This is the last place she expects to see him, and so when something gray flickers in her periphery she almost does not award it a second glance. It’s the sound of his voice wrapped around her name that brings her gaze to his, to familiar wine-red eyes and a  storm-gray face. Seeing him awakens that terrible ache that lives in her chest, the one that sometimes subsides the longer he is absent but never fades entirely. But now, everything comes roaring to life all at once—the thrill and the fear, the want and desire—and though she is sure she wears every emotion plainly on her face she does nothing to temper it.

None of it is a secret any longer; he knows her too well at this point, in ways that no one else ever could, with their own brand of intimacy that cannot be replicated.

“Carnage,” she says as she steps towards him, haloed by an amber light and trailing stardust from her wings; ethereal by all means, save for those hauntingly near-black eyes that had a penchant for seeking out darkness . “The place isn’t quite to my taste, but, it will have to do considering it’s the only land in existence.” It is said light-heartedly, though there is an undertone of discontent that she does not voice directly to him. She knows that he does not really care, in the grand scheme of things, what happens to Beqanna. She knows if it ever crumbled entirely into dust he would build another  world from stardust if he had to, and that there is a small chance that he might save her as the world fell apart, or briefly miss her when he realizes a hundred or so years after her demise that he did not, but that ultimately she would be forgotten.

She is maybe a little less mortal than most—an archangel that has seen death too many times, with a life decorated by magic and tragedy—but with him she is always reminded of her own evanescence, and all the ways that she is terribly finite in comparison.

“I must admit, I’m a bit surprised to see you here,” she says by way of distraction, because he is close enough to touch her but hasn’t yet, and while normally she would have reached for him without hesitation she cannot ignore the apprehension that makes itself known even through the haze of her own desire. She searches her memory for a recent slip-up, something she might have done or said to catch his attention in a bad way, but for once she comes up empty handed.