Текст книги "Desire in His Blood"

Автор книги: Zoey Draven

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“What do you want to do?” he asked me. “What do you and your sisters want to do with the estate?”

My shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if we have authority over it to decide. I would assume the estate is in my father’s name, but given the laws of the High Quadrant Council, it would have been forfeit the moment he turned himself over to them. And we can’t find the deed. No traces that he had ever owned it in the first place.”

I felt Azur’s long inhale.

“I own the estate, Gemma.”

Shock made me freeze before I slowly turned in his arms to meet his eyes. “What?”

“I should have told you long before this moment,” Azur said, his gaze shamed. An emotion I never thought I’d see etched on his expression. “For that I’m sorry.”

“Just tell me,” I said. “You…you negotiated the deed into the marriage contract? But Mr. Cross never said anything about that.”

“It was your father,” Azur told him, his lips twisting briefly. “He made contact with the stipulation that I recover the deed to the estate before he would agree to the marriage.”

I reared back. “What? Recover it how?”

His lips pressed. He didn’t enjoy telling me this, I realized. “Your father put up the deed as collateral for a gambling debt he couldn’t repay. Last year.”

When the world seemed to sway beneath my feet, Azur’s arm tightened around me, not letting me fall.

“The house…the house wasn’t ours? Someone else, a collector, had ownership? Who…who was it?”

“A Binshay male on the Qapot’a colony,” Azur told me. I froze. “I told your father that I would reclaim the deed, that I would buy out his debt to the Binshay, but that it would belong to me. To my House. He agreed. The agreement was finalized a couple weeks after our marriage. The deed is in my family’s vault on Krynn.”

“My gods,” I breathed.

“Your father, however, still owned a section of land here in the Collis,” Azur told me. “A section of the estate he refused to give up. Not to anyone. Not even to me.”

Azur gestured to our right. To the lake.

Of course, I thought, feeling conflicting feelings stab me in my chest at the realization.

“He wouldn’t give up the lake,” Azur told me. “At least until he was arrested. That deed went to an open auction two days ago.”

“Someone bought it?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said, his arm tightening. “Us, Gemma.”

“You…you bought it?”

“For you,” he told me. “We already own the estate. Now we own it in full, and I’ll let you decide what you wish to do with it. Whether you want to sell it, destroy it, or keep it. Whatever you want, whatever you and your sisters decide, I’ll make it happen. You don’t have to worry about that.”

My throat went tight. Maybe he’d bought and kept the deed to the estate out of malice for my father…but he’d bought the lake for me, knowing that my mother was buried there. And now he was giving me the agency to decide. He didn’t care about the estate. He only cared about me and what I wanted.

“We can bring your mother back to Krynn if you’d like,” Azur told me hesitantly, softly, when I didn’t answer him right away. “She doesn’t have to remain here. We can make her a soul gem, just like how we will make Aina’s. Maybe…maybe she’ll find her way to Alara.”

Soul gems were vessels. Azur had told me they lit up when their soul was near, especially on a night of the moon winds.

“It might break my heart if hers never came to life,” I told him honestly, wiping at my cheeks when a stray tear fell. “I—I’ll need to ask my grandparents. But I think they might want her to return home. I think they might want her to return to New Inverness, where she grew up. They wanted that from the beginning, but my father denied them their wishes. She was their daughter. They just wanted her back home, to the place where I think she was always happiest.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Azur told me, pressing his lips to my temple.

“And then I want…” I began, frightened to say the words but knowing that it was the right thing to do. “I never want to return here.”

“You wish to sell it?” he asked.

“No,” I said firmly. “My father… This estate was a reward for my father’s silence after the Pe’ji War.”

Azur’s jaw clenched.

“A reward for Aina,” I told him, and it broke my heart to do so. “He profited from her death, and I don’t want to take a single credit more for it. I want to leave this place and let it crumble to the earth with time. I want it to age and crack and fall. To let all of New Everton know, let all of the Collis know what he did. What the United Alliance did.”

“You’re certain?” he asked, his voice a rumble.

“Yes,” I said, my spine steeling. “I know my sisters will feel the same. We’ll return my mother to New Inverness. And then I want to go home. To Laras. With you.”

He embraced me tight. His horns tangled in my hair when he crouched down.

That was all I wanted. The answer seemed so simple.

