Текст книги "Desire in His Blood"

Автор книги: Zoey Draven

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Abruptly, I changed directions, making Gemma gasp. Hurtling back to the keep, I flew faster and faster, pumping my wings until all I heard was a rushing in my ears and all I could see was Gemma’s delighted grin, her white dull teeth flashing in the afternoon sunlight, which spread over her skin and made her glow golden.

“Vaan,” I cursed under my breath, feeling like I was on the verge of coming in my damn pants with no physical stimulation at all. I would come as I drank from her, I knew. It hadn’t happened before, but it would this afternoon.

Gemma gasped when I landed on the courtyard terrace, the impact no doubt jarring and sudden. In the next moment, I dragged her into the small space where we’d be hidden from view of the keep, tucked away among the tangled starwood vines and the stone wall of the staircase at our backs.

Gemma was gripping my vest, bunching the stiff material in her hands. Her hair was a wild, windswept mess, lovely and chaotic. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and she was still smiling, those plump, soft lips curling.

And suddenly, I needed to taste them almost as much as I needed to feed from her.

Pinning her up against the wall of the staircase, I ducked my head, the sensation of wild and feral desire, one that bordered on madness, overcoming me.

“Azur,” she gasped, her smile finally dying, replaced by a spark of awareness at our closeness and the roughness of my grip on her hips.

My cock pulsed with my name.

This is madness, I thought.

When our lips met, it felt like a violent thing.

Her lips were perfectly soft. Tender. She gasped into my mouth, and I groaned, digging my claws into the flesh of her hips, dragging her closer. I devoured her until she was clinging to me, until I was stroking my tongue across hers, finding her impossibly soft there too. Slick and needy.

My fangs pricked her bottom lip, and I growled, tasting the bloom of her blood. Just a small tease. A small taste.

This is madness, I thought again.

I couldn’t stop.

Chapter 21

Gemma

A swirl of golden pleasure was tightening and tightening in my belly. Tightening into a single solid thread that threatened to snap at any moment.

One glorious moment, we’d been flying. I’d felt free. I’d felt other. Like I’d been this entirely new being, whose world had just opened up to endless possibilities. I’d felt powerful.

Now I had my back against a wall and a Kylorr between my thighs, wedging himself against my body like he was trying to come into my skin.

And I was parting for him.

I was breathing into his kiss, tasting my own blood, feeling my head swirl whenever he licked at my tongue.

He tasted divine. There was a roughness to his kiss that made me crazed. I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was that I expected my pleasure and I would damn well get it.

When he tore his mouth away, I nearly groaned at the loss. My back left the warm stone of the staircase wall. The alcove we were in made a private little square, only big enough for us. Our only witness was the sea. It stretched wide, glittering and perfect, and I found myself blinking at it with a heavily lidded gaze as Azur turned me forward. As he pushed me over the banister railing of the courtyard terrace.

The stone was pushed under my breasts, and I gripped the railing hard. Azur bent over me, tugging hard at the neckline of my dress, and I heard it rip. He pushed the material down, and my breasts spilled out, the warm breeze drifting over them, making them pebble and stiffen.

His hot, roughened palm cupped one, and a ragged, shocked moan tumbled from my throat. His fingers pinched at one nipple, twisting it hard enough to make me squirm and my clit flutter, and I dug my nails into the stone, biting my lip, tasting my blood.

When he pinched again, I felt my knees tremble. My eyes flew wide, feeling the beginnings of my orgasm rising, hot and fast.

“Oh gods,” I whimpered.

His chuckle sounded strained and tight.

“I can make you come like this,” he breathed in my ear. “You don’t need my venom at all, do you, little wife?”

His venom?

I whimpered, dragging in lungfuls of air.

Our feedings were getting more and more physical.

Ever since the night in Maazin’s office, when he’d sunk his fangs into my breast and I’d felt the rasp of his chin abrade across my nipple, the feedings had been different. Like we were toying and playing at the edge of what could be. Like Azur kept pushing me and pushing me until he found my limits. Then he’d push some more.

