Page 56 of Flirting with Darkness

For one horrible moment, I clearly saw exactly how precious this… this thing we had built was.

I would never meet anyone like Vale ever again.

Stay, I wanted to tell him.Stay with me. I don’t care if it damns us both. I don’t care if it damns my entire town. Stay, stay, stay.

But I pulled away from him and went to my pack, which now was discarded at the foot of the bed. The rose was a little crumpled, the petals squished to one side. I owed him two. I only had one today, this ugly thing, lopsided and deformed, but still—always—living.

I hated these roses. I hated them so much.

Vale reached for me, but I only pressed the rose into his hand.

I met his amber eyes.

Stay,my heart begged.

“Go,” I said. “I’m leaving, and you should too.”

Vale knew me better than Farrow. Better than Mina.

To his credit, he did not ask me not to go.

* * *

You can feel it in the air, when a god is near. It breaks and shivers, like invisible lightning hanging in your breath, cracking over your skin.

It felt exactly the same as it did that day all those years ago.

I rode as fast as my poor exhausted horse could carry me. The beast was near collapse by the time I arrived back in Adcova. I practically flung myself off of him when we reached my cottage, throwing open the front door, calling frantically for Mina.

I checked my study, her bedroom, the kitchen. The house was empty.

I wanted to believe she just went to town. But the hairs on my arms stood straight upright.

Maybe a part of me knew what I would see when I opened the back door, the one that led to the fields.

The door opened, and for a moment I was a child again, standing in this doorway, watching my father on his hands and knees in those wretched fields, feeling this same horrible sensation of divine dread.

Mina was out there in that exact same spot, her back to me, surrounded by wild rosebushes.

The air was still. Silent.

She held herself upright for the first time in months. There was no dusting of ivory skin in the dirt around her.

“Mina,” I called out.

My voice wavered. My steps did, too, as I approached.

Mina didn’t turn. Her head was tilted up.

Above us, the clouds circled, circled.

And there, at their center, was Vitarus.

PARTV

THE FIFTH ROSE

21

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