Divine Descent

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Relatively, it hasn't been much time.

Two months nearly.

Less than sixty days.

And yet, as I stand shell-shocked, staring at the figure just a foot away, the weight of the time we've spent apart and the alternate life I've lived in his absence tacks on emotional years to our separation. We are no longer the people we were before I left.

I am a far-cry from what he remembers, and in this moment, staring into his eyes, it's never been more apparent to me.

Bracing the ledge, his reaction from the violence carried out while he was unaware, Elijah gazes at me as if I were a stranger. It's not surprise. It's not the fact that he hasn't absorbed it, or can't see me. He just stares, a hidden uncertainty behind his wide expression.

God, they're still green. His eyes. He's still the same.

I trace his intimately familiar features from afar, even in this eternal darkness, experiencing rushes of moments I'm given back, moments restored to my mind simply by being in his presence. His pale skin, the lasting youthfulness he's carried through centuries, his strong build concealed under dark fitted clothes.

He's physically the same as when I left, a beauteous piece of time embodied. I'd forgotten what it was like to look at him, how much I enjoyed doing it.

If I think really hard, I can remember what it was like to walk up to him, trace the curve of his jaw, to push his hair from shielding his eyes.

"I don't know if what I'm seeing is real," he says finally, gently, gazing at the body, then at my blood-stained hands, then to my face.

His words, so full of confusion, remind me of someone else's fears quite some time ago.

My own.

I don't know what possesses me to recite his words back to him, words that were both our undoing and our saving grace.

My voice echoes. "I vow to love you until the universe caves into itself... until every trace of light in existence extinguishes and time comes to an abrupt end..."

His gaze falters as I remind him of the vow he promised me back in England, long before we'd faced any of our true battles.

"Until there is no one else to love another creature," he whispers back faintly.

My fingers instinctively curl inward, sinking into my palm when I feel a faint ache cut through the center. When my eyes dip down, his fingers are also putting pressure on the exact spot on his own hand. Although our eyes never leave each other, I know he's thinking what I am.

I don't have to read his mind.

Those words were spoken in a blood vow, a vow Elijah sliced into our flesh with a blade.

Somehow, we feel the reminder of the confession simultaneously.

"It's actually you."

"It is."

He nudges his chin the direction of the fragile corpse shriveled on the ground, a pile of bones no longer resembling a human being. "And that was—"

"Angelica... yes."

He nods, absorbing that. "Why did she turn into that?"

"She's a demon.

"A demon?"

"Yes."

"And she's dead now."

"Yes."

"She was going to kill me?"