Page 61 of Flirting with Darkness

“You have your deal, little ailing lamb,” he whispered, licking my health from his lips.

And then he was gone, and I fell backwards into the newly barren soil, right back into death’s embrace.

23

The first time I met death, I saw its face before I even saw the face of the midwife, my mother, my father. My death defined my entire life. It was my beginning and my only end. For fifteen years, death had hovered with its grip near my throat, so close and yet never able to touch me.

Well, it had me now, and its grip was fierce. It choked the life from me in a single ruthless sweep.

Death’s home was a field of blackened flowers.

You have been on your way here,it whispered,for a long, long time.

“Lilith. Lilith.”

Someone was calling my name. A familiar voice—a face I wanted to turn to see. I blinked. It was hard. I saw a clearing sky.

I blinked again.

A face.

Two faces.

Mina, my sister, her eyes brighter than they had been in a long time. Her tears were warm against my cheek.

I opened my mouth, a sudden wave of words rising in my throat—a lifetime of words I had never known how to say to her, a lifetime of affection I didn’t know how to offer her. But I couldn’t speak, my breath wet and burning, producing only iron-sweet bubbles at my lips.

I blinked.

Death’s home was a field of flowers. A destination I had come to terms with—a path I was fifteen years late in traveling. Death walked beside me.

You seem sad to go,it said.

I stopped walking.

It was right, I realized. Iwassad to go.

In another world, a gentle touch turned my face.

My eyes opened with great, impossible effort.

Vale leaned over me. His hand gripped mine so tight I could feel it in the next world. Maybe that made sense. Vale, like me, straddled both of life and death.

And the scorched rose grasped between us was withering now, just like me.

Vale’s eyes said,Stay,and for the first time in my life, I wanted to. I wanted to stay so badly I would die for it.

I tried to speak, tried to tell him—

He murmured, “Do you want to live, Lilith?”

I blinked and almost couldn’t open my eyes again.

Death’s home was a field of flowers, and someone was pulling my hand, but I wouldn’t go—

Vale’s voice, again, more frantic: “Lilith, do you want this?”

And I knew what he was offering me. I knew that he would accept whatever answer I gave him.

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