Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia)

There’s nothing to be afraid of, I told myself, but that did nothing to stop the hairs from rising on the back of my neck.

I turned.

And though I was expecting it, the sight of him standing on the stairwell, enveloped in shadow, still made me jump—the way one jumps when a snake moves in the underbrush beneath your feet.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness of the stairwell. He stood at the top of the stairs, peering down at me with the vague curiosity of a hawk. He had long, dark brown hair, slightly wavy, and a neat beard. He wore a plain white shirt and black trousers, unremarkable if a little outdated. He was large, but not monstrously so. I saw no horns nor wings, no matter how hard I squinted into the dark.

I was almost a little disappointed by how… normal he looked.

Yet, the way he moved betrayed his inhumanity—or rather, the way he didn’t. He was still the way stone was still, no minuscule shift to his muscles or rise or fall of his shoulders, no blink or waver of his gaze as it drank me in. You don’t realize how much you notice those things in a person until they aren’t there, and suddenly every instinct inside of you is screaming, This is wrong!

He approached down the stairs, the moonlight illuminating bright amber eyes and a slow smile—a smile that revealed two sharp fangs.

My chills were short-lived, drowning beneath a wave of curiosity.

Fangs. Actual fangs, just like the stories said. I wondered how that worked? Did his saliva contain an anticoagulant or—

“Would you like to tell me what you’re doing in my house?”

He had an accent, a sharp lilt stabbing into the t’s and d’s, rising the long a’s and o’s with a melodic twang.

Interesting. I’d never heard an Obitraen accent before. Then again, most people in the human lands never met anyone from Obitraes, because vampires didn’t often leave their homeland and were usually better off avoided if they did.

“I was looking for you,” I said.

“So you come into my home uninvited?”

“It would have been easier if you had come to the door.”

He paused at the bottom of the stairs. Again, that vampire stillness, the only movement a single slow blink.

“Do you understand where you are?” he asked.

That was a stupid question.

Maybe he was used to being cowered at. I did not cower. Why should I? I’d already met death three times now. So far, the fourth was a bit of a disappointment.

“I brought a gift for you,” I said.

His brows lowered slightly. “A gift,” he repeated.

“A gift.”

He cocked his head, a slow curl brushing his lips. “Is the gift you?”

Another chill up my spine, and this time, I shifted a little to ease it—which I hoped he didn’t see.

“No,” I said.

“Not this time,” he corrected, which I had no idea how to respond to.

“The gift is very special. Unique. You’re obviously a man who appreciates unique things.” I gestured to the walls and the many artifacts that lined them. “In exchange, I ask you for a favor.”

“That isn’t a gift,” he pointed out. “That’s payment, and I offer no services for sale.”

“Semantics,” I said. “Hear my offer. That’s all I’m asking.”

He frowned at me, silent. I wondered if someone better at reading faces would be able to tell what he was thinking, but as it was, I certainly couldn’t.

After too long, I cleared my throat uncomfortably.

“Is there somewhere we can sit?” I asked.

“Sit?”

“Yes, sit. You must have lots of chairs in here. You must do nothing but sit, being in this mansion all by yourself all day and night.”

“Do I look like I do nothing but sit?”

He took another step closer, and I looked him up and down without really intending to.

No, he looked like he did a lot of moving. Probably sometimes lifting heavy things.

I sighed, aggravated. “Fine. We can talk here in the doorway if you want.”

He seemed like he was considering it, then acquiesced. “Come.”

He brought me to a sitting room, which was even more cluttered than the entryway. This one, thankfully, was lit, albeit dimly, with lantern sconces that held peculiar blue flames. Paintings and shields and swords and scrolls plastered the walls. Overflowing bookcases were shoved into every corner—even in front of the windows—and the center of the room was full of mismatched fine furniture. Statues loomed over us—a jade cat staring us down from one side of the room, and a fierce, very naked woman rendered in black marble eyeing us warily from the other. The curtains were cerulean silk, and matching sweeps of fabric hung across the opposite wall, pulled back to reveal another expanse of paintings.

It was a mess, and it was the most breathtakingly beautiful place I had ever seen.

In two seconds, I identified art from four different countries in separate far reaches of the world. The sheer amount of knowledge in this room—I couldn’t even imagine.

My eyes must’ve gone a little wide, because he made a low noise that almost resembled a chuckle.

“You dislike my decorating?”

Dislike?

I considered telling him, This is the most incredible place I’ve ever been, but thought maybe now was not yet the time to start stroking his ego.

“What House are you?” I asked, instead.

Another blink. “Excuse me?” he asked, like he thought he misheard me.

