But clearly he is here. Again. I can’t help but wonder why, but suspect if I inquire, I will only get veiled truths and half answers. Motives can only ever be truly known by those to whom they belong, anyway.
Also, I am resigned to accept whatever comes following my next actions, and he seems to be as well.
So, I say, “What do you have in mind?”
He shifts a bit, his wings adjusting behind his back and his barbed tail flicking this way and that as he considers. His hood is off, his all black clothes somehow more mournful under the sunlight than intimidating, as they had been every other time I’d encountered him. It is just a glimpse, a flash of a fleeting moment, but I suddenly see the terrible sadness beneath the imposing veneer. For a heartbeat, I am not afraid of him; on the contrary, I feel a bone-deep empathy for him.
How long has he walked alone between the planes? And what did that kind of time do to a soul?
With the way things were going, I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to know, and perhaps this would be a mercy.
“Are you afraid of heights?” he asks.
“I’m afraid of them,” I answer. “But I like to do things that scare me.”
Only after I say the words do I recognize the suggestiveness of them. It is obvious he is a thing that scares me.
He nods, dark eyes roaming over me slowly, as though they are drinking me in. I feel it like a touch, and now the goosebumps that raise along my arms do not have so much to do with fear, but with something else entirely.
Samael stands, glancing around. I am sitting atop a low stone wall that surrounds a quaint house. Bright fuchsia and lavender rhododendrons sit at its base, and duel columns support a porch where rocking chairs that belonged to my great grandmother and grandfather sit waiting for their next occupants. I cannot look at them without seeing myself and my sister playing there as children, back before I lost her and then lost myself shortly after.
Inside, Rose and Kai are preparing an early dinner together, celebrating the coming of their child, the beauty of their lives, standing in the same rooms as did generations of my family before them. My throat swells and my eyes prickle.
“She still has a handful of hours,” he says, and his voice is gentle, more so than I would have thought he was capable. “Give me one of yours, and then I’ll bring you back here to finish what you started.” He holds out his hand to me, tail flicking lazily back and forth near my ankle, barbs coming close but making no contact, massive scythe still resting against the stone wall.
I stare up at him, my eyes catching on the handsome lines of his face, the intense look behind his gaze. His wings flare just a little, a movement that seems involuntary, as though he is the one who is nervous, this tiny movement the sole indication.
The only reason I do not question these strange thoughts and feelings is because there is no time. No time for questioning things. My mind is made up.
“One hour?” I ask. I sound a little breathless.
“One hour of your time, Cecilia,” he promises.
“And you won’t try to stop me from coming back?”
“It is not my job to intervene. Only to enforce punishment after the fact.”
Enforce punishment. The words send a fresh zing of fear through me, though I sense that they are not meant to. It seems I was correct about not being alone in my resignation regarding the whole matter.
I place my hand in his.
He pulls me to my feet. Tugs me against him. I can feel everywhere he touches. The warmth of his skin is intoxicating. I have been cold for so long, and I had not even known it.
His wings flare and my breath catches. I am afraid to look up at him, though not at all for the same reasons as before. His fingers brush under my chin and raise it up, forcing me to look into his face.
“Hold on,” he says.
And we shoot up into the air, the speed and force snatching the breath right out of my lungs. I cling to him, burying my face in his broad chest as my hair whips around my face. His wings flare wide and beat fiercely, a single arm wrapped around my waist, holding me fast.
I suck in air, the pointless beating of my heart kicking into high gear. I am terrified and electrified all at once. I did not know that I could still feel this way, and no small part of it is due to the way he is touching me.
Touch, I’ve learned, is a thing as crave-able as any food.
“Open your eyes, Cecilia,” he says, his voice a deep whisper against the rushing of the wind. It sends a shiver through me, and his arm tightens in response, the other wrapping around me now, too, for good measure.
I want to cry out in exhilaration, but I play it cool and open my eyes.
Samael laughs at whatever expression is on my face, the rumble resounding in his wide chest, reverberating through my own with our proximities.
“A fall would not hurt you,” he says, amusement playing across his features. Despite our altitude, all I can manage to look at is him.
“No, but my brain still associates heights with danger,” I say, shouting a little over the wind.
In answer, he flips me in his arms, the adjustment so sure and abrupt that I am powerless to stop it, and let out a little yip in response. Now, my back is pressed against his front, his arms cradling me around my chest and waist. Like this, I see the earth for miles and miles spread out below me.
The greens and
