I stilled. Words evaded me. I searched his face for any one of the many signs I’d memorized that someone was making fun of me, telling me something that wasn’t true, and I found none of them in Vale’s expression.

That surprised me almost as much as it surprised me that I was considering it.

That I found myself, far too vividly, imagining what it might have been like to be in that woman’s place—to feel his hands over my body, pinning me. To feel the size of him inside me, feel what it would be like to be taken that roughly, that hard. I’d been fooling myself if I thought I had put him out of my mind. If there was any part of me that wasn’t thinking, just a little bit, about the sheen of sweat over his bare muscles with every movement he made tonight.

I cocked my head and stared at him.

“Vampires have a good sense of smell, don’t you?” I said.

He had moved a little closer. “Yes.”

“Do you smell me?”

My voice was low, rough.

“Yes,” he said. “Acutely.”

“Is it… difficult for you?”

“What does that mean?”

I didn’t answer, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you asking if I’m tempted by you?”

He leaned closer still. My back pressed to the doorframe. I remained very, very still, even as he stepped closer, our bodies almost—but not quite—touching. He lowered his head, so his lips nearly came to my throat.

I didn’t move.

My breath had gotten shallow, my heartbeat faster. Some primal thing within me reached for the surface of my flesh—reached for the surface of his.

His mouth did not touch me. But I still felt the vibration of his voice, deep and low, over the fragile skin of my throat.

“I smell you,” he murmured. “I smell your blood.”

“What does it smell like?”

It sounded like someone else’s voice.

“It smells like honey. Like… nightshade. Sweet. Perhaps with a bitter bite.”

I heard his voice dip a little at that last part. Amusement.

“And?” I said.

“And I smell the beat of your blood through your veins.”

My pulse quickened a little, as if stirring beneath his awareness. His hands braced against the doorframe now, so his body enveloped mine—though, still, without touching.

“And you know what else I smell?” His face ducked a little closer, voice lowering to a whisper. “I smell that you want this.”

I let out a rough breath.

I did. My curiosity extended beyond artifacts on a wall. It reached for Vale’s body and my own, and what it would feel like to bring them together.

I wouldn’t even try to deny that to myself.

But I wasn’t about to let him take me to bed in sheets still mussed from someone else’s body.

“Wanting something doesn’t count for anything,” I said, and put my hand firmly on his chest, pushing him back. He stepped away without protest, eyes narrowed—maybe with curiosity just as potent as mine.

“Goodnight, Vale,” I said. “Thank you for the blood. I’ll see you in a month.”

And I didn’t look back once as I set off down the trail.

I knew he watched me until I was gone, though.

When I got home, the house was still dark and quiet, though the birds were stirring by then. I called for Mina and heard no answer.

Maybe she left early, I thought, not believing myself.

I found her in her bedroom, perched at the edge of the bed, her eyes glassy and glazed over, her joints locked and muscles tight. She didn’t see me even when I stood right in front of her—not until I shook her, hard, and she blinked and finally looked up at me.

“Oh. You’re home!”

She hid her fear beneath her smile and a dismissive wave, and even though a knot formed in my throat that made it hard to speak, I didn’t question her.

But I still saw her trembling. Still saw the way she paused in the mirror when she rose, shakily, from the bed, looking at herself the way I had the first day I was old enough to feel death following me.

So much of her skin covered the floor that it took me half an hour to sweep it all away.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Three weeks of relentless work passed.

I threw everything that I had into it. I stopped sleeping, save for brief naps taken out of sheer exhaustion, and only when my body threatened to betray me. I stopped eating, save for hurried bites of whatever was easiest to shove into my mouth over my books. I stopped leaving the study, save to go cultivate my roses, making sure they remained perfect enough to pass Vale’s exacting standards.

“Why are you working so hard?” Mina would ask me sadly, with lips tinted black from the answer to her own question.

I couldn’t waste time. Time was precious.

My own condition deteriorated, too, old symptoms that I’d grown used to now creeping up on me with renewed verve. But those were nothing compared to those that nibbled away at my sister’s life, bit by bit.

When I closed my eyes, I saw Vale’s blood. I stared at it twelve, fifteen, eighteen hours a day, always in small bursts to avoid rejection from the magic of my instruments. It happened anyway, eventually, the glass cracking with bursts of acrid smoke. I had to run into the city to buy another lens for far too much money that I did not have. Not that I cared—who could care about money in times like this?

I began distilling Vale’s blood into potions. My early attempts were clumsy, one even erupting into eerie white flames. But after countless trials, my concoctions were no longer smoking or giving off rancid, rotting smells. Eventually, they started to resemble something like actual medicine.

One day, I produced something that responded well to all my tests. It didn’t combust, or smoke, or burn. It didn’t harm plants or skin. It had all the markers of a potential candidate—and it didn’t even resemble blood anymore.

Finally, after much internal debate, I gave it to one of my ailing test rats.

Animals didn’t respond to the plague the same way humans did, which made it difficult to test medicine on them. This rat was ill—it had days left, if not less—but it wouldn’t wither to dust the same way humans affected by the plague did.

Still… information was information.

I watched that poor rat day and night. Hours passed, then two days. I half expected the creature to die a slow, miserable death.

It didn’t happen.

In fact, the rat didn’t die at all. Not even when the illness should have stolen its final breaths.

No, it was still lethargic and slow, still obviously unwell, but it did not die.

It was such a tiny, tiny victory—not even a true positive outcome, but the absence of a negative one. Still, that was enough to have me grinning giddily all day. I felt, deep in my bones, that I was getting closer.

I gave up on even trying to sleep that night. It was midnight and very stormy, violent drafts through my office window blowing my candles out every few minutes. But I had work to do.

After only an hour, though, I reached into my pack to find that, in my exhaustion, I’d miscounted—I was out of blood.

I cursed.

I stared at the empty vials over my desk. Then at my dozens of failed experiments and the single—almost—successful one.

I looked to the window, and the ferocious night beyond the glass.

It wasn’t even a decision, really.

I rose, gathered my things, and walked down the hall. I peered into Mina’s room on my way out. Her sleep was restless, and she left dusty marks on the bedspread.

The sight was far more frightening than that of the storm outside.

Vale wasn’t expecting me yet. It hadn’t yet been a month. Maybe he’d turn me away. But I couldn’t afford to wait.

I tucked a rose into my pack and went out into the night.