Page 47 of Flirting with Darkness

I hated my own kin in this moment. But not as much as I hated myself.

I moved onto another burn, watching Vale’s skin twitch and burn beneath the silver liquid.

“You should have left,” he said. “I would have survived.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“Your friend wanted you to go with him. More than he expressed, I think.”

I shrugged. It didn’t matter what Farrow wanted me to do.

Then Vale added, quietly, in a tone of voice I could not decipher, “He is in love with you.”

My eyes stung.

I couldn’t even deny it. And what good had it ever gotten him?

“It’s just old feelings,” I said. “We were together for a while. But it ended.”

“Why?”

“He wanted more than I could give him.”

A life I couldn’t live. A heart I couldn’t free. A role I couldn’t play.

Vale nodded, as if this made sense to him. We didn’t talk for a long time. I was working on the last of the burns when he finally spoke again.

“I decided to go back to Obitraes.”

My heart stopped. My hand slipped. Just as well, because he turned around, his amber eyes cutting through me.

Why was it suddenly hard to breathe?

“Why did you change your mind?” I asked.

His fingertips ran back and forth over the back of my hand, absentminded. His gaze slipped away, to the strange white flames.

“Have you ever been in love?”

My brows leapt. I wasn’t expecting that question. I didn’t know how to answer.

I loved Farrow. He was one of my closest friends. But was I everinlove with him?

Strange that it wasn’t Farrow’s name on my lips as I watched Vale’s serious profile, silhouetted by the white firelight. And I was grateful that he didn’t wait for my answer—or perhaps heard the truth in the lack of one.

“I had only one great love,” he went on. “The House of Night. I helped build an empire. I shaped it with my blade and blood. I gave my king, my men, and my kingdom my unquestioning and all-consuming devotion. If you have ever loved something that much, you know that there’s no wine sweeter, no drug stronger. And when it fell…”

His throat bobbed. He stared into the fire.

“I was angry for a very long time. I came here to escape the memory of my failure, but then I spent every day dreaming of returning to the House of Night. Dreaming of rebuilding what I had let fall.”

“Then it’s good you’re going back,” I said, my mouth dry.

It’s good,I had to repeat to myself.

Vale needed to leave. He needed to leave to save himself and to save us. He’d murdered an acolyte of the White Pantheon. Maybe Thomassen had been right. Maybe Vale’s presence here—his presence as a tainted child of Nyaxia—did only worsen our fates.

What did it say about me that, despite all of that, the thought of Vale leaving made my soul ache?

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