"Is the Harbinger of the Final Silence blushing?" I tease him. "Look at how red the tips of your ears are."
He's clenching his jaw, turning his face from me. "I am the Primordial of death and darkness. Shadows are my own, and the last breath on every creatures lips belongs to me, do not insult me."
"Then why are your cheeks red?"
"It's chilly out here!" He ignores me marching to the passenger door. "Back home, now."
"I have groceries to get, so we're doing that first, then we can go home." Unlocking the car door sends him flying into the passenger seat, and he makes no move to hide that he's pushing his dick next to his thigh.
As I enter the car, Athanasius already has his seatbelt on, he's staring out the window. "Before you rudely sidetracked me, I asked if you had ever been in love because I have a question."
Chuckling, I start the engine and make a U-turn to head back towards the highway. "And it was?"
"Do you think love changes a person?"
Great question. How do I answer this? It's been two years since I was in serious relationship, and I think about him all the time. Well…I catch myself in moments of limerence when something reminds me of what was. It happens less, but let me smell something, let me hear a song—I'm gone.
"Do I think love changes a person?" I repeat slowly as we rejoin the highway and the cars roll past us. "Of course, it does. The same way death does. Even a kiss of death, a taste of it alters a person." My hands grip the wheel tightly before I remind myself to relax them. "Love, like death, doesn’t care who you were before. It doesn’t care what plans you had or how much control you thought you held over your own life. It takes you, drags you under, leaves you gasping in the dark with only your regrets for company. Sound familiar?"
He shakes his head. Of course.
"But here’s the thing—when love is gone," I should probably shut up now, but here we go. "When the echoes of it have settled like dust in an empty room, you learn. You learn what you can survive. You learn what you’ll nevertolerate again. You learn what parts of yourself were real and what parts were just reflections in someone else’s eyes."
My mind runs to Chris. His smile, the way he kissed me, how I felt. Too little, too late.
"I’d say love and death are cousins, but you wouldn’t know, would you?" I can see Athy in my peripherals, he's staring straight ahead, unmoving. "Love never sent you an invitation. Never took your hand and led you stumbling into the kind of ruin that doesn’t leave bones, only aching."
His voice is quiet. "No, in this I am ignorant."
"Tell me, then—have you ever been in love?" Now I'm curious. "Have you ever wanted someone so much that losing it felt like an extinction event? Or is that why you’re here, caught between the shadows? Do you think this—your entrapment, your isolation—is punishment for loving something you shouldn’t have?"
We arrive at the grocery store, and Athanasius sighs heavily before looking at me. "You know more than you let on, I like that." His hand is on the door, knuckles clenched. "I have never harbored affection for anyone but my siblings. Not even my avatars before you, but my sisters sees something in me." He leans his head back, returning to the human form with 2 less eyes and arms. "If my punishment is something this petty, I will still kill the mage, because who is he, and who were they to make me feel weak by expressing emotions I haven't understood for millennia unnumbered."
Chapter ten
Can't Take His Ass Nowhere!
Ione
Idon'tknowwhatto say about that all and I'm not sure how to respond. "Good talk, now get out the car."
"What are we here for?" He grunts, closing my door harder than necessary, while squinting in the sun. "Food? You should grow your own."
"Sure," Grabbing a cart from the stall, I roll my eyes. "Stretch your hand over my garden and make things grow."
"Not my alley," He snorts. "I will ask my sister when she comes over, she enjoys that kind of thing. Making things grow where there is no hope."
Stopping before the door, I stare up at Athy. "Are you saying my garden is a lost cause?"
"Your trees look pitiful." He shrugs. "I'll space them out more when we return home."
"Remind me to karate chop you in your throat when we get home." I mumble.
I can feel him pulling on the back of my shirt. "Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
Athanasius watches with slight interest as we go up and down the aisles. He points and asks what different things are, or what they are for. A woman farther along in the aisle is with her child who is screaming while lying in the middle of the floor.
