Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia)

I was surrounded by softness. Soft and sleek and… something wonderful. I rolled around and felt silk sliding over my skin.

Silk.

I’d never slept in silk.

My eyes opened. My head pounded. My skin was hot and clammy. I struggled to catch my breath. It had been a long time since I felt this way—so weak, so ill.

When I lifted my head, it felt like an iron weight. I forced myself up anyway.

I was in a bed that was literally triple the size of the one that I slept in at home. The sheets were black silk, the bedspread violet velvet. It was dark in here, lit only by a couple of dusty lanterns that looked like they hadn’t been used in a very long time. None of this, actually, looked like it had been used in a very long time—the furniture was all fine but mismatched and outdated, assembled from many different decades, none of them within the last fifty years.

I rubbed my eyes. The events of the night felt like a dream.

But they weren’t. It had happened, and now I was here.

In Vale’s home.

I had been unconscious in a vampire’s home.

I touched my neck, just to make sure—

“I promise I did not eat you.”

Vale’s voice was low and smooth with amusement.

I turned my head too fast. The movement sent the room spinning, and I swallowed vomit.

He stood in the doorway, approaching slowly, hands clasped behind his back. He looked much neater than he had last night, the monster I had seen replaced with the man I had first met. No sign of those stunning wings, either.

“The bandage is my doing,” he said. “But the wound under it is not.”

I touched my shoulder and winced. Fabric covered what felt like a vicious cut, and I hadn’t felt it only because my dizziness overshadowed it.

“He stabbed you,” he said, voice flat. “An accident, when he fell. The rats didn’t even know how to wield a weapon.”

He spoke with an air of disgust.

I remembered him tearing down those men. The dead face of my attacker nose-to-nose with me. I felt nauseous.

“You killed them.”

“I rescued you.”

He had. I was grateful for that. But I thought of Filip’s hand reaching for his friend…

Vale read my face.

“What?” he snapped. “You think I should have let them live?”

I pursed my lips.

…No. No, I didn’t want mercy on their behalf. I’d been distraught that I was too weak to end them myself.

I threw back the covers, but Vale crossed the room faster than I thought it was possible for a creature to move, yanking them back in place.

“You’re in no condition to be up.”

“I have work to do.”

“Three days ago you were near death,” he bit out. “You will stay right here.”

My eyes widened. “Three days?”

How had I been out for that long? I couldn’t be away from home for—

“Why were you going to undress for those people?” he demanded.

What?

I shook away that strange question. “I need to go. I have to—”

“You aren’t going anywhere. Why were you just going to let them do that to you?”

Everything in the world seemed too loud and too sharp right now, but sharpest of all was Vale’s expression—like he had been desperate to ask me this question for the last three days. For a moment, I glimpsed the version of him I’d seen in the forest.

“How was I going to stop them?” I said. “It’s just a dress. Just a body. Would you rather I refuse and let them kill me?”

I’d always felt disconnected from my body, like it was a strange vessel that only sometimes cooperated with me. It had been my enemy from birth, after all.

Vale looked appalled.

“You could have—”

“What? What could I have done?”

I posed it like a real question, and his mouth shut. I could see the moment he realized that he didn’t have an answer.

I blinked and saw those dead bodies. “Was robbing me a crime punishable by death?”

“Raping you would have been. Killing you would have been.”

“They didn’t do either of those things.”

“Yet,” he snarled. “I’ve killed others who deserved it far less.”

Oh, I believed him.

I looked down at myself. Only at the discussion of my dress did I realize that I was wearing different clothing now—an inordinately frilly nightgown that looked to be at least a century old and like it had never been worn before.

“You undressed me.”

“I thought it was just a body,” he jeered.

Fair enough. And I’d meant it before. But the idea of Vale seeing me naked… that felt like more.

“I preserved your modesty best I could,” he added.

I didn’t have time to think about this. “I have work to do,” I said, firmly, half to myself.

He gave me a strange look—amused? Curious?

“Does nothing bother you?” he said. “You seem totally unmoved that you almost died.”

I didn’t tell him that I was always almost dying.

“I don’t have time to waste on useless things,” I said.

“It was strange to see you in such a state, when I found you. And when I brought you back. So… weak.”

A wrinkle formed over his forehead, hinting at confusion.

And that confusion, in turn, confused me.

“Weak?”

“You’ve seemed… In the time we’ve known each other, you’ve seemed infallible.”

Infallible.

I burst out laughing before I could stop myself.

“What’s funny about that?” he said, offended.

I waved him away.

It was funny, of course, because I could not possibly be any further from infallible. I was the very definition of fallible.

I pushed the covers back despite Vale’s grip on them. And then I rose too fast and immediately fell.

He caught me before I hit the ground.

“I only let you get up so you could see that,” he grumbled. “See? You aren’t fit to go anywhere.”

“I need to go home.”

I tried again to rise, and again, I failed. The hot flush of my skin had nothing to do with Vale’s hands on me. The floor seemed like it was, quite literally, tilting.

I stuffed down my frustration. It had been so long since the symptoms had been this bad. I had been so preoccupied with the progression of Mina’s illness that I hadn’t been paying much attention to the progression of my own.

He scoffed. “Home? You won’t be making that trek for at least another week.”

Now it was my turn to scoff. “Well, that’s ridiculous.”

“You can’t even stand.”

“Let go of me.”

“I let you fall once, only to make a point. I’d rather not do it again. You’re ill, mouse. Far too ill to travel.”

“Of course I’m ill,” I snapped. “Everyone is ill.”

But he gave me a piercing look, one that made my mouth close.

“But you… you are very ill.”

Four words, and I heard so much in them. I felt like a light had just been shined directly on the weakness I tried to hide.

But Vale was a creature of death. Should I have been surprised that he smelled its fingerprints on me? Especially now, as it encroached closer than ever.

“My sister.” I allowed myself to lean on his grip as I rose. Even let him steer me back to the bed. “I need to—”

“I can send someone to check on your sister.”

My heart went cold. “A vampire?”

Maybe I’d looked a little unsteady at the very thought of that, because his fingers tightened around my upper arm as a flicker of annoyance passed over his face.

“What? You’re afraid of us, now?”

Only when I thought of one of them getting anywhere near my sister.

But then he seemed to soften slightly. “There’s a boy I hire for errands, sometimes. I’ll send him. Perfectly human, I promise.”

I hesitated.

“I’ll have him check on her every day, if I have to,” he added, annoyed. “If it’ll keep you from wandering out into that forest like an idiot.”

A strange emotion passed through me at the irritated urgency of his voice. Why would he care so much?

“Fine,” I said at last. “Thank you, my lord.”

Vale led me firmly to the bed. “Don’t call me that,” he grumbled. “I told you. I’m no lord.”