The first time Evelyn saw him, it was twilight, and the fog in the moor stitched silver veils between the bare-boned trees. He stood at the edge of the graveyard, where the iron fence buckled as if trying to crawl away from him. No scythe, no cloak, just a tall man with a hollow in the shape of the world behind his eyes.

She was tending to her father’s grave, fingering the withered rose she’d left the week before. “You’re late,” she said, surprising herself.

The man tilted his head, curious. “Am I?”

“You should’ve come for him a year ago, before the worms did.”

Death smiled, and the shadows beneath his lips flickered. “I was waiting for you to notice me.”

She should have run, screamed, prayed, and clawed at her crucifix like her mother used to. Instead, Evelyn stepped forward, her heels sinking into the damp earth.

He smelled of cold violets. His voice was like the hush of a mausoleum when the wind dies outside.

They met every dusk thereafter, beneath weeping willows, in the marrowed silence of abandoned chapels, behind the cracked mirrors of her dreams. 

Evelyn read to him from crumbling romance novels and kissed the frost from his cheekbone. In return, he showed her how to dance in the shadow between heartbeats.

He never touched her with flesh. His hands were bones wrapped in velvet night, and yet she ached when he withdrew. Their love was a slow rot, sweet and solemn, stitched with silences and a thousand unspoken goodbyes.

When winter came, the villagers whispered of a woman who walked with Death and smiled too much for the season. Evelyn lay down in her bed in a black velvet dress. She left the windows open. She waited.

And Death, ever gentle, ever faithful, climbed in beside her, folded her into his arms, and kissed her soul from her mouth.

Now they walk together, hand in hand, through graveyards that bloom only in the moonlight. Lovers in eternity. A bride and her groom, bound by a violet thread that smells faintly of decay and roses.

The End