Meeting Under the Angel
724 Words
The rain had passed.
London was steeped in its usual fog, clinging to every rooftop and alleyway like silk gauze on old bones. It was late, and the gas lamps flickered with a soft hiss against the night, their light catching on puddles and cobblestone. Seraphine stood in the upper room of her manor, curtains drawn back, the folded copy of The Herald & Oracle in her pale hands.
Cassian's latest column was nonsense. To the casual reader, it was poetic rambling—eccentricities befitting the man who had made a name writing of shadows and superstition. But to her, it read like a whispered confession. Every line dripped with knowing, with searching, with a desperate call that only she could answer.
Cassian waited.
He stood beneath the ancient yew trees in Greymoor Cemetery, just beyond the old chapel where moss crept like veins through the stone. His coat was buttoned tight, hat brim low against the mist. He’d been there for an hour.
He didn’t know why he felt so sure she would come. He only knew that she would.
There was movement—quiet as a breath.
He turned his head slightly. "You’ve read it, then?"
Silence answered him.
Cassian let a slow smile rise. "I wrote it for you. Not the readers. You know that, don’t you?"
The fog thickened around the trees, folding inward like curtains. He felt her presence before he saw her. Cold and ancient and sweet as violets pressed between a forgotten book's pages.
"She came to see me," he continued. "Aradia. Is that her name? The red-haired one with the venom behind her smile."
Still nothing. He could feel the weight of her attention but not the warmth of her gaze.
"She offered me immortality," he said into the mist, voice low. "Said I could be eternal if I helped her destroy you."
A breeze stirred the branches. A voice pierced through the shadows, light and melodic, but laced with venom. "And what did you say to her?"
He took a breath. "I told her to piss off."
A long moment passed. Then, from the fog, her voice floated out—velvet and ice.
"Why?"
Cassian turned slowly. Her silhouette emerged between the graves, a darker shade of shadow beneath the gaslight. She did not step closer, not yet.
"Because you're not a monster," he said. "You're a mystery. And I’m a man who chases stories."
"You don’t know what I am."
"No," he admitted. "But I know what you aren’t. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance. You protected me from her, didn’t you? Whatever you did to my mind—it blocked her spell."
That made her pause.
Seraphine stepped forward slowly. Her face came into view at last—ethereal as ever. Moonlight spilled across her skin, and her dark eyes searched his as if trying to decipher whether he was threat or offering.
"You remember," she said.
"Some. Enough."
A flicker of emotion passed through her. Relief? Regret?
"Then you must stop writing. The columns. The clues."
"I had to find you."
"And now you have."
He didn’t look away. "I’ll stop. If you let me remember everything."
Her brows knit. "You ask for too much."
"Do I? Or is it that I know too much already?"
She drew closer, boots silent on the damp grass. When she stopped just before him, Cassian felt as if the air itself froze between their bodies.
"I don’t understand you," she said quietly.
"You don’t have to. Just trust me."
Something changed in her expression—faint, fleeting. Then she lifted her hand, fingers grazing his forehead with a tenderness that stole his breath.
The magic passed through him like warm honey, like ice breaking over his skin. Memories returned in fragments—her grave, her voice, her story. The weight of her loneliness. The storm she hid behind her regal bearing.
"One promise," she whispered. "No more words of me in print."
He nodded. "No more words."
The fog shifted again, and when he opened his eyes fully, she was gone—but her scent lingered. Lilies and old books. His memory was whole.
Cassian stood alone beneath the trees, heart pounding. And for the first time in weeks, he felt steady.
Because she remembered him.
And now—he remembered her.
- Writer
