, the darkness had wrapped around her like a capsule, the candlelight she always kept on had died. She patted the bed next to her, whimpering and crying as she hoped and prayed to everything and everyone that it had been just a dream and that she was not back in her old body, laying beside someone who'd slowly been driving her to choose death.

As she frantically searched into the darkness of the room for monsters that would jump her without warning like they always did, pinning her down and violently taking what she did not give permission to be taken, her lips quietly shaped into the letters of his name, time after time like an incantation.

Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel.

"Please," she finally whispered at the end of her silent chant.

And the darkness answered. It answered for the first time ever. "I'm here"

Silene sucked in a sharp breath, staring right ahead at the direction of that familiar voice despite not being able to see a thing. But she knew he could see her.

"What was it, my beautiful demise?" he asked.

Her voice was too small, too wounded by memories as she muttered, "Just a bad dream."

"What dares to worry you at night?"

Hugging her knees to her chest, she whispered, "Memories."

"Shall I take them? Shall I wrench them away and gut them apart one by one?"

"I don't know what I am without them," she admitted. "I don't know what I am without the violence."

"You're Silene. My beautiful Silene with the gentlest, kindest hands. It wasn't the violence that made you gentle, my ruin, it wasn't the violence that softened you. You were kind and soft and gentle despite it. You won over all. In spite of all, you won. They could not change you, nor your heart—your kind, gentle heart. What they could not change they hurt. So let me take it away. Let me rip apart those memories for you."

Silene held onto that offer and his words like the most precious thing she owned. "Maybe, maybe I will let you take them away."

"You called for me," he said.

Her trembling lips parted as she confessed, "I did. But you were already here, weren't you?" She could smell the air scented with lavender, it had been what had dragged out of nightmares.

"I was."

"For how long."

"Since you fell asleep."

She bit into her smile. "That is disturbing."

A faint chuckle seeped into the darkness.

She sat up a little more, pulling the sheet to her chest when an unusual breeze swept from her open window, causing her to shiver and finally notice how very little she wore. "What were you doing in my room?"

"I had a question for you."

"Couldn't it wait?"

"The question could, but I couldn't," he said, dropping something on the table from the sound of it. "I had to see you."

"I can take a picture, so you don't have to come all the way here next time."

Though the room was in absolute darkness and Silene couldn't even see down her nose, she was entirely too sure he was grinning at her. "Of what kind?" he asked.

Her hand moved on its own volition as she grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it in his direction, another faint chuckle following. "You can't stay here for this long."

"What's the worst that can happen?"

"The universe could crumble. You're the greatest paradox in this land."

"Death sleeps. Fates sleep. Every existence there is sleeps. Only you and I are awake tonight." Silene jerked back when Gabriel's voice spoke directly in her ear instead of where he was supposed to be across the room. She had not imagined it. Because the moment she drew a deep breath, her lungs filled with his warm scent of lavender. "Do you know what I've done tonight, my ruin, to have just one moment with you, like this? The waters I've poisoned, the air I've stolen, the stars I've bewitched, the Gods I've lied?"

"Gabriel—"

His name stuck to her lips when he pressed his own over them in a harsh kiss.

She was sure the whole universe had frozen. That time had vanished entirely. Maybe she was still in a cruel, cruel dream.

Especially when nothing happened. There was no pain. Not at all.

There was no pain when she kissed him back, not when her hands grasped his shirt to pull him to her, nor when one of his hands cupped the back of her neck and the other banded around her waist to plaster her against him entirely. Seconds passed; minutes passed. Maybe none at all. Their limbs had tangled with one another"s, her fingers grasping his hair and his grasping hers as they kissed like two stars merging. She could not touch him enough and nor could he.

Gabriel pulled away only to ask, "Why did you kiss me?"

"Why did you?"

"Because," he murmured, nipping at her lips and slowly drawing another breath consuming kiss out of her. "I finally get to know how it feels to be alive."

Silene's chin quivered, her hands reaching to cup his face, revelling in how he felt in her hands, just as soft and strong and warm as she'd always imagined. "How?"

"If I tell you, I might scare you," he whispered back, pushing her hair behind her ear and pressing kisses all down her jaw before taking her lips again. "I don't want to scare you."

"I might scare you, too."

"There is nothing more I want," he said, hauling her onto his lap and letting her straddle his hips. "Make me afraid. Terrify me. I still have not made my peace with this fate. I don't think I ever will. So make me fear. Help me fear it for I know the pain will forever haunt me if I don't make peace with it. Tell me why did you kiss me."

Silene's heart had never broken as such before. Shattered to pieces. "I'm not scared of disappearing," she confessed, taking his hand and bringing it to her lips, kissing each knuckle and then his palm. "I couldn't think of a better way to vanish and leave nothing behind. Just like this. In your arms. Being held by you. It would be a dream. The dreams of dreams. I keep wondering how it would feel, this death."

"Nothing at all? No one at all?"

"Yes, nothing and no one."

"You heartless little thing."

She raised a hand to his face, feeling his skin under hers. "It would be better. Better than this. The longing…it might kill me again."

"This is all my fault." His hand came to her face, his thumb moving over her cheek. "I did this."

"It couldn't be helped."