“Which House? From Obitraes.” I gestured to the wall. “This all seems too brightly colored to hail from the House of Shadow. And you seem far too sane to be from the House of Blood. So does that mean you’re from the House of Night?”

His brows lowered again, now pressed so low over his amber eyes that they looked like two little jewels peering from pits of shadow.

I didn’t even need to question whether that was confusion. Good. Maybe he was surprised that any human cared to know about the three vampire kingdoms of Obitraes. But I liked making it my business to know things. It was the only thing I was any good at, and besides, when you don’t have much time in this world, you want to fill it with as much knowledge as possible.

He said, “Are you really not concerned that I’m going to eat you?”

A little, a voice whispered in the back of my head.

“No,” I said. “If you were going to do that, you would have done it by now.”

“Maybe there were other things I wanted to do first,” he said in a tone that implied this often got much more of a reaction.

I sighed wearily.

“Can we talk?” I said. “We don’t have much time.”

He seemed a little disappointed, but then gestured to the sitting room. I took a seat in a dusty red velvet chair, perching lightly upon it with my back rod-straight, while he settled into the opposite leather couch in a lazy lounge.

“Are you familiar with Adcova?” I asked.

“Familiar enough.”

“An illness is plaguing the city.”

His mouth quirked. “I had heard that one of your fickle gods had taken a bit of offense to that place. Shame.”

As if Nyaxia, the vampires’ exiled goddess, was any kinder of a god than ours. Yes, the twelve gods of the White Pantheon could be cold and fickle, but Nyaxia—the heretic goddess who had split from the Pantheon two thousand years ago to create her civilization of vampires—was just as ruthlessly cruel.

“The illness is getting worse,” I said. “It is starting to expand to nearby districts. The death toll is in the thousands and will only rise.”

I blinked and saw dust—rancid dust, swept from sickhouse floors and streets and bedrooms. Swept five, six times a day from the church floors, funeral after funeral.

I saw dust that I swept off of Mina’s bedroom floor, a little thicker each day. The dust we both pretended did not exist.

I cleared my throat. “All of Adcova’s and Baszia’s top scientists and doctors are working on finding a cure.”

And priests, and magicians, and sorcerers, of course. But I’d given up on thinking that they might save us. It was their god that damned us, after all.

“I think that you, Lord—” I stuttered, realizing for the first time that I had never actually asked for his name.

“Vale,” he said smoothly.

“Lord Vale.” I clasped my hands before me. “I think that you might have the key to a solution.”

He smirked at me. “Are you one of the country’s ‘top scientists and doctors?’”

My jaw tightened. I had always been bad at reading people, but even I could recognize that he was mocking me. “Yes. I am.”

Again, that wrinkle between his brows.

“What?” I snapped. “Do you want me to be more demure about it? Are you, about your accomplishments?”

Vale didn’t look like he was especially demure about anything.

“What is your name?” he said. “In case I need to verify your credentials.”

“Lilith.”

“Lilith…?”

“Just Lilith. You gave me one name, so that’s what I’ll give you, too.”

He shrugged a little, as if he couldn’t argue with that.

“So, Lilith. How do you intend to save the world?”

There it was again—that cloying coating of saccharine mockery, so thick that not even I could miss it.

I said, “I need your blood.”

A long silence.

And then he laughed.

The sound was low and restrained, and yet, so thick with unmistakable danger. I wondered how many people had been given that laugh as their final goodbye to this world.

“You came here to ask for my blood,” he said.

Alright, fine. I could see the irony.

“Yes,” I said. “I won’t need too much. Just a little.”

He stared at me incredulously.

“It won’t hurt,” I said. “I promise.”

“I wouldn’t think it would.” He straightened, crossing one leg over the other.

“I would only need four vials of blood each time. Maybe a little more, if I need extra for additional tests. I would need to come once per month.”

He said, without hesitation, “No.”

I cursed silently to myself.

“Why not?”

“Because about two centuries ago, I decided that I would never again do anything I didn’t want to do. And I don’t want to. So no, mouse. That is your answer.”

I honestly didn’t know how to respond to this. He’d seemed to be having such a fantastic time toying with me that it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d flat out refuse—at least, not so unceremoniously.

His face was a mask now. No wrinkled brow, no smirks. He spoke like he’d just turned down an invitation to dinner from someone he disliked. Pure indifference.

My fingers curled, and I pressed my hands against my skirts to hide the whitening of my knuckles.

Of course none of it mattered to him. What else could I expect from a creature like him—a creature that did not understand life, death, or suffering—but indifference?