We had an agreement. I would be whatever he wanted me to be during our feeding. I would act however he wanted me to act: fearful or submissive. I would play a role.

Only, Azur hadn’t demanded anything from me. He liked me needy though. He liked when I moaned for his bite.

The frightening thing was that I wasn’t playing a role.

Azur was bent over me, his front plastered to my back, as he tugged at my pebbled nipples. Every pull sent a flurry of sensation hurtling straight to my cunt.

Then Azur was groaning. He moved closer, and I was gasping for breath, tilting my head to the side, awaiting—no, needing—to feel that prick of pain, followed by the hot blur of pleasure.

I didn’t have to wait long.

But just as Azur bit my neck, as that first dizzying pull made me hiss, I felt his hand leave my breast and dive under the skirts of my dress.

I didn’t even tense when I felt his hand find me, so slick and warm that it was dripping down my thighs. I was lost. I spread my legs wider, sharp zaps of wicked desire skittering up my spine.

“Good wife,” he growled against my skin, and I gasped. “So fucking wet for me, kyrana.”

The callouses and the roughness of his fingers abraded sensitive flesh. I jerked and moaned, my gaze half-lidded, staring unseeingly out at the Silver Sea.

The orgasm came swiftly. From the lightest of touches against my clit, Azur made me jerk, and it set me off like a bomb. I broke. Shattered. With his fangs deep in my neck and his hand underneath my dress, I rocked and moaned and hissed and pleaded. I might have even screamed, the sound carrying over the water, and his dark laugh abruptly cut off when he ground his cock into the deep cleft of my ass.

His curse was a muffled whisper across my skin as he drank deep. As he ground that thick shaft, hard like steel, into me.

I was other again.

I didn’t feel like myself.

I was entirely new, created from Azur’s touch and crafted from the sublime pleasure that flooded me, altering every network in my body, every cell.

A second orgasm sparked between my thighs. A deep clenching that made me feel empty, as my walls spasmed and convulsed around nothing. I groaned, rocking against him. The movement made my exposed nipples drag across the rough, textured stone. It felt good. So damn good. That tiny bit of pain that made me want to hold my breath.

Azur froze. His fangs tore from my neck and every muscle in his body went rigid. His hips jerked. I could feel his cock swell. I could feel it twitch and spill in release. But he didn’t make a single sound.

With a sharp huff, Azur’s hand dropped from between my legs. The skirts of my dress settled. I felt warm. Like I was floating in a dreamy pink haze. Or was I just dizzy?

Azur turned me around. I thought he might leave. That he would leave me hanging over the banister with a ripped dress and flushed cheeks. That was what he did whenever he fed. Though the feedings were intense, he always left. Though he usually left me in my rooms where I could stumble right to bed afterward.

His expression was unreadable as he peered down at me. Suddenly, a wave of dizziness made me clutch at his forearm, keeping me steady. The world tilted.

Azur’s brow furrowed.

“Gemma,” he murmured quietly, his voice hoarse. His eyes were bright too. Burning like a roaring fire, embers peeking out at me.

“Hmm?”

His jaw tightened. “Have you been taking the baanye?”

My blink was slow. “The baanye?”

“The supplement,” he said, pressing his fingers to my wrist. His fangs hadn’t retracted yet. “To help your body replenish itself after my feedings.”

“Oh,” I said. Wasn’t he going to leave? “I’m not sure. Maybe Ludayn knows.”

“Raazos,” he cursed. “You should have been taking it this whole time! I told you to take it, didn’t I?”

I pushed at his chest, hearing the spark of his annoyance. As if he hadn’t just ground himself against me until he’d flooded his pants.

“I don’t know what I eat,” I argued. He’d fed from me twice yesterday. And now this feeding. I’d been a little tired this morning but nothing that would prevent me from working on the terrace all afternoon. “Ludayn brings me my meals, and I eat whatever is there. Except for that sludge tea.”

