Page 32 of Flirting with Darkness

“Right now, your people are not in power. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And what does that mean for them?”

A muscle feathered in Vale’s neck. He didn’t answer right away.

“Are the Hiaj fair rulers?” I asked.

He let out a short scoff. “Fair. Of course not.”

An unpleasant, unflattering understanding settled over me. My lips thinned. My mouth tasted sour, like it always did when rude words I shouldn’t say were lying in wait.

I said, curtly, “We should finish our work.”

I started to turn, but Vale caught my shoulder.

“Say what you’re going to say, mouse.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I stared at him, unblinking. I didn’t know what to make of the way he was looking at me—like he actually wanted to hear my opinion.

Or thought he did.

Keep your mouth shut,I told myself, but I’d never been good at listening to my reasonable voice. He’d jabbed at something I tried to hide, a frustration that now surged faster than I could stop it, and I wasn’t even sure why.

“It’s just… something being difficult is not a good reason not to do it.”

He pulled back, offended. “It isn’t about it beingdifficult.”

I tried to hide my skepticism and apparently failed.

“It isn’t,” he said. “It’s about principle.”

“Principle?” I choked a humorless laugh. “Your people are asking you for help and you’re refusing because of principle?”

“It’s just not the way things—”

“My sister is dying.”

I blurted out the words in a single rough breath.

“My sister is dying and mywhole townis dying, Vale. And everyone else thinks that we can hope or pray or dream our way out of it. They’re just like you. They’re refusing to seek better answers because ofprinciple.Because it’sjust not done.And every second they waste time waiting for a stupid dream is another lost life. That is someone who is the most important person in the world to another, somewhere.”

Vale didn’t blink. And I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t stop talking. The words just poured out of me.

“I know what it feels like to behelpless,” I ground out. “Youdon’t.Youdon’t know what it feels like to be surrounded by five men and know you can’t stop them from hurting you.Youdon’t know what it feels like to see the people you’ve grown up with wither and die. You—”

You don’t know what it feels like to watch yourself die.

I stumbled over that one.

“And I can’t blame anyone for bad luck and misfortune,” I said. “But if I ever knew that someone had a chance to help them—had a chance to save even one of those lives anddeniedit—”

I blinked and saw my sister, slowly grinding away into dust—my lively sister who was everything I was not, who was life when I had always been death, who was warmth when I had always been cold. My beautiful sister who deserved to thrive so much more than I did.

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