Page 60 of Flirting with Darkness

“Do we have a deal?” I said.

In the distance, Vale flew faster. I could make out his shape now, hurtling through the air at impossible speed.

Vitarus could not resist it. He smiled and leaned close to my ear. “Deal,” he whispered, then straightened. The full height of him, now that he stood again, nearly paralyzed me with fear. But he outstretched his hands, waiting, expectant.

My father made a deal out of desperation.

I dug a handful of the earth from the ground, then pressed it into Vitarus’s outstretched hands. “Soil,” I said.

Vitarus’s palm remained open, expectant.

My father made a deal because he was surrounded by a withering world—soil that would not give life, crops that would not grow.

I yanked a flower from the rosebushes, placing it atop the dirt in Vitarus’s palms. “Flowers.”

A slow, terrible smile spread over his mouth.

Vale was nearly here. I could see his face, now, desperate—his hand, outstretched, reaching for me even though he was still far away. Within it was a single flower, just a tiny dot of red and black in the distance.

“What else?” Vitarus prodded.

My father made a deal because he was surrounded by a withering world.

Soil that would not produce.

Crops that would not grow.

And a daughter that would die.

My father hated the gods for taking his livelihood. And he loved his family too much to let them go. That day, he had kneeled in the fields and looked back at me like hope destroyed, the same way he looked at those dead plants.

It now seemed so, so obvious.

I thought I wouldn’t live to see seventeen, twenty, twenty-five. But here I was, thirty years old with a heart still beating, death matching my pace without overtaking it. Still living, just like the cursed, blessed flowers my father had left behind.

I felt like a fool for not realizing it sooner. That my longer-than-expected life was so much more than luck. When the town withered, and I lived. Why hadn’t it even occurred to me to question it?

I placed my hand in Vitarus’s, laid on top of the flower and the dirt.

Vale hurtled to the ground, a rough, stumbling land, just behind Vitarus.

But I had the god’s attention now.

“And?” Vitarus breathed.

“Me,” I said. “I give you me.”

Vitarus leaned close, his lips so close they brushed mine.

“Humans,” he purred. “For all your faults, maybe you aren’t so boring, after all.”

His kiss was fierce and thorough, his tongue parting my lips, claiming, searching. I couldn’t breathe. The world dissolved. Life and death collided. He breathed into me, and his breath was growth and sun and water and light—and then he drew in a deep inhale, peeling all those things away, and coaxing forth like a fire the illness that had followed me since the day I was born. My strength withered. My lungs shriveled. My skin grew hot with fever and cold with shivers. My heart beat, beat, beat, pulsing only thin, impotent blood.

Fifteen years of illness that my father’s deal had staved off now crashed back into my ailing body, all at once. Fifteen years of weakness rushing through my veins, stealing my unfairly prolonged life with it.

In the distance, I heard a familiar voice call my name.

But that shout of desperation fell far in the background as Vitarus, a lifetime later, broke our kiss.

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