same relief for him, too. He removed his cloak and she laughed as he folded it neatly on the chair to one side. ‘How spontaneous,’ Lan whispered with a sarcastic grin.
‘I like to be neat.’ Fulcrom chuckled and sat down next to her.
They kissed. There were tentative gestures of exploration. He could feel her tense up, then gently unfurl, offering herself to him. Surprisingly he found that his desire to help her through whatever issues she herself might be suffering, her anatomical-based fears, overtook his own concerns that this was the first woman he had kissed since the death of his wife.
Half-clothed and worried she had forgotten how this sort of thing was done, Lan laid him back and straddled him. He fixated on the symbol on her Knights uniform. She peeled it off, joking, ‘No one’s going to save you now.’
Please not my dead wife…
He moved his hands inside underneath her uniform, helping it off. Again she became still.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Cold hands,’ she replied.
‘Oh, right.’
After losing the rest of her clothes he could tell she waited for his reaction, so he was quick to show her that she was — as indeed she was, and damn she was — a fine-looking woman.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he breathed against her neck, kissing her gently, and inhaling her fragrance. He whirled his tail around and ran it down her spine. She arced her back like a crescent moon. Lan seemed so small above him, in the gentle glow of the fire, so vulnerable. Something inside of him melted. He could not help himself. He wanted her.
He spun her over, unleashing years of introverted agony. He levered off his breeches with his tail whilst running his lips against her legs.
Lan made it clear she didn’t want anything more than this. They lay under the sheets for an hour, embracing, curling, fondling, learning each other’s quirks and preferences. And he simply enjoyed having her soft human skin against his tough rumel hide.
Whenever she shuddered he paused to check it was because he’d done something good, and not disturbed a memory — and she told him to stop worrying, laughing it off. There was something so wonderfully free about all of this, about having waited so long, about the not knowing, and it filled him with so much adrenalin, so many emotions, that it was an exquisite agony.
After their passions had ebbed, they lay there, a pleasing tangle of legs and arms and tail.
Eventually, breaking this monumental sense of peace, Lan said, ‘I shouldn’t fall asleep here.’
He agreed and after another long, slow kiss, she climbed out of bed. He watched her like a voyeur dressing in the half-light.
Reluctantly he roused himself, pulled on his breeches, and moved to see her out. He kissed her at the door and, as they parted, he noticed how she seemed a different person — they both did. Barely a word was uttered — and there was no need, because the warming look in her eyes told him enough. She brushed back her glossy black hair and sashayed sleepily down the corridor. By the top of the staircase, one hand on the rail, she blew him a kiss.
Beaming, he glanced away and strolled casually back inside Where his heart nearly stopped.
Adena was there, fully formed, with a ethereal sheen and a black-bloodied neck, sitting on the chair next to his bed. The room felt colder than it had previously, the fire had gone out. The darkness was more oppressive than before. He peered around anxiously.
‘Fuck,’ Fulcrom declared, agog. He felt guilty, a sinner, a cheating spouse, in the midst of some ridiculous love triangle between the living and the dead.
‘How long have you been there?’ he demanded.
‘Enough to see that you’re still the attentive lover you always were.’
Adena was wearing some kind of dress — though it was more or less in rags — and her dark hair contained bright silver streaks, her scruffy fringe hanging lankly before her eyes. The bones of her body seemed to jut out more than usual, darkness pooling in sunken skin. Her presence still sent a shiver through his body, and his tail was rigid with fear. Now more than ever there was a sinister air about her, although her expression remained muted.
‘Where were you when…?’ Fulcrom faltered, his voice was weak, as the world around him tried its best to reduce him to pure insanity.
‘In the corner of the room,’ she replied. ‘I chose not to be seen though.’
‘Why didn’t you say something? I don’t know, spook us, slam a door, flip a book across the room. Why did you just watch something so obviously painful?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered flatly. ‘Because it didn’t affect me the way I thought, I guess. When I first watched you, through the mirror, everything seemed intense.’
‘I…’ Fulcrom faced the floor and closed the door behind him. ‘I’ve no words for this situation,’ he continued honestly. ‘What can I say? I thought you were — are — dead. I know you are a ghost at least. I even went down there, and saw others like you.’
‘To the underworld?’
He placed his hands on his hips and tried to gauge his situation, to remain logical amidst this madness. ‘Yes, I was told all about the escape from the priest himself, and I followed him to the city beyond the river.’
‘Would you go back?’
‘It’s not exactly top of my travel destinations. There’s no way to return you there forcibly, if you were wondering. You have to go back by your own will.’ He found himself being remarkably stern, harsh even, perhaps a panic reaction, but what was he to do? He was talking to a ghost. There were no rules for such a discourse.
‘You’ve kept well,’ Adena said, ignoring his not-so-subtle request, and only then did he realize he was semi- naked, showing evidence of his betrayal.
‘You shouldn’t have stayed,’ he said.
‘I had to see it through, Fully,’ Adena muttered. She seemed to curl in on herself as the conversation continued. ‘I had to know if there was a chance of us ever getting back together.’
The emotions came from somewhere, and he found himself on the verge of tears. ‘There couldn’t be, Adena. You’re not alive. It was never possible.’ He knelt before her on the floor and tried to take her hand. It was colder than a frost and he released it in an instant. ‘We’ve been allowed a rare moment to see each other, but you have to realize that out here — in the real world again — time goes on. I can’t just stand still, though there was a time I contemplated… joining you. But that was long ago.’
Adena glanced up and gave him a deathly stare. She didn’t mean to frighten him though, and he knew it — it was just the way she was now. When will the madness stop? he thought, logic suddenly visiting him. Get a grip on this, immediately.
‘You know, it isn’t as bad as you think,’ she said. ‘Everything still hurts, but it’s… Look, I’ve had a few years to get used to coping without you, too. That makes it a little easier.’
‘What will you do now?’ he hinted.
‘You’ve made it clear there’s nothing for me here.’
‘There’s a world down there that you can make your own, surely?’
‘No. It’s pointless to have much ambition there, Fully. When you have all the time in the world, nothing seems to happen. Did you notice time dragged by so slowly while you were down there? Well, it’s the pressure of dying, I think, that makes you do things quickly up here, whether or not you lot realize.’
They talked a while longer, he didn’t know how long, didn’t bother looking at the clock. He was too drained to care any more. His eyes were sore, and he was exhausted, mentally and physically. This had been the most bizarre day of his life; and a healing one, too. Now old wounds were being poked at, but he forced himself to be mindful that he was more than a pile of emotions.
Adena spoke of wishing she could visit him, but she thought as soon as she crossed that river once again, that was that, she would never speak to him again. Awkward silences grew now, he suspected, because they were waiting to find something profound to share in that final moment, the last sentence they would breathe to each other.
He consciously tried to hold her again, but she flinched. ‘Just because I might move on, doesn’t mean I won’t
