An hour later, I walked up through the moonlit gardens towards the sound of falling water.
The path wound between beds of night-blooming flowers that opened only after dark and filled the cold air with something sweet and faintly green. The closer I got, the louder the waterfall grew—the same steady roar that had been the background to so many of the moments that mattered between Seraphina and me.
I came round the last bend and stopped.
Seraphina stood at the edge of the main pool with the moon on her. It turned her skin pale as porcelain and her silver hair almost white. She wore a simple ice-blue swimsuit that matched her eyes, and she was standing very still, looking at the water, the way she did when her mind was somewhere else.
Then she heard me, and turned, and the stillness broke. "You came."
"Wouldn't miss it." I dropped my towel on a flat rock and pulled my shirt off. "It looks exactly the same as it did years ago."