“Your sisters, Fran, even Sorj,” Azur started, murmuring in my ear, “they are all welcome to live in Laras. I’ll extend them all citizenship. They can come home with us. Or come and go as they please, if they prefer to live with your grandparents and remain within the New Earth colonies. They can even live in the keep with us, if that would please you.”

I love him, I thought, my chest aching with the sharp bite of the emotion. “You would do that?”

I could feel his frown. He pulled back to look down at me. “Of course I would. You forget, wife, that you are the Kylaira of Laras. Whatever you wish, you will get. Especially when it comes to me.”

I leaned forward to kiss him, his heat and closeness an incredible comfort, almost as comforting as his words.

“I’ll ask them what they want to do,” I told him.

Azur inclined his head, threading his fingers through my hair.

A brief moment of silence lapsed between us.

Then he said, “Your father’s trial will likely not begin for quite some time.”

I blew out a shuddered breath. I’d had no contact with him, but I knew how long it would take the High Quadrant Council to build the case, to gather the details, to record testimonies and statements, to track down the others involved. And that didn’t include having to drag the Pe’ji War back into focus.

“I know.”

“And I heard from a few sources,” he told me next, “that the United Alliance is already trying to get the charges thrown out, though your father confessed to the crime.”

“Of course they would,” I said, the news chilling my heart. “Because his testimony would implicate the United Alliance. That they were involved.”

“Yes,” he said. “It will be a long road for your father, Gemma. A long road for you. For my family. For your sisters. We all need to be prepared for it.”

I nodded, meeting his eyes. “We’ll get through it. I know we will.”

Azur exhaled a long breath. “We will,” he agreed softly. And hearing that quiet confidence in his voice was enough for me.

I turned in his arms again when our words died away. The beauty of the morning felt like a sharp ache. Soon, I would never see this place again. Even still, I couldn’t wait to leave it behind.

“It’s so quiet,” I commented when the sun began to rise over the mountain. “Maybe the crowd has finally died down. Maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

The bands of his arms tightened around me before he led me inside. Back to bed, where I knew we wouldn’t just be sleeping. “I had my ship’s crew disperse them last night when you were sleeping. They’re standing guard on the roads leading from the gates, making sure there are no trespassers. They won’t disturb you or your sisters anymore.”

I let out a small huff of laughter, feeling my heart warm. Such a small thing to do, and yet it felt so huge. Just knowing that there weren’t vultures on the steps of the estate, waiting for little scraps made my lungs feel less tight.

“You did?”

“Mmm,” Azur grunted. “You think I wanted my cock plastered all over the news coms come this afternoon? The crowd would’ve gotten an eyeful if they’d still been out there this morning.”

And even though it felt strange to do, with the heaviness of this house, with the pain and sorrow that still filled us both, I laughed.

And it felt good.

Chapter 49

Azur

Two days later, my Halo orb startled us out of a deep sleep, late into the night. Gemma stirred next to me, blinking blearily in confusion until she realized.

Until I realized.

When I accepted the call, Kaldur’s face appeared, perfectly crafted in colored pixels as they floated between us.

Raazos’s blood, I thought, my heart suddenly pounding.

“Tell me,” I said softly, holding his eyes.

I couldn’t breathe. Gemma’s hand squeezed my arm. Hope rose. Blinding and tentative but beautiful.

“Alaire’s mercy, Azur,” Kaldur said. The sheer emotion I heard in my brother’s voice made Gemma press her hand to her mouth, tears beginning to shine in the darkness. “We found her. We found her.”

I closed my eyes. Focusing on my breath.

Joy.

Utter, perfect joy and relief.

Mother, she will join you soon, I vowed quietly.

“Bring her home, Kaldur,” I rasped. “Bring her home to us.”

Epilogue

Gemma

Two months later…

It was the night of the moon winds, and the storm was raging.

Even still, I wasn’t afraid. I was in Azur’s arms and he was taking me over the Silver Sea, those red eyes reflecting in the moonlight, his look of pleasure and contentment making me grin up at him.

I still wasn’t brave enough to chance higher altitudes during the storm. These moon winds were strong this month too, tugging at Azur’s wings, though I had no fear that he would lose control over his own body.

I reached out and skimmed my hand over the waves, smiling when a spray came misting up toward us.

Azur was spearing me with that look again. The one that made me breathless. The first time I’d seen it was when he’d taken me flying over the Silver Sea. That very first time. Then afterward, the moment we’d reached the terrace he’d pushed me up against a wall and stolen a fierce kiss that still made my toes curl just thinking about it.