I forced myself to do what Mina would do. She would smile sweetly and charm. I was never good at being charming and didn’t see much point in it most of the time, but it was worth a try. So I smiled, though it felt more like a baring of teeth.

“You didn’t let me complete my offer, Lord Vale. In exchange for your blood, I’ll give you a gift each visit.”

I reached into my bag and withdrew the rose that I had so carefully packed. I had to stare at it for a moment before I handed it to Vale. Did I imagine that it seemed even more beautiful in here, as if it was meant to exist in this room?

He stared at it, face stone.

“A flower. Very pretty.”

He did not even try to hide how unimpressed he was.

“I promise you,” I said, “its beauty is by far the least interesting thing about it.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“You won’t know unless you accept my deal.”

His eyes narrowed at me.

“How many?” he asked.

“Visits?”

“Roses.”

“I’ll visit you six times, and I’ll bring you a rose each time.”

This time, I was expecting another unceremonious refusal. But instead, Vale examined the rose, twirling it slightly between his fingertips. He had a very cold, hard stare. It looked a bit familiar, and I couldn’t place why until I realized that it was the stare of a scientist, someone used to analyzing things and taking them apart.

A little spark of relief came with this realization. Because that, at least, was something I understood. Maybe Vale and I were worlds apart in every way—human and vampire, lord and peasant, near-immortal and pitifully ephemeral—but if we had that, it was already more than I had in common with most of the people I’d grown up with.

“Fine,” he said, at last. “I accept your deal. Did you bring your equipment? Let’s get this over with.”

Of course I had brought my equipment. I had my needles and vials ready. Vale pulled up his shirt sleeve and extended his arm to me, and I drew his blood.

Up close, he smelled like jasmine—both old and young at once, foreign and familiar. His skin was smooth and tan. When I touched his wrist to adjust the position of his arm, I jumped at the lack of warmth, but it also wasn’t as cold as I’d imagined it would be. People spoke of vampires like they were walking corpses, but I’d seen many, many corpses, and Vale didn’t look like any of them.

Still, I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting when I pierced the smooth skin of his inner arm with my needle. I had to push much harder than I did with a human, and when the needle went through, it did so with a faint pop and abrupt force. The blood that flowed into my vial appeared to be the same consistency as human blood, but much, much darker—nearly black.

I watched it, fascinated. Then, by the second vial, my eyes had drifted up to the rest of the room, taking in the tapestries on the walls, the books on the shelves. Gods, some of those tomes looked to be many centuries old, carelessly shoved into dusty corners.

How old was Vale, I wondered? Legend said he had been here, beyond the outskirts of Adcova, for nearly two hundred years. How many decades—centuries—of life had he lived before then?

How much had he experienced?

“Are you enjoying looking?”

Vale’s voice startled me. My eyes flicked back to him. He was now looking at me as he had looked at that rose—pulling me apart, petal by petal.

Are you? I wanted to say.

Instead I said, “What will become of all of this when you die?”

“I’m immortal.”

I scoffed. “You’re not immortal. You’re just very long-lived. That’s an important distinction.”

“By the time it matters, I’m sure I won’t care.”

It already looked a bit like Vale didn’t care, judging by the condition of his living space, but I didn’t say that, either.

A knot of jealousy formed in my stomach. He spoke with such blasé carelessness about all of this. About his life. The gluttony of it revolted me. He’d hoard all of this knowledge here, and he’d think nothing of it. Selfish.

“I imagine it must become the only valuable thing, after all that time,” I said. The last vial was almost full. I watched the blood bubble up in the glass, ready to pinch off the needle. “Knowledge.”

“Knowledge is cheap and dull,” Vale said, too casually, and I almost gasped at him in horror.

“I can’t imagine that ever being true. There’s so much to learn about the world.”

He laughed a little, condescendingly, the way one laughs at a stumbling kitten. I corked the last vial and withdrew the needle from his arm. I found, with some surprise, that his skin had already healed around the needle tip. I had to rip it from his vein, which he didn’t react to.

“After so long, you realize that knowing things doesn’t especially matter very much. Knowledge with no context is meaningless. That’s not the real treasure.”

“Oh?” I tucked away my tools and stood. “What is, then?”

Vale stood, too. He was quite tall, and he looked down at me with a wolfish kind of delight. He smiled, revealing those deadly fangs. The moonlight from the window glinted in his amber eyes.

I felt, all at once, like an idiot for thinking before that he didn’t look monstrous. Because in this moment, with that smirk on his lips, I glimpsed the man of the legends. The monster of the whispers.

“Curiosity,” he said.