Page 36 of Love and Death (Tempting the Fates #4)

EROS

T he dark is endless.

I start, the thought rippling through my consciousness. I do not remember the last time I was present. Something is calling me out, waking me from a slumber I did not know I was in.

My mind bends, pulling me inward and yet, out … as I suddenly find myself in a crumbling moonlit garden, overgrown with white roses long past their bloom and scattered with half-naked statues of memories long forgotten.

It feels wrong .

It is wrong.

This is not a place carved from stone and tree, but from heartache and longing.

I do not know why I am here, and then … I feel her .

She does not step into the garden so much as she awakens it. The moonlight sparkles over fresh dew on roses risen to bloom again, the air filling with the sweet scent of night as even the statues return to their former glory.

Hazel .

My darling mortal.

My little spark.

She is here.

I turn to find her before she even calls my name. A silver thread and a thousand lifetimes between us since I last heard her voice … and yet, it still breaks me.

“Eros?” she breathes, and I know I cannot be saved.

She will always break me, and I would not have it any other way.

I want to stay in this moment forever, to tell her everything I could not bear to before.

I want to be selfish, to let the world burn so that she might be mine …

But then, that would break her, and prove my nature right.

That I, the God of Lust and Desire, was not born to love; only to break.

And I refuse to be proven right.

Not with her.

The moonlight shivers across the garden, flickering softly around us as the world trembles beneath our feet, and I watch in silence as the shadows take form behind her—and out steps Death, a thread darker than a starless night floating between them.

Neither speaks a word, and yet she feels his presence, just as I have felt hers, and turns from me to face him. He takes her in his arms, as I could only dream of, and I feel their very souls rejoice .

The moment is steeped in an eternity of pain, and yet, it frees me.

It would always be him. Always be Death she chooses, and I know now that it always should be.

I have felt what she means to him, lived his memories … known the depths of his sacrifice.

He would endure a thousand torments just to make her smile, to hear her soul sing once again, to love her as only he can.

Now, I am the last thing standing between them ... And I know what I must do for her.

For love.

Even if this means the end for me, I will not weep for myself.

I will not fade in fury, but in peace, knowing that I have given her everything and claimed nothing.

And, in this way, I can only hope to earn a place in her heart. By choice, she will be the last thing that I see, and I will love her all the more for it.

Reaching down, the garden now bursting with light and life, I tear the silver thread from my chest.