Page 42 of Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined (The Twilight Saga)

E YES CLOSED , E DYTHE STEPPED BLINDLY INTO THE LIGHT.

My heart jumped into my throat and I started sprinting toward her.

“Edythe!”

It was only when her eyes flashed open and I got close enough to begin to understand what I was seeing that I realized she hadn’t caught on fire. She threw up her hand again, palm forward, and I stumbled to a stop, almost falling to my knees.

The light blazed off her skin, danced in prism-like rainbows across her face and neck, down her arms. She was so bright that I had to squint, like I was trying to stare at the sun.

I thought about falling to my knees on purpose. This was the kind of beauty you worshipped. The kind you built temples for and offered sacrifices to. I wished I had something in my empty hands to give her, but what would a goddess want from a mediocre mortal like me?

It took me a while to see past her incandescence to the expression on her face. She was watching me with wide eyes—it almost looked like she was afraid of something. I took a step toward her, and she cringed just slightly.

“Does that hurt you?” I whispered.

“No,” she whispered back.

I took another step toward her—she was the magnet again, and I was just a helpless piece of dull metal.

She let her warning hand drop to her side.

As she moved, the fire shimmered down her arm.

Slowly, I circled around her, keeping my distance, just needing to absorb this, to see her from every angle.

The sun played off her skin, refracting and magnifying every color light could hold.

My eyes were adjusting, and they opened wide with wonder.

I knew that she’d chosen her clothes with care, that she’d been determined to show me this, but the way she held herself now, shoulders tight, legs braced, made me wonder if she wasn’t second-guessing the decision now.

I finished my circle, then closed the last few feet between us. I couldn’t stop staring, even to blink.

“Edythe,” I breathed.

“Are you scared now?” she whispered.

“No.”

She stared searchingly into my eyes, trying to hear what I was thinking.

I reached toward her, deliberately unhurried, watching her face for permission.

Her eyes opened even wider, and she froze.

Carefully, slowly, I let my fingertips graze the glistening skin on the back of her arm.

I was surprised to find it just as cold as ever.

While my fingers were touching her, the reflections of the fire flickered against my skin, and suddenly my hand wasn’t mediocre anymore.

She was so astonishing that she could make even me less ordinary.

“What are you thinking?” she whispered.

I struggled to find words. “I am . . . I didn’t know . . .” I took a deep breath, and the words finally came. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful—never imagined anything so beautiful could exist.”

Her eyes were still wary. Like she thought I was saying what I thought she wanted to hear. But it was only the truth, maybe the truest, most uncensored thing I’d ever said in my life. I was too overwhelmed to filter or pretend.

She started to lift her hand, then dropped it. The shimmer flared. “It’s very strange, though,” she murmured.

“Amazing,” I breathed.

“Aren’t you repulsed by my flagrant lack of humanity?”

I shook my head. “Not repulsed.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You should be.”

“I’m feeling like humanity is pretty overrated.”

She pulled her arm from under my fingertips and folded it behind her back. Rather than take her cue, I took a half-step closer to her. I could feel the reflected shine on my face.

And she was suddenly ten feet away from me, her warning hand up again and her jaw clenched.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I need some time,” she told me.

“I’ll be more careful.”

She nodded, then walked to the middle of the meadow, making a little arc when she passed me, keeping those ten feet always between us.

She sat down with her back to me, the sunlight incandescent across her shoulder blades, reminding me of wings again.

I walked slowly closer, and then sat down facing her when I was about five feet away.

“Is this all right?”

She nodded, but she didn’t look sure. “Just let me . . . concentrate.”

I sat, silent, and after a few seconds, she shut her eyes again. I was fine with that. Seeing her like this—it wasn’t something you could get tired of. I watched her, trying to understand the phenomenon, and she ignored me.

It was about a half hour later that suddenly she lay back on the grass with one hand behind her head. The grass was long enough to partially obscure my view.

“Can I . . . ?” I asked.

She patted the ground beside her.

I moved a few feet closer, then another foot when she didn’t object. Another few inches.

Her eyes were still closed, lids glistening pale lavender over the dark fan of lashes. Her chest rose and fell evenly, almost like she was asleep, except there was somehow a sense of effort and control to the motion. She seemed very aware of the process of breathing in and out.

