Page 67 of Flirting with Darkness

We made it through a few awkward minutes of stilted conversation before the question I couldn’t help but ask bubbled to the surface.

“Do you hate me?” I asked. “Or hate… what I’ve become?”

Mina’s eyes widened. Her answer was immediate. “Never. I could never hate you, Lilith.”

“Do I look different now?”

I was curious, I had to admit. There was no mirror in this room, and I definitely wasn’t strong enough to get up and go look for one.

She thought about this before answering.

“You look different,” she said, “but you also look more like yourself than you ever had. And that makes sense, because you were never… like us. You were always so different than the rest of us.”

She said it with such warmth, even though I’d always resented my differences from those around me.

“You’ll be going with him,” she said. “Right? To Obitraes.”

I hadn’t even been able to think that far ahead yet. I touched my throbbing temple.

“He hasn’t asked me to.”

Not technically true. He did ask me to go with him—a lifetime ago, before I went to Vitarus.

Mina gave me a flat stare. “He’ll ask.”

“I don’t have to. I could live outside the town.” It was risky, and the last thing I would want to do is draw more negative attention to Adcova. But… Vale had managed it for centuries. Maybe I could.

She looked at me like I was insane.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because…”

I had never been further than twenty miles away from my home. I had a sister who had always needed me, a cause that demanded all my focus and energy.

“That would be a stupid thing to do,” she said, so plainly I almost laughed. “I’m not as smart as you, but I’m no idiot. You think I don’t know what you want? I know you’ve always wanted to travel. See new things. Learn new things. So go!”

She smiled, even though her eyes were damp again. She took my hand and squeezed. “You’ve spent your whole damned life dying, Lilith. Now you’ve gotten that out of the way, and you get to go live.”

I was silent, a bit struck.

My voice was rough when I said, “You know that I never wanted to leave you.”

I didn’t mean here, in this moment.

I meant all those days when she asked me to stay, and I went to my office instead.

I meant all those years when she, and my parents, and my friends, and everyone around me begged for me to stay, when death was stealing me away instead.

Her face softened.

“I know,” she said. “Of course I know.”

She said it like it was obvious and simple, and a silly thing that didn’t need to be clarified.

I always had thought that Mina didn’t understand me, all my true intentions hidden behind the wall I couldn’t figure out how to scale between me and the people around me.

Maybe she did see more than I ever realized, after all.

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