Pray For Me, Then Kiss me

CHAPTER 14: First Kiss as Humans

No curse. No magic. No burning.

Just us.

We were on the roof. 2am. City lights below. Cold wind. Elias gave me his jacket. It smelled like him.

"I thought loving you would kill me," Elias said. He stared at the sky.

"It almost did," I said. I leaned into his side. I could feel his heartbeat now. Fast. Human.

"Was it worth it?"

I thought about 200 years. The emptiness. The kills. The nothing. The nights I didn’t sleep because there was no point.

Then I thought about soup. And paper cuts. And his burned cooking. And his hand in mine. And the way he looked at me like I mattered.

"Every second."

And I kissed him.

Slow. Real. Human.

No gold light. No black smoke. No divine intervention.

Just two idiots who chose each other over heaven and hell.

His lips were chapped. He tasted like tea. My hands were shaking but I didn’t pull away. I’d killed hundreds of people and I’d never been this scared.

When we pulled apart, he was crying.

"Pray for me," he whispered.

"I am," I said. I wiped his tears with my thumb. "Every day."

"What if they come for us tomorrow?"

"Then we face them tomorrow," I said. "Tonight is ours."

We stayed there till sunrise. Didn’t talk. Didn’t need to.

Below us, the city woke up. Cars. People. Life.

And for once, I felt like I was part of it. Not above it. Not outside it. Part of it.

When we went back down, Sister Mara just smiled at us. "About time," she said.

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