I sat with my legs folded under me, my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands. It was very warm—the sun felt strange on my skin now that I was so used to the rain—and the meadow was still lovely, but it was just background now. It didn’t stand out. I had a new definition of beauty.

Her lips moved, and the light glittered off them while they . . . almost trembled. I thought she might have spoken, but the words were too quiet, and too fast.

“Did you . . . say something?” I whispered. Sitting next to her like this, watching her shine, made me feel the need for quiet. For reverence, even.

“Just singing to myself,” she murmured. “It calms me.”

We didn’t move for a long time—except for her lips, every now and then singing too low for me to hear.

An hour might have passed, maybe more. Very gradually, the tension that I hadn’t totally processed at first drained quietly away, till everything was so peaceful that I was almost sleepy.

Every time I shifted my weight, I would end up another half-inch nearer to her.

I leaned closer, studying her hand, trying to find the facets in her smooth skin. Without even thinking about it, I reached out with one finger to stroke the back of her hand, awed again by the satin-smooth texture, cool like stone. I felt her eyes on me and I looked up, my finger frozen.

Her eyes were peaceful, and she was smiling.

“I still don’t scare you, do I?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

She smiled wider. Her teeth flashed in the sun.

I inched closer again, stretched out my whole hand to trace the shape of her forearm with my fingertips. I saw that my fingers were trembling. Her eyes closed again.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“No. You can’t imagine how that feels.”

I lightly trailed my hand over the delicate structure of her arm, followed the faint pattern of bluish veins inside the crease at her elbow. I reached to turn her hand over, and when she realized what I wanted, she flipped her palm up in a movement so fast it didn’t exist. My fingers froze.

“Sorry,” she murmured, and then smiled because that was my line. Her eyes slid closed again. “It’s too easy to be myself with you.”

I lifted her hand, turning it this way and that I as watched the sun shimmer across her palm. I held it closer to my face, trying again to find the facets.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she whispered. She was watching me again, her eyes as light as I’d ever seen them. Pale honey. “It’s still so strange for me, not knowing.”

“The rest of us feel that way all the time, you know.”

“It’s a hard life,” she said, and there was a forlorn note in her tone. “But you didn’t tell me.”

“I was wishing I could know what you were thinking. . . .”

“And?”

“I was wishing that I could believe that you were real. I’m afraid. . . .”

“I don’t want you to be afraid.” Her voice was just a low murmur. We both heard what she hadn’t said—that I didn’t need to be afraid, that there was nothing to fear.

“That’s not the kind of fear I meant.”

So quickly that I missed the movement completely, she was half-sitting, propped up on her right arm, her left palm still in my hands. Her angel’s face was only a few inches from mine. I should have leaned away. I was supposed to be careful.

Her honey eyes burned.

“Then what are you afraid of?” she whispered.

I couldn’t answer. I smelled her sweet, cool breath in my face, like I had just the one time before. Unthinkingly, I leaned closer, inhaling.

And she was gone, her hand ripped from mine so fast that they stung. In the time it took my eyes to focus, she was twenty feet away, standing at the edge of the small meadow, deep in the shade of a huge fir tree. She stared at me, eyes dark in the shadows, her expression unreadable.

I could feel the shock on my face, and my hands burned.

“Edythe. I’m . . . sorry.” My voice was just a whisper, but I knew she could hear me.

“Give me a moment,” she called, just loud enough for my less sensitive ears.

I sat very still.

After ten very long seconds, she walked back, slowly for her. She stopped when she was still several feet away and sank gracefully to the ground, crossing her legs underneath her. Her eyes never left mine. She took two deep breaths, then smiled apologetically.

“I am so very sorry.” She hesitated. “Would you understand what I meant if I said I was only human?”

I nodded, not quite able to smile at her joke. Adrenaline pushed through my system as I realized what had almost happened. She could smell that from where she sat. Her smile turned mocking.

“I’m the world’s best predator, aren’t I? Everything about me invites you in—my voice, my face, even my smell . As if I needed any of that!”

Suddenly she was just a blur. I blinked and she’d vanished; then she was standing beneath the same tree as before, having circled the entire meadow in a fraction of a second.

“As if you could outrun me,” she said bitterly.