“Beautiful,” he rasped in my ear, the wind nearly carrying the word away, but I still caught it. I held on to it. Held it close.

I laughed, but the wind took that away. Not before I caught his grin.

“Take me back,” I urged, tightening my legs around his waist so he wouldn’t misunderstand my meaning.

A sharp growl left him. He immediately pivoted, the world going quiet for a brief moment as he stilled, and then we were zooming back to the keep.

House Kaalium’s windows were lit up golden. Warm and inviting. It would be a reprieve from the rush of the moon winds, but I wanted to savor the wildness a little while longer.

So when Azur landed us in the courtyard, I pulled on his hand and tugged him into our secret corner. Hidden by starwood blooms, which were growing larger and larger with every passing week, and the staircase that led up to the main terrace.

“Wife,” he breathed, the wind whipping all around us. Azur flared his wings to help shield me from them.

I was already aching for him. Wet and needy. The moment I caught sight of that relaxed pleasure on Azur’s face from flying, my body responded to it. There had never been a time when he’d taken me out flying that hadn’t ended with me on my back or Azur on his.

Reaching up to tug on his horns so he hunched down to me, I kissed him, pouring my need and desperation and delight into it. He groaned, his hands squeezing my backside before lifting me up onto the banister so that our lips were level. There, he devoured me as tingles spread across my scalp, making me smile and shiver.

On the wind, I swore I caught the strain of music.

There was a dance tonight in Laras. Every moon winds, there was a community-wide feast and celebration as the storm raged above.

The Kylorr, I’d discovered, took every opportunity to throw a party. There was even, allegedly, a steam cake festival in the spring, one I was very much looking forward to, though Azur was already grumbling about attending.

The moon winds celebration was where Mira and Sorj, Piper, and Fran were tonight. Ludayn and Kalia too.

We would join them later after we stopped at House Kaalium’s shrine. I’d picked one of the most beautiful starwood blooms to leave for Lyca, Azur’s mother, and Azur was bringing a small, wooden dagger he’d found in an old storage chest for Aina. A wooden dagger that she’d once used to train him, his brothers, and Kalia with.

But until then, this moment was for Azur and me. My husband and me.

Azur’s grip was getting tighter and tighter, his wings beginning to thrum as his energy rose. Needful. Lusting for more than my kisses, and I would gladly give him anything he desired.

I gasped when he flipped me so I was facing the Silver Sea. The full moon was a shining orb in the sky, reflecting beams over the violent waves as Azur’s hand pulled at the loose neckline of my dress. The air was frigid. Winter was approaching. And yet my husband felt like a furnace behind me, throwing off heat that melted into my skin.

I gasped when the wind abraded my bared nipples and then moaned when Azur tugged and plucked at them. His metal gauntlets chilled my flesh, making his touch feel all the more intense, making me shudder against him as he nudged open my legs.

“Get me inside you. Now, laraya,” he growled into my ear. I was whimpering by the time his fangs brushed my throat.

Mindlessly, I reached back, tugging at the material of his pants, pulling at the clasps until they came undone and his cock sprang forward. I always wore a dress when we went flying for this very reason. Especially during the moon winds when Azur told me the “blood madness,” as he called it, felt heightened. When his hunger for me was a pinching and aching thing and he simply needed relief.

His fangs descended and I moaned when he imbedded them deep in my neck. That first dizzying tug on my blood always made my eyes roll back, and my movements became frantic, pushing my dress up around my hips before guiding his thick, heavy cock to my entrance. His tongue lapped at my skin, and every teasing lick felt like it was right over my clit.

“Azur,” I breathed, sinking down on him. His hand came up to my throat. I loved when he gripped me like this. It made me want to submit, to let go in his arms because I knew that he would never let me fall. In our daily life, we always played games. Games where I challenged him, where we went toe-to-toe, sniping at one another because we liked to. Usually, we picked fights over how to handle the harvest records. Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost.

But this…

I never minded the submission when it came to our lovemaking. I craved it. So did Azur. My wicked, wicked husband enjoyed seeing me at his complete mercy. He could make me do whatever he wished…then again, I could make him do anything too. We both knew it, and it made my submission all the more tantalizing and satisfying.

