The Blood of Darkness

Chapter 61

Kye

I think that I'm dreaming.

I have to be dreaming, because waking up with Val in my arms, telling me that she loves me...it seems too perfect to be my reality. Much more than anything I could ever deserve.

She loves me.

What have I done to make her love me? All I know is that I'll do it a million more times.

I feel like I'm dying. As if everything inside me is cracking open because this can't be happening; people don't get the things they want like this.

But here Val is, right next to me. Here she is, propped up on her side, letting me drape an arm over her waist, and she's smiling. At me, as if it's so natural now, so normal, not something that steals the breath from my lungs every time. Val is smiling, and she's berating me about how, despite all my apparent wealth, I've never seen the ocean before, or snow. She's telling me, in a voice still hazy with sleep, about Nieves, how much she loved it there, and I can't help but notice the way she says loved and not love because the Dark King ruined her home for her.

But it's hard to feel angry when she's smiling, smiling and talking about the ocean there, how piercingly cold it was, yet how it made her feel alive. And then she starts talking about Asilo, how her friends told her how beautiful and idyllic it was there, like something out of a dream. She tells me how Coryza would describe the meadows, all grassy and flat and filled with colorful flowers. "The stars there," she's saying, her voice faraway, "in a meadow like that, at night, you could look up and see so many stars, right? For miles. Can you imagine? All the stars, so many that everything seems infinite? That nothing else matters?"

That's how I feel when I look at you, I almost tell her. But before I can, there's a knock at the door, and the moment shatters. Reality seems to crash back in, for Val's entire face falls, her smile fading so fast that everything inside me seems to ache. She moves to slide out of bed, but I tighten my hold on her, drawing her back to me. "We could just ignore it." Let's stay here, right here, like this, forever. So the future can never catch up to us.

She stares at me for a moment, errant strands of dark hair framing her lovely face, her eyes filled with something soft. She actually looks slightly tempted.

But then she laughs softly, shaking her head. "You know we can't. Today is the ball. We have things to do."

And everything is okay because she laughed.

~

It's only Zyair at the door. He leans against the frame casually, looking not-hungover, which is good. His eyes are bright and his pink hair disheveled in a way that looks as if it was intentional, though it probably wasn't.

"Good morning," I tell him with a smile.

"Good morning," he replies amiably. "Today's the big day. Sleep well?"

Val comes up behind me, crossing her arms casually. "Wonderfully," she says, her tone just as light.

When he sees her, Zyair grins. So widely. His eyes flicker between her and me. "Oh?"

Val ignores him then, walking over to the table and rifling through her bag until she finds a hairbrush, which she begins to smooth through her hair with one hand while inspecting the blades of a few of her daggers with the other.

"Is that some kind of morning ritual?" Zyair inquires. She doesn't answer him, so he turns to me. "She does that way too casually."

"I'm just making sure they're sharp," Val says, shooting him a dirty look. "I assume the Queen needs to talk to us again? Start the final preparations for the evening?" She sets down her daggers and the brush, pulling a pair of gloves from her bag to slip onto her hands.