Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia)

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.

“How long—”

“Weeks.”

Vale sounded weary. He looked weary, too—his hair unkempt, his eyes shadowed, like he’d gotten very little rest or food.

“I didn’t know if you would survive,” he said quietly. “You were very sick.”

Most don’t survive the process, he had told me.

The process.

Only now did it start to sink in, what had happened to me—what I had done. My human self had withered and died, just as it had always been destined to.

And I…

I rubbed my fingers together. Even my skin felt different. Smoother. Unmarked.

Gods. The shock left me dizzier than my illness. The words even sounded strange aloud.

“You Turned me.”

Vale nodded slowly. Hesitantly.

“I asked you—”

“I said yes.”

I want to stay.

And so, he’d helped me stay.

“Yes,” he whispered.

I met his eyes. He didn’t blink, watching me carefully—as if to make sure he saw every shade of my reaction to this.

“I won’t lie to you, mouse. It won’t be an easy transition. A part of you did die that day. A different version of you was born. There will be things you’ll grieve. There will be things about yourself you’ll need to learn how to embrace. Things that might be… uncomfortable. But…”

His hand fell over mine as his voice faded. He cleared his throat a little. “But you’ll have help.”

I took this in for a long moment.

He asked quietly, “Do you regret it?”

Regret it?

I felt… different. So wildly different than I always had in every way, shedding not only my humanity, but the ever-present looming threat of time.

Even through my illness, I felt the strength lying in wait, ready to be seized. This body wouldn’t wither. It would thrive.

But I couldn’t care less about that.

The prospect that overwhelmed me was the thought of time.

Time. So much of it. Time to collect knowledge. Time to see the world. I didn’t know what I might do with so much of it.

I felt strange, yes. I could already tell Vale was right that it would take me a long time to adjust to this new existence.

But regret?

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

Vale’s shoulders lowered slightly, as if in relief. He avoided my gaze, rolling my fingers gently through his. My senses were so heightened, I could feel every wrinkle and texture of his skin.

“You… you came back,” I said.

“I know it wasn’t what you wanted me to do. But I was a general because I was better at giving orders than following them.”

Not true. I wanted it more than anything. For him to come back. Even if I didn’t know it at the time.

“Why?” I asked.

“You were right. The roses were special.”

I smiled a little. “You finally noticed.”

“They never died.”

They look exactly the same as they always have, he’d said, so irritated, like I’d tricked him. I’d thought it was funny at the time. Of course a vampire wouldn’t notice the absence of decay, the absence of time, when they lived beyond it themselves.

“When I was preparing to leave,” he said, “I was gathering the roses. And I noticed, when I held them, that one of them had begun to wither—just a little. I’ve held god-touched objects before. And when I was touching them, I—I felt it. It feels strange, for us to touch an object touched by the White Pantheon.”

Us.

Him and I. Vampires.

But that struck me less than the image of what he was describing. That Vale, when packing up his belongings, had not only taken the roses with him, but had sat there holding them. For a moment I could picture it so vividly, him cradling those roses, and it made my chest tighten.

His thumb rubbed the back of my hand.

“It was foolish that I didn’t realize you were god-touched, too. You strange creature.” A wry smile tugged at his lips. “Different from any human or any vampire I had ever encountered.”

Gods, the way he looked at me—a strange feeling shivered in my heart.

But then my brow furrowed.

“But how did you know?” I said.

Vale had pieces of the truth. Incomplete evidence. But not enough to draw a final conclusion.

He lifted one shoulder in an almost-shrug. “I didn’t know, Lilith. I felt.”

So few words, and yet they encapsulated something I had struggled to name in those final moments. Something I understood, against all reason and logic.

“I knew that—that I would be making a mistake, in leaving you,” he said softly. “I knew it, even if I couldn’t name precisely why. So I came for you.”

And he had saved me.

My throat thickened. I swallowed, though it was difficult through the dryness of my throat.

“And what about Adcova?”

“Ah, the best part.” He smoothed my hair from my face. He’d been doing that this whole time—touching me in all these little mundane, fussing ways. Smoothing hair, adjusting my sleeve, wiping beads of sweat. “It seems,” he said, “that Adcova has escaped its god’s ire at last.”