Azur bit out a sigh, his left wing twitching behind him. Just seeing it reminded me of flying. I wanted to do that again. I’d never felt anything more exhilarating.

“Baanye is usually put in that sludge tea, you impossible female,” he rumbled softly.

Even though his eyes were sparking with irritation, I wasn’t afraid of him. With the exception of those first couple days…I wasn’t afraid of Azur.

He wasn’t what I’d thought he’d be.

None of this was how I’d thought it’d be.

“You’ll drink it,” he told me, jabbing the finger, which had been pressing and rolling my clit, toward me. I blinked, my cheeks flushing, my gaze fastening on the very tip, which appeared…wet. Gods. A deep sound rumbled from his throat when he saw where my attention was directed. “Yes?”

“Yes,” I said softly, feeling the sudden wave of dizziness fade. For now.

He’d grown in size again. I noticed he’d begun to wear looser clothes so that when he did feed from me, he wouldn’t ruin them. I’d tried to ask Kalia about it yesterday, but the subject had been awkward and stilted, considering we’d been speaking about her brother. She’d hummed and merely told me that it happened occasionally but not every time a Kylorr fed.

But every time Azur fed from me, he grew. Kalia had said it was the beginnings of a rage. An actual Kylorr rage, the ones that had won entire wars. Kalia had told me that Azur could trigger one at will if he wished. Her words had made me shudder. Had made me realize how powerful Azur was and why I shouldn’t go poking at him with my sharp words after he fed.

Only, he’d never harmed me.

Azur rolled his neck and I heard it pop. His gaze drifted down, and it took me a moment to realize my breasts were still out, the top of the neckline ripped open.

I flushed, gathering up the material to shield my nudity.

“I only have so many dresses, you know,” I grumbled, unable to help myself from grouching at him even though he was on the verge of a rage. “I’ll have to sew this one just like the one from a couple nights ago.”

Azur’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t bother,” he bit out. “It’s hideous and needs to be burned.”

Embarrassment made my cheeks heat. My temper—normally tame and manageable—reared its head, making me snap back, “This dress has lasted me for years, even in the mines. Not all of us have the luxury of buying pretty things that aren’t practical.”

Azur’s eyes burned. If I was afraid of him, that look would’ve scorched me where I stood, but as it was, I glared back at him, undaunted.

This was a game between us, I’d begun to realize. When he wasn’t feeding off me, when I wasn’t coming my brains out, we were usually sniping at each other.

Like a…

Well, like an old married couple.

“You will never step foot in another mine in your entire lifetime, so what does it matter?” Azur hissed back, lowering himself so that we eye level. My eyes flicked to his lips, suddenly jarred because I remembered his kiss. Oh gods, he’d kissed me, hadn’t he? And I’d…liked it?

And I wanted to kiss him again.

A rough huff exhaled from his nostrils, and when I looked up to his eyes, I saw that his were now on my lips.

I held my breath as his dull claw reached forward, brushing the fullness of my bottom one. I was still bleeding a little from his tiny, nipping bite, and I could taste the metallic tang on my tongue. His touch was surprisingly gentle, and when a dab of my blood came away on his thumb, I watched, with a swirl of dizziness, as he sucked the pad clean. His eyes darkened. There was a new kind of awareness stretching between us now, tight and breathless.

Azur seemed to shake himself. He straightened, towering over me, blocking the sunlight behind him, casting me in shadow.

“Besides,” he continued, clearing his throat, “you’re my wife. The Kylaira of Laras. You think you can continue to dress in these rags and not embarrass House Kaalium?”

I bit the side of my cheek to keep myself from snapping at him.

He saw it. Nearly smirked. And that irritated me.

“I’ll arrange for a clothier to come to the keep tomorrow morning,” he told me next, his tone stern. “I’m certain my sister will be more than pleased to help you spend my credits and fill your closets.”

