Page 93 of Where Light Cannot Follow

"I'll see what I can do," she says abruptly. "Buy you some time."

I blink at her, uncertain I've heard correctly.

She's already turning away when she pauses, glancing back over her shoulder. Her jaw is tight. Her eyes are unreadable.

"This isn't forgiveness, Virgil."

"I have never expected that from you," I say quietly. "Nor would I ask it."

Our gaze holds for a long moment, two broken things recognizing each other in the dark.

Then she's gone, her silhouette swallowed by the path back toward his fortress.

My feet carry me through the long grasses and half-forgotten paths toward my sanctuary. I walk in, barely registering the hot springs, the painted ceiling, the stars glittering through impossible windows.

I stumble past it all and into the space Dante painted within this pocket of reality. The apartment, perpetually suspended at twilight, the city sprawled beneath it like a jeweled tapestry.

It already fades—just lightly, just at the edges, like watercolor left in the rain. If I don't anchor it soon, it will dissolve into blank nothingness once more. I could never replicate it faithfully. I never knew this space the way Dante did, the precise grain of the wood floors, the exact configuration of lights in the skyline, which windows belonged to which buildings.

If I don't anchor it, I'll lose it forever.

If I do, I'll carry this space with me for eternity.

This tomb reminds me of all I almost had. All I never quite touched.

I walk through the rooms and let my hands reach out, brushing over the counters, the marble table, the brown leather chairs. I can't feel any of it, but no one is here to watch me, and there's no harm in letting myself imagine.

Letting myself imagine walking into this space at the end of some long day and sinking into one of those chairs overlooking the glittering sprawl of Manhattan, at the ten thousand windows burning amber and white, the rivers of headlights flowing through the streets below like molten gold. Imagine lifting a glass of wine and tasting the layered complexity on my tongue. Imagine someone settling into the chair beside me, crossing his strong, elegant legs, offering a hand palm-up. And me placing my hand into his and recognizing the texture of his calluses, the architecture of his fingers, the familiar certainty of his grip.

Because it would be a familiar thing. Because we would have done this a hundred times before.

I lower myself into the chair. I only manage to sit because I envision it so. Nothing can actually hold me up anymore. I am a ghost built of words, slowly sinking beneath the mire.

No companion will join me now.

Dante is gone.

I let the thought settle, bitter and raw, in my mind. It's good. I'm glad he went. He's safe now and will never again face this realm, the pain and misery of it, the dangers, the temptations.

But I am certain I have never, in all my existence, felt so decisively and utterly alone.

I rise and walk to the balcony. Dante had opened the doors the last time we stood here, of course. I could walk through the glass and stand where I'd stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at a world he'd missed and finally learned to see.

Instead, I remain pressed against the glass, looking out at a world I do not belong to and will never touch.

Time passes. It matters not how much.

Finally, I step away from the door.

I'm going to anchor this space.

After all, I shall grieve Dante for all my remaining days. That's what grief is, in the end, the love left over. It’s a river that has burst its banks and lost its course, spilling across the landscape with no destination, no purpose, only the relentless need to flow somewhere. Grief is not tidy. It does not observe boundaries. It floods the low places and the high places alike, and the only choice is whether to drown in it or learn to breathe water.

With a steadying breath I do not need, I reach out to the space. I feel the impression of Dante woven through it—his carefulness, his precision, his hidden tenderness, the way he saw beauty in things he'd trained himself to ignore. I gather all of it and bind it to me.

Now it will remain here, beside my retreat. Permanent. Indelible.

I suppose all ghosts need an empty place to haunt.