The real world offered pots to scour and fields to tend and oxen to track down when they went astray. And Kenzo. The world offered her Kenzo as a husband. In truth, there were no other suitors. Too long had passed.
He sat down beside her, darkly pleased with himself, and set his hand on her arm. His touch filled her with revulsion, but soon he would have the right to do with her as he chose — beat or kill her — at his pleasure. Rei had no doubt he would brook no repudiation of his will. Kenzo would offer no choices. Most likely, he would also make her suffer for keeping him waiting so long. As the Tanaka’s firstborn son, he loathed being denied what he believed to be his due.
“When?” he asked softly.
She did not pretend to misunderstand. “It will be an autumn wedding, when all the leaves turn red.”
Kenzo offered a sharp look, for red was a dual color. But he did not demur. “So it shall be, Reika.”
To convey his displeasure, Seraphiel greeted them in a huge cavern with a ceiling so high it appeared to be made of darkness. Jagged streaks of lightning crashed overhead, highlighting the stark rock. Other times, this place might appear to be all white, formed of nothing but marble pillars. The leader of the Seraphim was not to be crossed lightly.
First he kept them waiting, and then he manifested in a font of golden light. When I call, I expect obedience.
Apologies, Ezekiel offered.
It took considerably longer to appease Seraphiel, and for every moment, Camael expected him to know, but the shields held. And Ezekiel intended for them to maintain this deception for eternity? Impossible. He already felt sick and shaken, not by his actions, but the subsequent efforts to conceal them. No matter the regulations, touching Rei did not feel like sin.
At length, they took their orders and went from the divine sanctum. They shook the mountains and painted the sky red, as instructed. It seemed like a great deal of effort in order to change one man’s mind, but they did not question instructions handed down through the hierarchy. Even Seraphiel did not know the reasons behind the commands he gave.
Afterwards, he followed the rest of the host. Once — not long ago — privacy mattered not at all. Now it was crucial. As he watched, Ezekiel shaped the wards that would keep others away. Let them think they discussed some secret orders given by Seraphiel, handed down by the Thrones.
Despite their success, Ezekiel wasn’t pleased. We must live this way forevermore. You all accept this?
The alternative is losing him, Nathaniel responded.
Raziel kept even his thoughts to himself, but of them all, he had been closest to Camael, and he could read his kinsman’s brooding silence. He was blisteringly angry. I never asked for help, Camael thought. I would have taken my punishment and left you out of it.
And you truly think I could allow that? Raziel demanded. Of us all, you would be destroyed down there. Did you know people call you Camael the Innocent, even here, where all are pure?
He hadn’t known that, and it angered him. Innocent I may have been, but I am not helpless.
No, Raziel responded. Just stupid.
Enough. The force of Ezekiel’s thought silenced them both. We acted to preserve your secret. You must go now to this human woman. Tell her whatever you must, but there will be an end to it.
He had watched the Morning Lord’s fall, once the most beloved and beautiful. Later, he had seen Gabriel willfully turn his back on his host. Neither hurt so much as the prospect of this — and he did not know why. Only that an ache throbbed deep in the core of him at the prospect of bidding farewell to a beauty he had hardly known.
I will attend to it now.
With a twist of his will, he left them. It was too much to hope he would find her where he had before, and yet that was the first place he looked. Camael matched his appearance to what she had seen before; otherwise, how would she know him? The river had risen since his last visit, which signified rain. How much time had passed? He stood quietly, listening to the water tumbling over the rocks. The trees were a little thinner, somewhat less green, and the air carried a chill. This was the dying season, when the leaves fell, and the world spun toward winter.
It was too cold for bare skin and he thought clothing into existence to cover himself. Not because he felt discomfort on any crucial level, but if another traveller came upon him here, they would call him demon or worse, finding him tarrying so. For the first time, it occurred to him he did not know how to find her. While he could focus on her essence and port to her, it might prove awkward if she were in company. He did not want to cause problems for Rei, or offer trouble she could not explain away.
And so he sought shelter in a cave not far from the river, where he built a fire. It was easy work, a matter of laying wood and willing it to kindle. He could have had fire without fuel, but that too would alarm human travellers. Camael wanted to blend in as best he could. Once he had created a tolerably comfortable space, he sat and sent the call. If Rei felt anything for him, she would be compelled to seek him out. The delay gave him time to accustom himself to her world. This time, he would not be helpless and overwhelmed by so many physical sensations.
On the third day, she found him. She looked different, less girlish. He had no way to gauge the passage of time here.
“It’s you,” she breathed. “And you have aged not even a day.”
He’d wondered if she remembered. He had wondered if he ought to come and tell her there could be nothing more. Perhaps she already knew. But his conscience would not permit him to share such intimacy and then offer only silence thereafter.
The right words — words of farewell — trembled on his tongue and yet he did not speak them. “Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “But when I did not quicken, I thought I dreamed you.”
Would that were so — then he would not feel the awful sensation of being torn in two. He carried Ezekiel’s orders like a weight in his heart, but for the first time, he struggled against them. Camael did not want to obey. He craved a few more moments with her.
“I cannot get you with child,” he said, instead of good-bye.
“Because you are truly not of my world.”
He inclined his head.
“Then it is safe for us to be together.” Before the fire, she began to disrobe. “I relived that afternoon so many times. Nothing ever felt so good or so right.”
This was where he must tell her. But instead, he admired the curves of her body, no longer sylph slim, but rounded and succulent. “Rei. .”
“You make my name sound like singing. No one ever did before.”
When she threw herself into his arms, he was lost, oh, so lost. Camael wrapped his arms about her. He had not touched her thoughts as he did with the host, and it mattered not at all. He knew her. The ache he hadn’t been able to explain before intensified into longing, and then he recognized it.
“I missed you.” Such longing for an absent person; it was wholly new to him.