I stiffened even though the greedy part of me—the thread that all the Haras seemed to share—perked up at the notion of things. New, glittering, pretty things. New dresses. Clothes. Things I hadn’t allowed myself to have in years.

The want mingled with my pride.

“I don’t need new dresses,” I said, sniffing. “I have a few that are perfectly acceptable for—”

“Wife,” he growled, cutting me off. He jabbed his black claw at me again, his pointed ears twitching. Which I found…fascinating. “For once, do not argue with me.”

I glowered at him but bit my tongue.

“Good,” he rasped, pleased. “Maybe you can be tamed.”

To prevent myself from clawing at his eyes, I tilted my head to regard the Silver Sea, fuming. My ire softened when I remembered the skim of the water against my fingertips, the lap of the waves against my hair as Azur had flown me over it.

I’d never experienced anything like that before.

I’d never felt so free. So thrilled. So weightless.

And I wanted to do it again.

Drawing in a deep breath, I turned to Azur. He might deny me. But I’d ask all the same.

“Will you take me over the sea again?”

Azur’s gaze steadily flickered between my eyes. His expression was unreadable as always, his slitted pupils widening before contracting. His fangs were still elongated and pressed against his surprisingly soft lips.

“If you take the baanye, I will,” he grumbled finally. His gaze sharpened when my lips parted. “At every meal.”

A small price, I supposed, to experience the thrill of flying. I was looking at those wings in a whole new light. A new world had been opened up to me.

With a curt nod, trying to hide my blooming excitement, I sniffed and said primly, “That’s fair.”

Did Azur’s lips quirk? I couldn’t be certain.

Maybe…maybe my life in Krynn could be fulfilling. Maybe my marriage to Azur wasn’t completely doomed. We seemed to be taking small steps, small compromises toward one another.

What would happen if we met in the middle?

“Ludayn,” Azur called out suddenly, raising his voice.

My brow furrowed.

My indigo-haired keeper suddenly scurried down the steps from the upper terrace. My cheeks reddened. How long had she been nearby?

Likely the whole time, I knew. Gods, had she heard us? As my keeper, she was never far, always waiting nearby to serve me food or drinks, especially when Kalia and I worked on the starwood blooms. It was her duty, I’d begun to realize. To make sure I was content, cared for.

“Yes, Kyzaire?” she asked breathlessly.

“Take the Kylaira up to her rooms,” Azur ordered her, though his gaze never left mine. “She seems to have ripped her dress.”

I shot him a warning glare.

“So clumsy,” he purred, making my heart stutter in my chest, just as a jarring, familiar warmth bloomed between my thighs. He turned from me then, and I gaped after him. “And make sure she drinks her baanye. I don’t care if you have to force it down her throat.”

With that, my silver-tongued charmer of a husband disappeared, shooting into the sky, flying toward the balcony that I guessed was his office in the west wing of the keep.

I met Ludayn’s gaze with burning cheeks.

She bit her lip with glinting fangs to hide her smile. “Come, Kylaira, let’s get you changed.”

Chapter 22

Gemma

“Ludayn.”

“Yes?” my keeper asked, still admiring the fabrics on my new clothes, running her fingertips over them as she organized them a third time, this time by color. Clothes that had been delivered just that morning, just four days after the initial consultation and measuring with the clothier from Laras.

Luxurious dresses spilled from my wardrobe, in various shades of blues and lilacs and silver, crafted with material so light and airy it felt like I was wearing nothing at all. Another dress was blood red. The plunging bodice shimmered with silver metal swirls which had been sewn so tightly and expertly they resembled embroidery. Kalia had argued that I needed a dress for the harvest ball, though I’d told her that Azur likely didn’t want me to attend.

