The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow collection)

They will never sing my name.

I return briefly to Gwynne, long enough to kiss his brow and whisper to him what I should have understood lifetimes ago, what I should have told him every night and every morning. “I am yours.”

I ask, “Was it worth it?”

And on the other side of the scale, there is a pair of silk slippers.

I wonder what color they were when he was truly young and how long ago that might have been.

I am sitting with my back against the pool, and Gwynne’s body is cooling in my arms.

He is dead, and I belong to no one.

Then he smiles. Then he leans his weight into the knife and twists his neck sharply, drawing the blade across his own throat.

His gaze is steady, full of a love so naked and sincere that I wonder for a moment if the two of us are alone, if everything else is just another bad dream.

I know him, and in knowing him I love him, and in loving him I cannot do as he wishes.