The End of Eden

XXXVII

"Why is it that it's always me who finds you in the most compromised of positions?"

My eyes open slowly to the sunlight, the rays burning them with their brightness. I'm still in the rose garden, morning dew weighing down my nightgown so that it hides nothing beneath the sheer material coating my skin. It is cold enough that my skin prickles into goosebumps, and I shiver. The dew sparkles on the grass I'm in, and the rose bushes, the bench beside me. I know her voice, but I don't care that it's her who finds me.

"Maybe it's Sleep who leads you to me," I say sitting up from the ground, my shoulders and hips aching from another night spent on the ground. My stomach heaves, and I take a deep breath, letting my eyes close to the blinding light. "To continue to show you that I am above you, and I have everything you yearned for."

The nausea doesn't pass, even after I close my eyes to collect myself.

"Probably to show me just how much of a wreck you've become," Annabelle says, and I flutter my eyes open to see her standing in the overgrowth of roses, both of us hidden from view of any wandering eye. In the corner of my eye, I see him hovering, the white of his face and black of his clothing contrasting against the verdant green of the very late summer that's slowly turning to autumn. The red marks on his face are bloody, his symbol dripping red down his face. "From where I stand, you are beneath me."

He watches Annabelle, instead of me.

I slowly turn my face to look at her, then back to where Sleep sits, watching her like he is a hunter, and she is his prey.

I know the look well, and there is a sudden, sick twist of jealousy low in my stomach. The same jealousy I am certain that she feels towards me.

Perhaps Sleep considers that he has made a mistake, choosing me instead of her to be his.

I cannot have that happen.

The fear of being replaced suddenly outweighs the fear I harbor for Sleep.

I cannot be replaced.

The vessels were right; Annabelle is a problem, was always a problem.

I raise up on shaky legs from the ground, and swipe the dew and grass from my body. "I would like to go with you to the fields today," I say, brushing my hands together and taking soft, deep breaths to settle my stomach. Annabelle glares at me.

"No," she says bluntly.

I arch an eyebrow up. "I demand it," I say simply, and start towards the sanctum, each step easier than the last as I leave the rose garden, not a single glance backward towards Sleep on the bench. "Wait for me to get dressed."

I don't wait for Annabelle; she has no other option but to do as I say due to my ascended level over her. I can hear her stomping behind me as I lead her to the sanctum. I don't even tell her to wait as I enter my room. I quickly change into black leggings, a simple black shirt one of the vessels left behind, and the tunic that Four had given me. I pin my hair up in the mirror, and look at myself.

I look like a vessel myself; all in black, from my neck down to my ankles, because I don't have the laced up boots they wear, or the tabi that Vessel wears. All I need is a mask, and I would be one of them.

You already are a most precious vessel.

A chill runs up my spine. My eyes shift focus in the mirror, to Sleep hovering in the dark, his eyes watching me. Idly, my fingers spread along the tunic I slid on along my stomach. My eyes flutter closed as I press the palm of my hand flat against my, the scent of Four filling my nose from the shirt that is surely his, the tunic I know that was his.