Page 23 of Flirting with Darkness

The screams of pain faded into a distant din.

I fought hard for my consciousness, fought just as hard as I had been fighting for answers my entire life, but it slipped away from me anyway.

The last thing I felt were strong arms around me, and the strange, weightless sensation of being lifted up, and gods, I must have been hallucinating after all, because I could have sworn I even turned my head once to see the trees so far below me they looked like stalks of broccoli.

What a strange dream,I thought to myself, as it all faded away.

9

Iwas surrounded by softness. Soft and sleek and… something wonderful. I rolled around and felt silk sliding over my skin.

Silk.

I’d never slept in silk.

My eyes opened. My head pounded. My skin was hot and clammy. I struggled to catch my breath. It had been a long time since I felt this way—so weak, so ill.

When I lifted my head, it felt like an iron weight. I forced myself up anyway.

I was in a bed that was literally triple the size of the one that I slept in at home. The sheets were black silk, the bedspread violet velvet. It was dark in here, lit only by a couple of dusty lanterns that looked like they hadn’t been used in a very long time. None of this, actually, looked like it had been used in a very long time—the furniture was all fine but mismatched and outdated, assembled from many different decades, none of them within the last fifty years.

I rubbed my eyes. The events of the night felt like a dream.

But they weren’t. It had happened, and now I was here.

In Vale’s home.

I had been unconscious in a vampire’s home.

I touched my neck, just to make sure—

“I promise I did not eat you.”

Vale’s voice was low and smooth with amusement.

I turned too fast. The movement sent the room spinning, and I swallowed vomit.

He stood in the doorway, approaching slowly, hands clasped behind his back. He looked much neater than he had last night, the monster I had seen replaced with the man I had first met. No sign of those stunning wings, either.

“The bandage is my doing,” he said. “But the wound under it is not.”

I touched my shoulder and winced. Fabric covered what felt like a vicious cut, and I hadn’t felt it only because my dizziness overshadowed it.

“He stabbed you,” he said, voice flat. “An accident, when he fell. The rats didn’t even know how to wield a weapon.”

He spoke with an air of disgust.

I remembered him tearing down those men. The dead face of my attacker nose-to-nose with me. I felt nauseous.

“You killed them.”

“I rescued you.”

He had. I was grateful for that. But I thought of Filip’s hand reaching for his friend…

Vale read my face.

“What?” he snapped. “You think I should have let them live?”

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