“You can’t,” Vladimir said with wry amusement. “Soil that thin produces only the hardiest specimens, ones that spread far and wide to drive out all others. But none of them could be called beautiful. The red flower you killed, it was a night-darkness.”
Maura felt her mouth go dry, but Vladimir didn’t care what he’d done.
“Night-halls were once native to a chain of islands in the east, a blessed place of rare beauty and illumination,” he said. “I dwelt there for a time until it was destroyed, as all mortal endeavors philippines email list ultimately must be. I took some seeds from a forest once tended by a temperamental spirit of nature and brought them back to Valoran, where I was able to coax them to grow with a combination of blood and tears.”
“You don’t mean blood, sweat, and tears?”
“My dear, what purpose would sweat serve to grow a flower?”
Maura had no answer, but the musical cadence of his voice was seductive. She could hear it all night. Maura shook off the velvety quality of Vladimir’s drifting voice and nodded toward the covered canvas.
“Is that where I am to paint?” she asked.
“No,” Vladimir said. “That was merely the first.”
“Your first what?”
“My first life,” he said as he lifted the edge of the sheet.Something dark lurking deeper in his eyes. Perhaps a hint of cruelty, a flash of festering bitterness.
