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. I was sad 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 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.
Death stopped. Turned back to me.
For a moment, I stood between them both. Vale, and death.
Do you want this?
I forced my eyes open.
“Quickly, Lilith.” Vale’s voice was urgent, rough with almost-tears. “Do you want this?”
I wanted life.
I wanted time.
“Yes,” I choked, as death grabbed my hand.
I felt a sharp pain at my throat as the scent of dead roses overwhelmed me.
Somewhere in a world far away, my body writhed, lungs fighting for another gulp of air.
I balked. Death tightened its hold on me.
You have waited for this for so long, it told me, frustrated.
Something hot filled my mouth, pooled in my throat. Sweet, with a bitter bite.
I choked on it, sputtered.
“Drink,” a familiar voice commanded—begged.
Muscles that I barely controlled swallowed. Death tasted like rose petals. It dribbled down my chin, pooling in dusty earth.
Death’s empty eyes stared at me, its hand clutching mine.
I want to stay, I said.
You can’t.
I need to stay.
I yanked my hand away from death’s grip. Turned away from the field of flowers.
And I drew in a great gasp of air.
Vale held me tight to his chest, cradled in his arms, forehead to mine. There were tears in his eyes and blood on his lips.
“I want to stay,” I choked out.
“I know,” he whispered, as his mouth lowered to mine, and I faded away there in his arms, surrounded by withering roses.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A million dreams consumed me. Dreams of my mother, my father. Dreams of Mina. Dreams of dusty skin on rickety floorboards. Dreams of amber eyes and silver wings.
I dreamed of mundane days and torrid nights. I dreamed of a body pressing me to a silk-sheeted bed. I dreamed of needles and vials and flower petals on a wall.
In my dreams I couldn’t breathe, and I’d struggle and struggle, and then I’d put my head between my knees and choke up blood and roses.
Time passed. So much time. Flashes of the past and future, this world and the next, life and death. Pain, fever. Consciousness, unconsciousness.
I’m dead, I thought. I’m dead. This is death.
Or is it life?
Maybe, a voice said, it’s something in between, mouse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I startled awake, choking and sputtering.
I couldn’t orient myself. My entire body felt strange, foreign. My heartbeat was too loud, scents too strong, light too bright. My head pounded. My own senses overwhelmed me, blocking out all else.
Until I became aware of a hand holding mine, tightly, as if to lead me back to the world.
“Careful.” Vale’s voice was steady, solid. Real. “Careful, mouse.”
Words spilled out of me without my permission. “I’m dead,” I gasped. “I died. I died, and Vitarus, and my father, and—and—”
“Slow.” It was only when he put his hands on my shoulders and started to push me back to the bed that I realized I had been leaning over it, precariously close to throwing myself to the floor.
I let him place me back against the headboard and a truly obscene number of pillows, though my hands were clasped tight in my lap. He eyed me with that analytical stare.
I felt awful. My head was spinning, I was hot and feverish, my stomach churned. My mouth was sandpaper dry, my throat raw. And my whole body… my body didn’t feel the way it always had, like I’d just been put in a version of my childhood home where every measurement had been adjusted by a few inches.
But I was certainly alive.
“You remember this time?” Vale said, quietly. He wiped sweat from my forehead.
Was it the first time I had woken up?
“I…”
My head hurt so much. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to assemble the pieces of what had happened. Vitarus. The rose bushes. The deal.
And…
Do you want to live?
The choice. The choice Vale had offered me, and the one I had taken.
“I remember.”
The words were gritty because my mouth was so, so dry. As if he knew that, Vale pressed a cup into my hands. I drank without even looking at it.
It wasn’t what I was expecting—water. No, it was thick and sweet and bitter and rich, and—and— Gods, it was amazing.
I tilted my head back, practically drowning in my own frenzied gulps, until Vale gently pulled the cup away.
“Enough for now. Not too fast.”
He kept his hand on my wrist, as if to keep me from drinking again. I blinked down at the cup and wiped the liquid away from my mouth. I’d gotten it everywhere.
Red. Very, very dark red. Practically black.
I recognized it right away. By sight, and… even the taste.
“It’s not human,” he said, misreading my expression.
“It’s yours.”
I’d spent months obsessed with Vale’s blood. I’d know it anywhere.
“Yes,” he said.
I tried to raise the cup again, and he said, “Slowly,” before allowing me another sip.
I still felt horrible, but the blood helped. I took in the room around me for the first time. Unfamiliar—somewhere far from home, judging by the decor. Simple. It was a small room, and sparse, with only a few pieces of simple furniture. The curtains, thick brocade fabric, were drawn. No light seeped beneath them—it was night.
“Where are we?”
“The coast of Pikov.”
My brows rose. We were far from home. Far from Adcova—far from the continent of Dhera, too.
I didn’t know how I knew that significant time had passed. It was like I could smell it in the air—summer, the damp humidity of the sky outside, the salt on the skin of those beyond this building. I could… feel, sense, so much more now.