She’d waved her hand and gotten her way, telling the clothier—who wasn’t a Kylorr at all but a Hindras female, small with nimble, delicate fingers—to add it to the purchase order. Estee was her name. Hindras had always reminded me of faeries from the Old Earth stories, with translucent wings to match, though they didn’t fly. But their bones seemed hollow and they had large, unblinking, black, glossy eyes that I could see my reflection in.

Also added to that purchase order—which Kalia had gleefully helped me fill, as Azur had guessed she might—were pants and trews and beautiful, flowing tops of various styles. Fitted leather vests that clung to my breasts, waist, and hips, like Kalia wore, inlaid with metals. Even little baubles of silver to adorn my wrists and hair.

Everything together must have cost a small fortune.

And now, I watched Ludayn run her fingers over the clothing that I hadn’t had the heart to touch, much less try on.

“Yes, Gemma?” she asked me again, finally noticing my silence. I’d told her to call me by my name. While she’d agreed, she told me she must call me by my proper title among company and especially in front of Azur.

“Will you do me a favor?” I asked nervously, nibbling on my lip as I debated how to ask her.

Her brow furrowed. She frowned, no doubt catching the grim tone in my voice, and said, “Of course. Whatever you need.”

I took in a deep breath. Ludayn had been kind to me. We’d been spending a lot of time together, ever since I’d come to Krynn. If Kalia and I worked out on the starwood flowers, she would join us. If Kalia needed to go into the village—citing “harvest festival business”—then I would join Maazin in the records room, like I did most late afternoons, and continue on my work. Ludayn would accompany me. She’d even begun helping me sort through some of the older stacks while Maazin raked his hands through his hair and glowered down at his own.

I even considered us friends. Kalia too. Even though she had detested me at first—whether it was because I’d married her brother or because she was merely territorial, I didn’t quite know—I thought she liked me now. While it may have been a superficial kind of friendship—since we studiously avoided discussing Azur, my abrupt marriage to him, and anything having to do with House Kaalium or their family—we still spent hours every day together, ripping out old, dead things from the terrace. It was therapeutic, I thought.

“Will you feed from me?”

The question popped out of my mouth before I thought better of it. I didn’t know how to phrase the question. I figured it was better to just ask.

Ludayn sputtered, her eyes going wide.

“What?” she asked, already shaking her head. “No, Kylaira, your husband would not like that. At all. It’s…it’s…simply not done. Especially since…”

She trailed off, pressing her lips tight.

My stomach sank, but I tried again. “It’s just that…the way it is with him…” I sighed, deep and long, my shoulders sagging. “I just want to know if what I feel with him is normal. I don’t have anything to compare it to, and it’s not like I can ask Kalia. Only you.”

“Kylaira…”

“Gemma,” I corrected softly.

She sighed too, mimicking my deep one. “Gemma…he would be upset. Furious, even.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I protested, narrowly hiding my displeasure.

He hasn’t fed from me in five days.

Five. Days.

Not since what had happened on the terrace.

Even though I’d been diligently taking my baanye at every single meal and I felt terrific. Like I had enough buzzing energy inside me that I feared it might burst.

At first, I’d thought he’d departed to the northern borders again, like he had when we’d first arrived on Krynn. Then, yesterday, Kalia had told me that he was still at the keep when I’d asked her, much to my bewilderment and churning gut, dashing my theory.

For five days…it had seemed like he was avoiding me. He hadn’t come to me for his feedings, and it made my gut sour, thinking that he was feeding from someone else.

I should’ve been happy if he was. Right?

But I wasn’t. That was perhaps the most alarming thing to come from this.

“Please,” I said softly, tapping on my exposed wrist. I didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on the flesh. “Just here. Just for a moment so I can understand.”

Ludayn stepped away from my wardrobe. It was evening. The sun was sinking and glimmering. A blanket of golden light had been steadily sliding across my rooms for the last hour.

She hesitated. “You won’t tell him?”

I straightened. “No. Never.”

“Truly?”

“I promise,” I said, watching her approach. Tentatively, I held out my wrist. “Please, Ludayn.”