Azur fucked me hard and fast, keeping me still with a hand at my throat and the other curled around my thigh, holding it up and open as he used the leverage the banister provided. The moon winds were threading over my nipples, looping around them and tightening. I moaned and squirmed. He fed harder at my neck. Deeper. The music from the celebration carried over the breeze, and I wondered if they’d be able to hear my moans all the way in the villages.

When I came, my climax burst through me like a violent wave. I bucked and screamed. Nothing would ever come close to this, and I held on to that pleasure tight, for as long as I could. Azur’s fangs prolonged it until he, too, fell over that cliff, joining me in sublime oblivion.

He didn’t seat his knot inside me. We didn’t have time. We were expected at the celebration soon, but I knew he would later tonight when we were in our bed, alone and together with the moonlight sliding across the walls.

Though he was still inside me, still fucking his silver seed into me, I felt my anticipation rise. This was just a taste, something to take the edge off for us both. But the main course would come later.

I huffed out a pleased laugh. Azur sighed and retracted his fangs, kissing my neck and lapping at his bite marks with his flexible tongue.

I shivered as he pulled his cock out gently, the rush of his come spilling out too, coating my inner thighs.

Despite his spine-tingling and wicked words about getting me pregnant when we’d still been in the Collis, we’d both decided that it was best if I continued taking marroswood for now. The last two months had been…stressful, to say the least. Getting pregnant right now—though I wanted a child with Azur desperately—I knew, wasn’t the right time for us. Soon, it would be. Perhaps after winter we would change our minds.

For now, I was content to enjoy us. Together. To settle into life in Laras and decompress from the whirlwind of the last two—truthfully three—months.

My priority in returning to Laras was getting our affairs in order. My sisters and Fran had chosen to come to the Kaalium with us. Sorj, too, since I didn’t think he wanted to be parted from Mira, not when they were finally free to explore a relationship with one another. It had surprised Sorj to discover Killup living in Laras, I thought. But he’d found a job easily, working on the fishing boats that journeyed deep into the Silver Sea, and he seemed to enjoy it. Mira complained that he always smelled like fish whenever he returned but would always scream in excitement and jump right into his arms when she greeted him at the docks after an extended trip, kissing him until his fellow fishermen teased him and pounded on the steel docks with their stomping feet. His gray skin would darken, but he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off my sister for days afterward.

Even though House Kaalium supported my sisters and Fran, Azur insisting on giving them a generous stipend every month, all of them had wanted to get jobs. My sisters had never worked a day in their lives. Not for money, at least, but it made me proud. It was commonplace in Laras, even for the Kylorr of the noble houses, to work. Azur had hired Fran to work in the keep after she’d asked him…to work beside Ludayn as one of my keepers and assist an aging Zaale in whatever way she could.

Truthfully, it was a great excuse to be able to see Fran every day. She and Ludayn had become fast friends, and it pleased me to no end to see Fran happy after so many years.

Mira had taken work at a local tavern, which had surprised me when she’d told me her decision. But her sunny and bright disposition was well suited for the job, and she gossiped with me about all the regulars at our weekly dinners at the keep.

Piper had landed work with Neela, helping her plan extravagant parties for the nobles and the villages—which, frankly, suited my sister perfectly. Piper had helped with tonight’s celebration, after all, and even the approaching storm hadn’t dampened her mood. Earlier, she’d been barking orders at a poor, grumbling Kylorr male to get the positioning of the feast table just so and I’d had to bite back my smile.

Though Azur had offered them rooms in the keep, they hadn’t felt right about taking them and had chosen to live within the main village below instead. Piper and Mira shared a home, though Sorj often stayed with them too, especially right after a fishing trip. Fran had her own home, close to where Ludayn and her mother lived above their steam cake shop, and they would both walk to the keep together in the mornings, chatting all the while.

As for New Everton, our estate in the Collis had been left behind. We hadn’t taken anything. We’d left the furniture. We’d only packed up our personal belongings, and my grandparents had taken what they wanted from my mother’s things. We hadn’t looked back and we would never return. The deed lay in House Kaalium’s vault, and there it would remain.

The only thing I’d taken of my father’s was a necklace that he’d given my mother, long ago. He’d found a polished blue stone, worn with time, on a walk home when they’d lived in New Inverness, before I’d been born. And he’d painstakingly made a simple chain from a metal wire, crafting a bail for the pendant by hand, and it had been one of my mother’s favorite jewelry pieces to wear. Something so simple. Something he hadn’t paid a single credit for.

