Page 48 of Flirting with Darkness

I fidgeted with the rag because I needed something to do with my hands. “You must be happy to go home.”

Vale’s gaze turned to me.

“I thought I would be,” he said. “But perhaps they, like your friend, want something I can’t give them. Maybe they want some part of me I have already given to someone else.”

I let my eyes fall down to the bedspread—to my hand pressed against it, and Vale’s atop it, those graceful fingers stroking the shape of the delicate bones at the back of my hand the way a musician stroked the strings of an instrument.

My heart thrummed so loudly in my chest.

And looking away didn’t save me from Vale’s stare, because I could feel his eyes the way one can sense a wolf stalking them in the forest.

Except I wanted to be caught.

The bed shifted as he turned to face me fully. He leaned a little closer. His scent surrounded me.

“Why did you come here,” he asked, “when you realized they’d come for me?”

“Because my work isn’t done.”

A lie. It was as done as it was going to be.

“Look at me, Lilith.”

Vale rarely said my name. The sound cut me down to the bone, shivered and swirled just as it did when he wrote it over the page.

Look at me,my sister had begged.

And I felt just as frightened now, as I forced my eyes to lift, forced myself to meet Vale’s stare.

Once it had me, I was utterly ensnared. I couldn’t hide.

Run,a voice inside me whispered.

Stay,another begged.

As Vale’s fingertips reached for my cheek. Stroked my cheek, my jawbone. Brushed the bridge of my nose. He wore the same expression that he had the day I showed him his blood, the day I realized for the first time that the only thing more beautiful than his blood was the expression of amazement on his face.

Tears pricked my eyes.

“You want more than I can give you,” I whispered.

“I can’t imagine that ever being true,” he murmured. “Because I want only you, Lilith. Whatever of you I can have. I’ll take one night. One hour. One minute. Whatever you want to give me. I’ll have it.”

My breath was ragged, choppy. It burned in my chest with all the emotion I realized I could no longer smother.

I had never been enough.

I had never been able to give any of them enough—enough time, enough love. Everyone gave up so much as trying to get more from me, and now I did the same for them. From the moment I was old enough to understand my eventual fate, I made every decision knowing this. Knowing that I couldn’t be enough. Knowing that I would wither too fast, like a flower in an early frost.

I didn’t realize how much I had liked that Vale didn’t see that in me until this moment, when I knew that it had to end.

“I’m dying,” I choked out.

I didn’t know why I said it. It didn’t really matter, now, when he was leaving and the gods were damning us and the whole world seemed to be ending.

“I’ve been sick my entire life. Every year I don’t know if it’s the last. I’ve been leaving this world since I was brought into it. No one wants to believe it, but it’s the truth. It always has been. I’m—I can’tstay.”

You’re asking for more than I can give.

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