His eyes drew shut, and a pained look grasped his features drawn up in shadows by moonlight.

"You should go," she said with a heart so heavy it was weighing down to her stomach. "There is no point—no point at all to this."

"Please," he begged, but she didn't know what he was begging, or who. "Please."

Light suddenly filtered in her room and she could see the desperation in his eyes now, too.

"Take your hands off her and get out of here," a dark voice called from her doorway. Death stared at his brother and then at her, shaking his head at them both. "You cannot come and wreak havoc in my world, brother. You cannot come and confuse my people, weaken the land, weaken your own kin, your own brother!"

"She did it first," Gabriel said, burying his face on her neck and making Silene turn red from the tip of her hair and down to her toes.

Azriel's nostrils flared, and he glanced around the room, his dark gaze fixing on a liquor bottle that did not belong to her. "You're drunk?"

Gabriel murmured something intelligible over her skin and then held her tighter, sighing and pressing his mouth all over her shoulder, her neck, her jaw.

"I will take him back," Silene said, trying not to shrink back under Death"s harsh gaze or under the pain she was starting to feel now at Gabriel's touch that had weakened in his brother's presence.

"You cannot touch him outside of my world. You know I can't keep you safe out there."

"I can touch him for just a few minutes."

"Silene," Azriel warned.

"I know." She gave him a quivering smile, tears filling her eyes. "I know." And she wasn't scared.

She was sure his already dark eyes went a shade even darker. "No, you don't. You cannot even begin to fathom the depths of chaos you would plunge if he were to hurt you, the trial your souls could be put through if you cross the bounds of death. There are worse things than I in this universe, Silene. I suggest you do not tempt them." Death cocked his head back, his dark gaze shifting to his brother still holding onto her tighter than anyone had ever held her. "I will take him," he said with finality, stepping inside her room and attempting to peel his brother off her and failing. "Gabe!"

Her hand went to his hair, soothing it back and forth despite the painful rot starting to set in at the tips of her fingers, "You have to go now," she murmured. "I will come and see you tomorrow."

"You will?"

"You have my word."

Then he was wrenched out of her arms like a band aid stuck to her fresh wounds, left there half bleeding, half torn, with no hope.

He'd been lied to.

Maybe not.

Maybe something had happened to her because of his reckless behaviour.

He could not even find out because his brother had done what he'd never done.

He'd closed the gate between life and death entirely, leaving him there desperate on the other side of the river while his ruin was right across, refusing to show herself.

Gabriel tried to not worry, that she was not an idiot like him, that when she worried she stayed home, busied herself and took care of anything that needed taking care of and made pretty things out of the most unusual objects, not tempt the wrath of every God and Goddess, moon, star and sun there ever was, destiny and fate.

He almost jumped right up when her front door slowly drew open and she came out, wearing something strange—a yellow dress that fell just to the middle of her thighs that were bare except the tall black books cutting at her knees. There was no scarf. Her hair was up in a long tail except the two white front pieces dangling at the front.

Gabriel had been wrong. Silene was tempting—she was tempting him to commit things that would endanger every living thing there had ever existed.

"He's not letting me in."

She came to a stop right at the very edge of the river. "Can you blame him?"

"Can't you take my side just this time?"

When she smiled, he realised she'd been on his side all along. "What did you do last night exactly?"

"Besides almost mauling you?"

She pressed her lips tightly together to hold in a smile Gabriel almost begged to see, and nodded.

"Things I shouldn't have done. Things I didn't regret doing. Things I'm regretting doing now that I can't have you close." He waited for a few heartbeats, watching her head to toe, inspecting every visible inch of skin in her body. "Did I hurt you last night?"

Her teeth dug on the corner of her lip before she shook her head.

"Liar," he breathed.

"It was nothing."

He started backing away, but she stepped on the bridge and crossed it before he could back away too far. Throwing a ribbon around his neck, she pulled on both ends to lower him to her before she said, "You're an absolute idiot."

He blinked. "Do you like idiots?"

"I don't mind them."

Gabriel smiled. "Good enough."

Pulling the ribbon off his neck, she wrapped one end on her hand and offered him the other. "You're still to take me to a zoo."

"You're always all business with me."

"Are we taking it slow today?"

"As slow as you want to, my little bee. Are we stopping at your hive beforehand or straight to the zoo? Or is your hive there?"

She sneered at him. "Thought you liked yellow."

"I like you. Whether you make honey or not."

She'd fallen asleep in his car, still wearing the ridiculous hat and shirt they'd bought from the zoo's store, his jacket thrown over her lap. She lay on the passenger seat like a splatter of colour, a sight he thought he'd never see. A sight that made him so acutely happy it terrified him.

She stirred, peeling her sleepy hazel eyes to stare up at him. "Should you not take me back?"

"A few more moments. Time will not mind."

"Because you've made a bargain?"

"I'm a good businessman, what can I say?"

Silene reached for the monkey toy he'd bought her and squeezed its middle, making it release a few high-pitched sounds at his face. "I have the bear. You take the monkey. To remember me by."

He rubbed a shaky hand to her face before taking the stupid monkey. "You think I will ever forget you?"

"I hope you will. Eventually."