A burst of an exhale left her lips. I didn’t feel any particular emotion when she grabbed my wrist. Not relief or victory or excitement or dread. She was doing me a favor.

“Very well,” she said, eyeing my wrist, her fangs elongating quickly. “But I will have to heal the wound, and you should hide it while it finishes healing. Or he will know.”

“He hasn’t seen me in days,” I told her, not quite sure what she meant by “healing.” Did my voice sound like I was sulking? I hoped not. “He won’t even notice.”

Ludayn frowned but lowered her head, though she hesitated as I held my breath. Her midnight-blue hair brushed my skin, her hot breath drifting over my wrist.

Then I felt the prick of her bite.

Something warm flooded into my flesh, making me flinch at the familiar sensation.

Only…it never turned into anything more.

Not pleasure. Not pain.

Truthfully, I didn’t feel anything. There was only a gentle pressure from where her fangs were imbedded and the pull of her feeding.

My brow furrowed in confusion. I frowned, though it was one of acceptance and understanding.

Only with Azur, I determined, uncertain how I should feel about that revelation.

Only with Azur did I feel…lost and wild and unbound.

Ludayn’s gaze flickered up to me. She took one last draw on my wrist and then released me.

“Thank you,” I said softly, lost in my own thoughts.

Ludayn wiped at her mouth, running a finger across her fang to prick it before collecting something that looked clear. She wiped it over the small bite at my wrist, smearing the bead of blood across the marks. With a furrowed brow, I watched the mark begin to fade away. The wound closed though there was still a reddened bloom around it and obvious lightened pinpricks where her fangs had been.

Azur…he could have been healing my bites this entire time?

He wanted them to remain. To be a reminder. And for others to see, I realized.

I didn’t know how I felt about that—or why it brought a strange thrill to my belly. I was used to seeing the marks he’d left on me in the mirror in the mornings and evenings. I’d stroke my fingers over the healing bites, and just the memory of how I’d received them would make my blood rush. I wanted to hate him, and yet I couldn’t.

Ludayn was quiet afterward, returning to my new wardrobe of clothes, but her organizing seemed more jittery and agitated.

“Ludayn,” I called softly, rising from my chair to stand next to her. When she turned to me, her bright yellow eyes catching on mine, I said, “I will never tell him it was you even if he finds the mark. Which he won’t. It’s practically invisible. You don’t need to worry.”

“I don’t think you understand, Gemma,” Ludayn said softly, and I stilled at the seriousness in her voice. Her dragging wing twitched backward. “But I am your keeper and I cannot deny you anything.”

She sighed and turned back to the wardrobe.

“Are you upset with me?” I wanted to know.

“No,” Ludayn said. “How could I be?”

“Because you’re my keeper?”

Maybe she wasn’t allowed to be, and I realized that I would have to navigate this particular relationship more carefully in the future. I didn’t want to get her into trouble, especially with Zaale. Or Azur, for that matter.

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m not mad, because you’re human. And you’re here. I know you were fearful of us in the beginning, but I can see you trying to learn. I can see you trying to understand us. How we are. How we are different than you.”

I flushed in shame even though it relieved me to hear the truth in her voice…that she wasn’t angry with me for asking her to feed from me.

As such, I could only give her the truth in return.

“In the Collis…gods, throughout most colonies, I’d say, we’ve always been taught to fear the Kylorr,” I confessed. “Growing up, my governess would tell me fearsome stories of the Kylorr ripping apart their prey, limb from limb. Nothing more than beasts who only hungered for blood to fuel their rages.”

Ludayn’s lips pressed together. The words were jarring, hitting her square in her softened face. And it just felt wrong. So wrong to me.

“There were a lot of Killup too, living in the Collis, because of the mines. Their own stories began to circulate throughout New Earth. An old war that was a complete slaughter, for example. And you just…you hear so many things. And then you begin to believe them as truth. When I came here, when I married Azur…that was what I believed.”

