Chapter 217: Beneath the Still Water.
We walked in silence for a few paces. The cold night wind swept down the empty street, carrying nothing but the faint rustle of distant leaves and the echo of our footsteps. The capital felt like it had been emptied just for us, streetlights casting long, lonely pools of gold on the pavement.
At the next lamp post, Celestine stopped abruptly and turned to face me. The warm light spilled over her, catching the sharp green flash of the diamond on her finger and the raw vulnerability flickering across her face.
"Why are you doing this?" Her voice came out quieter than before, almost fragile.
"Doing what?"
"This." She held my gaze, brown hair stirring lightly in the wind, the cool pallor of her skin stark under the lamp. "You know what I am. You know exactly what I’m capable of. And you’re still here."
I studied her in the glow—the centuries carved into the elegant lines of her face, the way her shoulders tensed as if bracing for rejection, the faint rise and fall of her chest as she waited. A woman who had outlived empires, standing under a flickering streetlamp at midnight, asking a twenty-year-old from the plain why he hadn’t run.
"I feel good around you," I said simply. "I can’t explain it better than that."
She drew in a slow, visible breath. Her lips moved, whispering something the wind snatched away before it reached me. Her fingers flexed once at her sides, then stilled.
A heavy beat of silence stretched between us, broken only by the soft hiss of the wind.
"Do you know another spot?" I asked.
"No." She glanced down the deserted street, then back at me. "Wherever you want. Tonight is yours."
I scanned the road ahead. A small artificial lake shimmered in the distance, its wooden shore lined with scattered sand. A single lamp post spilled soft amber light across the still water.
"There," I said.
She followed my gaze. "You sure?"
"I’m not hungry," I replied. "I just want somewhere quiet. To actually talk to you."
Her eyes lingered on mine for a long moment. Something in them softened and settled, the guarded edges easing.
"Okay," she whispered.
We crossed to the shore together. The air grew sharper near the lake, the cold sinking deep and lingering, wrapping around us like a second skin. The lamp behind us cast gentle light over the sand, leaving the water in near-perfect darkness. The surface was a flawless mirror, reflecting the scattered lights of the capital skyline in shimmering, unbroken streaks.
We sat side by side in the cool sand facing the water. Fine grains shifted under our weight. Celestine drew her knees up slightly, my coat still draped around her shoulders, the collar brushing her jaw. I stayed close enough to feel the faint, unnatural coolness radiating from her.
The wind whispered across the lake, barely disturbing the glassy surface. Somewhere in the distance, a lone night bird called once and fell silent.
We sat in silence for a long stretch, neither of us rushing to fill it. The artificial lake lay almost perfectly still, a dark mirror stretched before us. The capital’s lights bled across its surface in long, shimmering ribbons of gold and white that fractured only when a faint breeze whispered over the water, scattering the reflections into glittering chaos before they slowly knit themselves back together.
Celestine dug her fingertips into the cool sand beside her, watching the fine grains cascade and vanish between her fingers. Her shoulders were relaxed, but her jaw carried a faint tightness.
"I don’t remember the last time I sat somewhere without wondering who was watching me," she said softly.
I turned my head toward her. The wind tugged at her brown hair, and the distant city glow caught the sharp line of her profile.
"There’s always someone?"
She kept her gaze fixed on the water. "When you’ve lived this long, you stop being surprised by it." She brushed away another handful of sand, letting it spill in a thin stream. "Family. Enemies. People you thought forgot about you a century ago." Her eyes flicked to me for a heartbeat, then returned to the lake. "After a while, you forget what it feels like to simply *exist* somewhere."
I said nothing. The plains had been the opposite—twenty years of being watched by no one because there was no one there. I had nothing useful to offer her on that wound.
The silence settled again, heavy and comfortable. The water lapped gently at the shore, cold and insistent.
"Is there any advantage," she asked after a while, "to outliving everyone around you?"
"Depends," I said. "You get to see everything. Every kind of person. Every kind of moment." I paused, watching a ripple spread across the lake. "But you also have to keep watching them leave."
She turned to look at me fully. Her eyes widened a fraction, a flicker of surprise crossing her face—something she clearly hadn’t expected from someone my age. The wind caught her hair again, brushing it across her cheek.
"Yeah," she breathed. "That’s exactly it."
She shrugged my coat from her shoulders and laid it carefully in the sand between us, the fabric still warm from her body. Then she scooped up a handful of sand and flung it toward the water. The grains glittered briefly in the lamplight before vanishing into the dark surface with tiny, silent impacts.
"Hundreds of years," she murmured, almost to herself, "and it doesn’t get easier. Living longer doesn’t change the feelings. Just gives you more chances to feel the same ache."
I let the words hang in the cold air. The lake drank them in, its mirrored lights trembling faintly.
"Can you swim?" I asked.
She turned sharply, eyebrows lifting. The question caught her off guard.
I stood and extended my hand toward her, palm up. "Come on."
She stared at my offered hand for several heartbeats—fingers twitching once at her side—then looked up at my face, then out at the black water. A storm of conflicting emotions played across her features: hesitation, curiosity, something deeper and harder to name. Her throat worked in a visible swallow.
She took my hand. Her skin was cool, almost cold, as I pulled her to her feet.
We walked to the water’s edge together. The sand grew firmer, damper, sucking softly at our shoes. She stopped just short of where the small waves kissed the shore, the cold lapping at her toes.
"Abram," she said. Her voice had changed—lower, stripped of all humor, edged with something raw.
I looked at her. The lamplight from behind us cast long shadows across her face, highlighting the tension in her jaw and the way her eyes reflected the fractured city lights on the water.
She kept her eyes on the water. "There’s something I need to tell you."
It was the first time since we’d met...
...that Celestine Vale sounded afraid.
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