Page 150 of A Soul to Steal

The strange stomach quivers in the cemetery at just holding his imposing hand had not gone unnoticed; they were shy flutters of a growing infatuation.

He’d had many goals in his life, but it was time to make a new dream: Aleron.

Without reading it, Gideon tossed the letter into the fire, rings and all.

He didn’t need it, nor the affections for someone in the past. In front of him was someone new. Not better or worse.

They were different, Aleron and Beau. One a Duskwalker, the other human, but both... possible of capturing his attention, so long as he left himself open to it.

It’d happened once; a time he didn’t remember. He already felt the trickles of it happening again. He didn’t care if it was old emotions from the afterlife, or new ones anymore, only that they existed.

The way his heart had flipped shyly in his chest in the cemetery. Their days in the cave where it had squeezed. Without realising he’d woken Gideon, this Duskwalker had tried to sneakily hug him from behind, and he’d found himself wanting Aleron to hug him tighter.

He couldn’t ignore these signs, and he wouldn’t.

I’m starting to really care about him.

Gideon cared if Aleron was anxious or nervous around him, becoming hyperaware of the way he cupped his hands to his chest, or how his wings would tighten against his back. It deeply bothered him when Aleron’s orbs would shift blue.

The space between them was beginning to feel barren, cold.

Looking at him from afar meant Gideon always took him in fully. There was no denying what Aleron was, but when one looked past the veil of normality and human ideology, there was definitely much more to be seen. He looked like a deity of death, but there was beauty in dying. Just like there was beauty in Aleron’s skull and ethereal, glowing orbs.

Gideon frowned at himself.Why do I feel like I’ve had that thought before?

But it was more than that.

Aleron’s personality was kind. He was gentle and understanding towards a creature that had beendyinginside.

Gideon would take that Demon eating him repeatedly, rather than experience any more of the internal suffering he’d gone through the first week he’d come back to life. The urge to lie down and let the forest grow over him, unable to move forward in a pointless life, had been so harrowing and draining.

Throughout all of it, he’d never been alone. If he had been, if Aleron had abandoned him as he’d demanded multiple times, he didn’t think he would have survived his own dark internal thoughts.

He needed someone to distract him, to fill in the space around him. The silence, the coldness. He needed someone to make himlaughagain.

Aleron had cared for him when no one else would have, not even Beau. A human could only take being beaten down by another for so long, and this Duskwalker had shown more selflessness and love than anyone else could have.

What he’d done to be gifted that level of devotion... he didn’t know.

“Gideon?” Aleron called, making him realise he’d just been staring at the magnificent creature before him.

He hated how Aleron cupped his hands to his chest because of it.

“Oh, sorry.” He laughed awkwardly, darting his gaze from the burning letter before looking down at his guitar. He grabbed the neck of it and fully pulled it from its case. “Here, let me show you what it does.”

He thrummed the strings and instantly grimaced.

“Shit, it’s out of tune. Give me a second.”

He checked the saddle and bridge pegs, then twisted the tuning pegs one by one as he thumbed the strings attached tothem. Once it sounded in tune, he thrummed all the strings, happy with the cascade of notes.

Just when Gideon started playing, he paused.

“I would like to apologise in advance if this is horrible,” he stated. “I didn’t actually have this guitar long. It took me years to afford it with my pay, and a bunch of my friends chipped in the rest for my twenty-first birthday to help me get it.”

And, for the two years he’d had it, he’d played it nearly every day to learn. He couldn’t afford lessons, but he’d borrowed music books to teach himself. His parents had wanted to help, but Gideon had been set on doing this on his own, so he could say with pride that he was self-taught.

With the apology about his skills out of the way, he played a light, heartfelt song, with a touch of melancholy underlining it – one of the many he’d made up. He enjoyed playing from his soul, rather than following a sheet of music from someone else’s. He felt the song, the music, and each note that vibrated as he moved up and down the fingerboard.

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