Kensley had lost the majority of his warmth some years before.
So much of it had been lost when he’d watched his sister draw her final breath.
And then the rest of it had leached out of him in the weeks, months, years that followed.
But even as a dead thing, there had been some glint in his eye. The last tendril of what he’d been in the before.
And now.
Now there is absolutely nothing left.
He can feel the heart in his chest, the way the ice splinters and reaches outward, and there is some comfort to be found in this. He’d heard once that it was better to feel pain than nothing at all, but he knows now that it isn’t true. Because there is such sweet relief to be found in the nothingness.
He is lingering at the edge of the river when she hears her call. It slips so easily into his psyche that it’s almost as if she’s whispered it directly into his ear. He feels no quickening of his pulse, no sharp jolt of worry, not only because the call had been calm but because these things are well outside of his reach now. He goes to the cave without knowing how to find it, drawn there by whatever magic she has woven into her call. The feet carry him without instruction until he reaches them.
Anaxarete and their children. One gray and one black. But, upon closer inspection, he finds that the boy is not black at all. At least not in the most traditional sense. A shadow creature. He’d heard of them, certainly, but had never seen one. And the girl, beautiful like her mother, but he can tell just by looking at her that she is like him. Living but not alive.
Were he softer still, he might have felt some swell of guilt. He might have closed his eyes and shook his head and apologized to all three of them for the things he had done and could not undo. But, he is no longer soft. So, he smiles and touches each of the children’s heads and then presses his cold mouth against their mother’s head. He no longer feels that bone-deep ache when he registers that he’s touching her but cannot feel much of anything at all.
“They’re beautiful,” he murmurs and then draws away. “Have you named them?”
