Page 59 of Flirting with Darkness

My strange roses, that grew right here in the spot where Vitarus had stood, all those years ago. I had thought that they grew here because a god had once stood upon this soil.

But…

My father had been so upset by the crops he couldn’t save. The fields he couldn’t fill.

Vitarus saw the realization in me. In this moment, the only creature I hated more than my father was him—for the utter delight on his face.

“All the things he was willing to give up for some fertile soil,” he crooned. “I told him that life requires death. He did not care.”

Vitarus twirled the rose between his fingertips. The vine now wove all the way down his arm, the blossom and leaves so swollen they filled his palm.

“Beautiful, aren’t they? Shame they aren’t edible. Tell me, little girl, was he disappointed by that?”

My eyes burned. My stupid, selfish father. The truth was, he never even lived to see the roses. He was the first to die of the illness, and the first sprouts of these bushes poked from the earth after his death. I remembered vividly staring down at them as I walked home from his funeral, staring down at those little beads of green like they were an equation that didn’t make sense.

Well, they didn’t. They never had.

I crushed the rose in my clenched palm. It left smears of black and red against my skin.

All of it for nothing.

I had fought. I had studied. I had sacrificed whatever life I had left—and I hadsucceeded, I had succeeded in creating a cure, and it would be for nothing.

Vitarus tilted my chin up, his rose-covered hand sweeping the tear from my cheek, a thorn leaving a salt-stung scratch of red.

“Why are you so surprised?” he murmured—a genuine question. “Do you not know the nature of humans by now?”

He cradled my face like a lover, one hand on each cheek—one touch of death, one of life. I could feel both roiling inside me, surging at his touch—illness and vitality, decay and growth. My reflection stared back at me from his curious eyes, shrouded in the gold glint of his desire.

He wanted to consume me the same way he consumed withering crops. And I wanted to give up and let him.

But then, something moved over his shoulder, something barely visible within the thick cloud cover. A little glint of silver-white.

Wings.

Vale.

My stomach dropped.

Vale couldn’t be here. Vitarus wouldn’t tolerate a vampire in his presence. There was nothing the gods of the White Pantheon hated more than reminders of Nyaxia’s betrayal.

Maybe Vale knew that.

Vitarus’s brow furrowed, noticing my distraction. He started to turn, but in a fit of desperation, I turned his face back to me. His skin was violently hot, and I drew in a sharp breath to resist the urge to pull my hand away.

“I told you I want a deal,” I said. “I want to terminate my father’s bargain.”

I couldn’t offer Vitarus goods or riches. But in an immortal life, one thing becomes more valuable than all else. I heard the answer as Vale had said it to me, months ago:

Curiosity, mouse. Curiosity.

“It will be a game,” I said. “If I can give you back everything that you gave my father, you will take back the plague. You’ll treat our town just as you did before.”

For a moment, I thought I’d miscalculated, and Vitarus’s petty anger would still win. But…

There. There it was. A glint of curiosity in his eyes. Cruel amusement. His knuckles stroked my cheek—decay blossoming over my skin.

“You do not know what you are offering me, child.”

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