I let out a rough exhale. I almost didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to hope it could be true.

“I asked my errand boy to send updates,” he went on. “There have been no new cases reported in town, or anywhere else in the area. And it seems a peculiar new drug has cured the cases that already existed.”

The pride shone in his voice. My chest hurt fiercely, a strange burning sensation. I couldn’t speak. He held my hand tight.

“It’s over, Lilith,” he said. “You saved them.”

Years. Years of my life. Countless hours in my study, countless hours of sleep stolen. Thousands of books, thousands of notes. Years-worth of pen-grip callouses on my fingers.

For this.

For…

“Mina,” I choked out.

I’d meant for it to be a real question, but I couldn’t get it out, not without breaking down.

Vale was silent for too long, making worry tighten in my stomach. He let go of my hand—somewhat reluctantly—and went to the door.

And when she appeared in the doorway, my heart cracked open.

She was bright and vivacious and full of life like I hadn’t seen her in years, as if all those layers of death she had shed in the form of dusty skin on our floors had left her a whole new person. New, and yet, the version of her I had always known.

She smiled at me through tears, a huge, sun-bright grin, and I opened my mouth to speak and let out a garbled sob.

She crossed the room in several clumsy rushed steps and threw herself against me in an embrace.

“I know,” she said, when I couldn’t speak, and neither of us said anything else.

Because for so long, I had struggled to connect with my sister. Struggled to show her the warmth beneath my cold. Struggled to let her see the love my face and words couldn’t convey to her.

I’d thought I’d die with her thinking I did not love her.

I did die, and that fear died with me.

Because here, in this moment, with me on the right side of death and her on the right side of living, lost in a tearful embrace hello instead of goodbye, we met each other on level ground.

Here, we understood each other so completely, words were useless, anyway.

We did, eventually, let each other go and compose ourselves, and I did, eventually, manage to get my grip on words again.

We made it through a few awkward minutes of stilted conversation before the question I couldn’t help but ask bubbled to the surface.

“Do you hate me?” I asked. “Or hate… what I’ve become?”

Mina’s eyes widened. Her answer was immediate. “Never. I could never hate you, Lilith.”

“Do I look different now?”

I was curious, I had to admit. There was no mirror in this room, and I definitely wasn’t strong enough to get up and go look for one.

She thought about this before answering.

“You look different,” she said, “but you also look more like yourself than you ever had. And that makes sense, because you were never… like us. You were always so different than the rest of us.”

She said it with such warmth, even though I’d always resented my differences from those around me.

“You’ll be going with him,” she said. “Right? To Obitraes.”

I hadn’t even been able to think that far ahead yet. I touched my throbbing temple.

“He hasn’t asked me to.”

Not technically true. He did ask me to go with him—a lifetime ago, before I went to Vitarus.

Mina gave me a flat stare. “He’ll ask.”

“I don’t have to. I could live outside the town.” It was risky, and the last thing I would want to do is draw more negative attention to Adcova. But Vale had managed it for centuries. Maybe I could.

She looked at me like I was insane.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because…”

I had never been farther than twenty miles away from my home. I had a sister who had always needed me, a cause that demanded all my focus and energy.

“That would be a stupid thing to do,” she said, so plainly I almost laughed. “I’m not as smart as you, but I’m no idiot. You think I don’t know what you want? I know you’ve always wanted to travel. See new things. Learn new things. So go!”

She smiled, even though her eyes were damp again. She took my hand and squeezed. “You’ve spent your whole damned life dying, Lilith. Now you’ve gotten that out of the way, and you get to go live.”

I was silent, a bit struck.

My voice was rough when I said, “You know that I never wanted to leave you.”

I didn’t mean here, in this moment.

I meant all those days when she asked me to stay, and I went to my office instead.

I meant all those years when she, and my parents, and my friends, and everyone around me begged for me to stay, when death was stealing me away instead.

Her face softened.

“I know,” she said. “Of course, I know.”

She said it like it was obvious and simple, and a silly thing that didn’t need to be clarified.

I always had thought that Mina didn’t understand me, all my true intentions hidden behind the wall I couldn’t figure out how to scale between me and the people around me.

Maybe she did see more than I ever realized, after all.