Page 63 of Flirting with Darkness

In my dreams I couldn’t breathe, and I’d struggle and struggle, and then I’d put my head between my knees and choke up blood and roses.

Time passed. So much time. Flashes of the past and future, this world and the next, life and death. Pain, fever. Consciousness, unconsciousness.

I’m dead,I thought.I’m dead. This is death.

Or is it life?

Maybe,a voice said,it’s something in between, mouse.

25

Istarted awake, choking and sputtering.

I couldn’t orient myself. My entire body felt strange, foreign. My heartbeat was too loud, scents too strong, light too bright. My head pounded. My own senses overwhelmed me, blocking out all else.

Until I became aware of a hand holding mine, tightly, as if to lead me back to the world.

“Careful.” Vale’s voice was steady, solid.Real. “Careful, mouse.”

Words spilled out of me without my permission. “I’m dead,” I gasped. “I died. I died, and Vitarus, and my father, and—and—”

“Slow.” It was only when he put his hands on my shoulders and started to push me back to the bed that I realized I had been leaning over it, precariously close to throwing myself to the floor.

I let him place me back against the headboard and a truly obscene number of pillows, though my hands were clasped tight in my lap. He eyed me with that analytical stare.

I feltawful. My head was spinning, I was hot and feverish, my stomach churned. My mouth was sandpaper dry, my throat raw. And my whole body… my body didn’t feel the way it always had, like I’d just been put in a version of my childhood home where every measurement had been adjusted by a few inches.

But I was certainly alive.

“You remember this time?” Vale said, quietly. He wiped sweat from my forehead.

Was it the first time I had woken up?

“I…”

My head hurt so much. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to assemble the pieces of what had happened. Vitarus. The rose bushes. The deal.

And…

Do you want to live?

The choice. The choice Vale had offered me, and the one I had taken.

“I remember.”

The words were gritty because my mouth was so, so dry. As if he knew that, Vale pressed a cup into my hands. I drank without even looking at it.

It wasn’t what I was expecting—water. No, it was thick and sweet and bitter and rich, and—and—

Gods, it was amazing.

I tilted my head back, practically drowning in my own frenzied gulps, until Vale gently pulled the cup away.

“Enough for now. Not too fast.”

He kept his hand on my wrist, as if to keep me from drinking again. I blinked down at the cup and wiped the liquid away from my mouth. I’d gotten it everywhere.

Red. Very, very dark red. Practically black.

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