"There is a young man in Pandora that I want and I want you to find him," Thanatos tells Elinee as they move together. He touches her like he's casting a spell and his hands trace invisible sigils on her body. He writes Salamando's name in the alphabet of the ancients and she imagines that his fingertips grow warm; he writes Undine's name between her breasts and she feels as though her heart will turn to ice.

Elinee doesn't answer. She moans when he kisses her and she kisses him back, hungrily, even though his mouth tastes of vomit and decay. "I will," she finally says and closes her eyes. He tongues Lumina's name onto her eyelids. She opens her eyes again and tells herself that this is only to maintain the illusion.

He doesn't feel like her husband; Cain never cast such spells on her and there is something mechanical and empty to Thanatos's thrustings. She wonders, not for the first time, if he even gets any pleasure from it. She whispers Cain's name onto his shoulder, against his neck, and into his mouth; she breathes it anywhere she kisses him.

She's paying for this act in heartbeats. She's trading years of her life for memories and she's giving power for illusions and mockery. She can feel Thanatos sap the life from her even as her heartbeat quickens. And she knows that, despite it all, all she's really doing in his arms is dying one second at a time.

He isn't really her husband, but he lets her pretend. He lets her make love to her memory, and, sometimes, she forgets for a time that she's just fucking a corpse.

But, as long as she's with him, Elinee doesn't mind.

The End

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