Page 53 of Flirting with Darkness

The world went quiet. Reality came back in blurry pieces.

Vale’s head dropped, his forehead pressing against mine. His muscles trembled a bit, which I noticed with a pang of guilt. He’d strained himself more than he should have so soon after his injuries, magical potions or no.

He rolled off me and, as if it was nothing other than instinct, his arms folded around me, pulling me onto his chest.

I had never liked being held much. I found it too hot and restrictive. But Vale’s body was just the right amount of warm and cool, just the right balance of soft and firm. It felt like it was built to accommodate the shape of my own.

I let him hold me, and as my eyelashes fluttered with a sudden wave of exhaustion, a terrible dread settled over me.

Vale had been my experiment, my question to be answered. I thought it would be easier to let go of him if I could understand his every unknown. But he was a question that had no answer. And every answer.

Vale wasn’t a cure for anything. He was a whole new disease, one I’d carry with me to my inevitable end.

I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t like goodbyes. Easier to be the first one to go.

But they come for us all, anyway.

20

Ireally didn’t mean to sleep.

I didn’t have time for it. I never did—maybe that was why my body forced it upon me. One moment, I was allowing Vale to hold me. The next, I was blinking blearily into the shadows of his bedchamber. I hadn’t spent much time in this room. It was just as cluttered as all the others—full of books and weapons and mismatched artifacts, like he’d just run out of space to put the vast quantity of things he’d collected over his long life and just shoved them wherever he could.

The smile came without my permission.

Vale. Someone who collected knowledge just like I did. I felt like a failure of a scientist for not realizing what I was seeing the first time I came to this house. I thought it was just full of clutter. But no, all these things had touched him in some way. He was careful about what he kept.

He slept now.

I knew that before I even looked at him. I could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my head. It was a deep sleep. Good. He needed it.

I didn’t want this moment to pass.

I blinked away sleep and stared into the room. The blue light of white flames flickered now alongside a warmer accent. My eyes fell to the windows. Dim light seeped beneath the curtains. Daylight from an overcast sky.

Daylight.

“Shit,” I hissed.

How? How could I have slept so long?

When I pushed myself up, a wave of dizziness greeted me. My whole body protested. The hard realities of our situation crushed me one after the other.

The dead priests I had burned.

The medicine.

Vitarus.

Time.We didn’t havetime.

And I had let myself fall asleep.

Shame flooded through me. Embarrassment, that I’d let myself be distracted for so long—that I’d let Vale see—

I stood abruptly, ignoring my shaking needs and the sway to my step as I crossed the room.

I heard rustling fabric as Vale stirred behind me.

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