“Are you sure about this?” Gideon asked her, his voice kind but rough, just like it’d always been.
She couldn’t help the way her cheeks heated as she gave him a bashful smile. “Yes. Absolutely. I’m sure about this.”
His light-green eyes were bowed with uncertainty, and with an affection only a brother could shine at her. Although she could barely feel it, a light gust of wind made his short caramel-brown hair shift.
He had a small dark shadow of a beard. He usually liked to keep it shaved, preferring to be well-presented in a time where hygiene and cleanliness were difficult to achieve.
Gosh, he looks exactly as I remember.
He still looked twenty-three, only four and a half years older than what she’d been.
His shoulders were still bulky from working the forest as a tree cutter, his arms flexing with lean muscle. His legs, however, were strong from bracing his weight while tossing an axe around, and his stomach was flat, his shoulders broad.
Gideon had always had a handsome face.
His jaw was wide, his cheeks high, his nose wide but nicely pointed. Even his bushier brows were neat, but sharp. Yet, the rest of him, like his full mouth, his eyes, and chin, was softer.
Emerie had been one of the many people who had found him attractive.
He drifted his wary expression to the side where the two Duskwalkers were. One of his gold earrings glinted in the bright sunshine that came from goodness knew where in this afterlife.
Ghosts walked through them, one or two she knew, most she didn’t. They were on the outskirts of her old town of Fishket or, rather, a falsified and created version of it. Brown brick houses behind Gideon were familiar, as was the sandy path they were standing on.
She didn’t know what she’d been doing before she’d woken up to find Aleron’s claws just in front of her face, but it must have been walking with Gideon. She vaguely remembered holding a basket of fruit and vegetables before she’d flung it somewhere and it disappeared.
However, instead of there being wooden stakes behind her like a wall, it was a field. Long grass, vibrant and green, swayed with the light wind that constantly swirled. The sun was perfect – not too hot, not too cool, and didn’t sting her eyes.
Ghostly birds chirped in the distance, and she could hear the pleasant rush of moving water. She thought it may be a waterfall.
Tenebris was… peaceful.
There was a serenity to it, especially knowing that she could stand in the vast openness behind her, even in the night, and a Demon wouldn’t come to tear her to pieces.
This is what Earth should have been like, not the nightmare it’d turned into.
She guessed this was Weldir’s version of heaven. She was surprised it looked like this.
“A Duskwalker, huh?” Gideon muttered as he rubbed at the side of his neck. “Never picked you for doing something out of the general norm.”
Emerie couldn’t help the pitying smile that tightened her lips.
“A lot has happened to me since you died,” she admitted.
His own lips tightened but curled downward. He cupped the left side of her face and brushed his thumb over her scars. “Did this happen that night?”
She tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Yeah.”
“Guess you owe me one.”
Her head reared back as her brows knitted tightly. “Excuse me?”
“You know… for saving your life and all.”
“You practically ruined it!” She tried to give her voice a shouting inflection, while keeping it quiet, tempted to start bashing on his chest.
Gideon rolled his green eyes. “That’s what you get for arguing with me.” Her lips parted in disbelief, but he chuckled, wrapped the bulk of his arm around her head, and yanked her in for a forced hug. “How were mum and dad afterwards?”
She buried her head further against his shoulder. “They died the same night. My oil lamp, it… set everything on fire.”
He squeezed her. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. To lose all of us and your face all in the same night.”
“You just couldn’t let me be eaten, could you? You just had to be a big hero and save my stupid ass,” she grumbled with a pout, for some reason not feeling an urge to cry when she would have while speaking to anyone else about it.
Maybe it was the familiar comforting warmth of Gideon, or his soothing brotherly voice, but she felt… relieved. Calm.
He was gone, and she was only talking to his spirit, but he wasn’t suffering or in pain. He wasn’t in some dark place, scared and alone.
She wished she could smell him; it would have been comforting. Especially since the world here smelt odd, wrong, false even.
He squeezed even tighter. “I’m sorry for leaving you by yourself. Your family welcomed me into their arms when my own died, and I had people to lean on through it. You had no one.” He pulled back to look at her. “Did you at least find some happiness in your life?”
“No, not really,” she answered honestly, averting her gaze to the side. “I joined the eastern sector of the Demonslayers.”
His head shot back in surprise. “What the shit? You became a Demonslayer?” He let out a deep laugh. “Emerie… you’d get scared when there was a rodent in our house. How the hell did you manage to become a Demonslayer?”
She stepped away and threw her hands up. “I don’t know, okay?! I wasn’t a very good one, if I’m being honest with you. The only thing I had going for me was my smarts.”
“Pfft! You? Smart?!” His laughter got louder. “You’re the biggest goofball I know. You’re the kind of person who couldn’t even be bothered to attend school because it was boring.”
“Well, that changes when your brother decides to fuck off to the afterlife.”
He sobered from his humour. “I always pictured you running off into the sunset with some man, not going to the Demonslayer guild.” His sight drifted to the Duskwalkers. “Is that how you met him?”
“Yeah. I freed him because I couldn’t handle what they were doing to him.”
Gideon’s eyelids crinkled knowingly. “Of course you freed him. Still as soft-hearted as ever.”
Emerie turned her shoulders inward in bashful awkwardness. “Do… you want to meet him?”
She’d asked Ingram to give her a few moments with Gideon so she could reassure him and have some free, non-Duskwalker-weirdness time with him.
“Absolutely, I do.” He lifted his chin and firmed his expression. Then he tossed her a smile while bending his arm in the air. He patted his flexed biceps. “Have to give him the ol’ ‘hurt my sister and I’ll break your legs’ chat.”
“Gideon… I’m not sure how to tell you this, but… he’d destroy you.” She patted his shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look. “You just aren’t strong enough, no matter how much you think so.”
“Fuck, that was rude,” he exclaimed.
They both burst into a quiet fit of laughter.
As she laughed, feeling lighter than she had in a long time, she swept her gaze over to Ingram and Aleron. Their backs were semi-turned to them, and it appeared as though they were having a very important and hushed conversation.