Page 66 of Mortal Things

My heart jerks painfully at the sight of him.

Careful, I remind myself. Étienne belongs to a god who wants my soul. He has spent all this time playing with my emotions, building lies on top of lies.

He doesn’t look over at me as I approach his table. Today, he seems paler than usual, his gaze dull, faint shadows marring the delicate skin under his eyes. He leans back against his chair, seemingly deep in thought.

I sit down beside him. For a moment, we say nothing. The few people who were also making their way down the street have gone, leaving us entirely alone in this wintry oasis. Somewhere in the distance comes the tolling of bells.

I open my mouth, ready to confront him, to tell him what Raven had told me.

But before I can, Étienne puts a finger to his lips.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he says without looking at me, his head still turned toward the intersection.

I swallow my words, curiosity getting the best of me, and look in the same direction. “Who?” I ask, but he just shakes his head and falls back into silence.

Even his voice sounds different today, subdued and hoarse, robbed of its usual gleam, and a general air of melancholy hovers around him. I find myself doing as he says, waiting with him as if this is something I came to do, too.

For a moment, we sit together and don’t say a word. Does he know I’m here on my own job for Raven? Does he suspect what that job happens to be?

When the silence drags on, I open my mouth, ready to question him again.

But before I can, the door to one of the buildings across the street opens, and a woman emerges. She’s bundled up in a thick coat and hat, her face partly covered behind a scarf.

Étienne nods at the figure as she closes the door behind her and turns toward the intersection. “There,” he says.

“Who’s that?”

But even as I ask, I know the answer to my own question. The woman’s mouth may be covered behind the scarf, but I can still see her green eyes, made more prominent by the verdant shade of her coat, and her golden-brown hair billowing out from beneath her wool hat.

Étienne had inherited the same eyes, the same hair, the same high cut of cheekbones.

“Your mother,” I say.

As she reaches the intersection and turns, Étienne rises from his seat. I follow in his wake. Together, we cross the intersection, where we follow his mother a respectable distance behind her.

Étienne doesn’t say a word, but he does offer me his arm, and after a moment of hesitation, I take it, letting my hand rest in the warm crook of his elbow. The heat of his soul seeps through even the thick layers of his coat, warming me in turn, and in spite of everything, I can feel myself leaning into him. From a distance, we must look like nothing more than a young couple in love.

Not two Harbingers at war. Not me, pretending to be drawn to Étienne in order to take his life.

“She’s worked at that silk shop since I was little,” Étienne finally says after we make our way up the hill for a while. “Every day, the exact same schedule. I could time it down to the minute, when she shows up for work and when she leaves.” He lifts his other hand briefly, nodding at his silk bracelet. “She made this for me from some of the leftover scraps. It always felt like a reminder of better days to come.”

My eyes go from the bracelet to him. His gaze is on the receding silhouette of his mother as she continues on, but his expression seems distant, almost dreaming, like he’s reliving the past.

“You come here to see them often, don’t you?” I ask. “Your family?”

“Not that often. Now and then.” He looks in a different direction. “My sister found work recently in Germany. She’s dating someone there now.”

“And your father?”

He shrugs. “Only Raven knows.”

I look back toward his mother’s figure, bent against the cold. “She must miss him,” I say.

“It’s a gift, to miss someone,” he replies. “It means they meant something to you.”

I bow my head, my emotions a confusing churn. Don’t forget that he’s a liar. And yet, I don’t hear the lies here. There is only grief, an eternal yearning. He had given up their remembrance in order to keep providing for them. And in turn, he had doomed me to the same fate. The same curse.

As his mother reaches a busy intersection and pauses at the light, Étienne and I cross to her side of the street. I expect him to keep his distance, but instead he leads us right up to her.