“And now?” Ludayn asked, a hardness in her tone I’d never heard before. “What do you believe?”

“That I was wrong.”

Her shoulders softened.

I touched her shoulder, the back of my neck feeling tight and discomfort swimming in my belly. I didn’t like to admit it. I’d always been proud. But I couldn’t stand to see the look on Ludayn’s face as I spoke of my own ignorance.

“I was completely and utterly wrong,” I said softly. “Krynn…Laras…it’s the most beautiful place. I watch the village from the west wing in the evenings, and it just seems so peaceful. And you and Kalia and Maazin…you’ve all been so kind to me. Helping me navigate my new life here. You’ll never know how grateful I am to you for that.”

“We hear those stories too,” Ludayn informed me, reaching out hesitantly to squeeze my hand before dropping it.

“Which ones?” I asked frowning.

“The terrible ones,” Ludayn told me. “Some are true.”

My brow furrowed.

“There are other Kylorr. Other territories or nations, if you’d like to call them that. The Kaazor in the north, for instance. The Thryki to the east, across the sea. The Koro. The Dyaar,” Ludayn murmured, her voice softening on the last word. “And some are as terrible as I’m sure most believe. Don’t misunderstand me, there are terrible Kylorr living within the Kaalium too. Plenty of them. No territory is perfect. But outside of the Kaalium there is a culture of keeping to the old traditions of the early Kylorr. They relish the warring. The slaughtering. The bloodshed. For the sake of it, not because it has a purpose.”

I flinched.

“I am a Dyaar,” she informed me after great hesitation. I stilled. Was that why her hair and her eyes were so different from everyone else’s? Her face shape was different too, her horns smaller, her nose more flat. Her skin was a lighter gray than Kalia’s. “I am a Kylorr who has never flown. Who has never taken to the skies and felt the moon winds on my wings because my father was cruel. He hated that I wasn’t a son. A son he could make into a warrior. So he broke my wing when I was just a child, and he laughed and drank his brew as he did it.”

Nausea bloomed in my gut, restlessness rising under my skin.

“Ludayn,” I whispered, aghast. I couldn’t imagine my father physically hurting me. He never, never would.

She drew in a deep breath, blinking the memory from her eyes, and approached me after she draped my dress over the back of a chair.

“My mother and I escaped to the Kaalium. She knew a traveling merchant from Laras, and he brought us here, even across an ocean, along with others that would fit within his ship,” Ludayn said. “So I might have been born Dyaar, but my home is the Kaalium. And like you, I’ve found much kindness and understanding here, though there are those who look at me and sneer.”

“Where’s your mother now?” I asked, fearing the worst.

Ludayn smiled, and to my relief, it wasn’t tinged in despair. “She lives in the village,” she told me. “She makes the most delicious steam cakes you’ve ever tasted and has a shop where the line is out the door every morning.”

I heard the pride in her voice.

“I’d like to meet her,” I said gently.

“I’ll take you into the village,” Ludayn declared. “Though your husband might want you to wait until after the harvest festival. It draws many Kylorr into the city, those who live in the outer lands, and he might think it too difficult for a guard to keep track of you.”

“He hasn’t fed from me for five days,” I told Ludayn, unsure why that confession slipped from my lips. I watched her own bewilderment flash over her face, though she tried to hide it valiantly. “I don’t think he would mind.”

“All the same, we should wait,” she said softly. She cocked her head to the side. “Did you find your answer?”

“To what?”

She gestured to my wrist, to the bite she’d left behind.

Oh.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “It’s different with him.”

Ludayn nodded. She’d already known that.

“Why?” I asked.

She wasn’t as quick to hide her discomfort, her indecision this time. “That’s a question for the Kyzaire,” she told me.

“Ludayn.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you,” I told her. “Thank you for telling me. I know it couldn’t have been easy. For you or your mother. But I’m glad you’ve found peace here.”