Page 22 of Aïdes the Unseen
Four
AÏDES
The rain still clung to me when I returned to the shadows.
Not that it mattered. I carried her scent now—of almond blossoms and damp moss, of something young and unguarded that had no business clinging to a thing like me.
She had offered me her world.
Not with garlands or gold, but bywalking beside me. That was worse, in a way. Gentler. More dangerous. I’ve never feared blades. But I have always feared beauty, especially hers, as it wasn’t rooted in the superficial but in kindness.
She didn’t know what she was doing.
Or maybe she did.
That’s what unsettled me most.
They watched her. The others.
They arrived cloaked in laughter, in sun-touched ambition, with garlands in their hands and conquest in their eyes. Beautiful, powerful, gilded with the blessings of Olympus. Gods who sung, shone, anddeservedher.
They waited for her mother, of course. Played the game. Offered tribute. Spoke of legacy and harvest and the joining of great lines. All the same lines.
Butshedidn’t look at them the way she looked at me.
Shesoughtme.
I should not have taken pride in that. But I did.
I waited at the margins—always at the margins. I watched her from the edge of things. Where the season faltered. Where green faded to gray.
Not because I meant to haunt her.
Because I didn’t know how to stop returning.
She walked with me. Took my hand. Not to bind. Not to claim.
But toseeme.
Even when I said nothing, even when I stood still as stone, she filled the silence withrecognition.
When I touched the bark of her trees, I feared they would wither.
They didn’t.
They bent.
Theywelcomed.
The underworld didn’t welcome. It claimed, consumed. It forgot warmth. But her world—her world leaned toward me like I was not an ending.
Just… somethingoutsidethe cycle. Something necessary.
I didn’t belong there. I knew that.
But when she smiled, quietly, shyly, like something unfolding for the first time, I began to think that maybe it didn’t matter.
Maybe it never mattered.