I didn’t know why I’d taken it. Truthfully, looking at it brought tears to my eyes, but I kept it tucked safely away regardless.

My grandparents had helped with my mother’s transport to New Inverness when her grave had been excavated. They’d buried her in a little plot of land on their ancestral estate, close to her beloved stables and the forest where she’d often ridden her horse with her father growing up. She would’ve loved that, I knew, and it brought me and my sisters a lot of peace whenever we thought of her there.

My father, however…I hadn’t spoken to him since the night of his arrest in the Collis. Azur had Setlan keeping us updated with any major happenings regarding his trial, any scrap of news he’d heard through the Four Quadrants. As of yet, nothing had happened. He wasn’t on a prison planet. He was being held in the High Quadrant Council’s private base with the rest of his unit and would likely remain there for a year, possibly even two, as the evidence was gathered.

For now, we would wait. Just as Aina had waited. Just as House Kaalium had waited.

And we would likely wait some more.

But it was important to me to fill that time with life. While my emotions regarding my father were mixed, a maelstrom of emotions that ranged from pity to grief to sadness to anger, I refused to waste another day of my life lamenting the mistakes he’d made in his.

When the time for his trial came, I would attend. But that would be the first time I would see my father since I’d last seen him.

Until then, I wanted to focus on Azur, on our future, on my sisters, on my loved ones and friends, on me.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Azur murmured in my ear, nipping at my lobe, dragging me abruptly out of my thoughts. I smiled as he smoothed my dress over my hips. “We have a celebration to get to. Though we can skip it if you’d like,” he teased.

“Piper worked so hard on it, we can’t,” I informed him, my legs feeling wobbly when I turned to face him, looping my arms around his neck. “Besides, all your brothers will be calling in on the Halo soon, so we need to get to the shrine.”

Azur inclined his head. We were visiting Kythel in Erzos next week, a trip I’d been looking forward to for nearly a month ever since Azur’s twin had extended the invitation. I wanted to see the Kaalium. I wanted to see and explore the different territories.

I knew that Azur was going in part because they were investigating Maazin, whose death had left me reeling. Shocked. Upset. In disbelief. Azur had told me that they believed he’d been involved with the Thryki and had potentially been trying to create tension and friction between the Kaalium and Kaazor from within.

Maazin had lived in Erzos for years before he’d traveled to Laras. Kythel had been looking into his time there and likely had something to discuss with his twin in person. Me tagging along was a necessity since Azur didn’t like to be away from me for longer than a couple days. As such, we’d be away from Laras for nearly a full week.

His other brothers were coming to meet in Erzos as well. And while my relationship with Kaldur had gotten off to a rocky start, he had apologized to me shortly after his return from Pe’ji, after he’d recovered Aina’s body and transported her bones back to the Kaalium.

It had been a fresh beginning for us. For House Kaalium and me. For Azur, Kalia, Kythel, Kaldur, Thaine, and Lucen. And for me. I hoped that we could move beyond the pain and tragedy that had brought us together.

I believed we could.

House Kaalium’s shrine was peaceful and humming.

The Halo orbs were hovering in various spots of the room, illuminating Azur’s brother’s handsome features from their respective territories in the Kaalium. Kalia squeezed my hand as Azur spilled his blood in the small zylarr that stood in front of their family’s shrine. A small offering to Raazos, I’d learned, for keeping the souls safe and protected. For keeping them close.

But my eyes flickered to the newest soul gem within the shrine. There were hundreds of them—the souls of House Kaalium’s ancestors—illuminating the private room with its tall cathedral ceilings. Each soul gem was safely tucked away within the stone, a special carving for each that had been dug out within the black marble slab.

The soul gems were perfectly round and polished. Their insides were frosty and clear, though they were made from bone, a special process within a time-honored Kylorr tradition.

Aina’s soul gem was glowing.

As it had since the first moon winds after her soul gem had been nestled among the others.

I remembered that night now. I remembered Azur spilling all of our blood, even mine, within the zylarr, another attempt to reach Zyos, to appeal to Raazos to lead her back home to the realm of Alara. Where her sister had been waiting for her. Where her family had been waiting for her.

Like Aina had been waiting for that path to open for her, she’d flooded back in. The whole room had chilled with her touch, with her joy, and I’d been in wonderment as I’d felt her all around us. And the others too. The lingering souls, just like I’d felt within the keep. Their icy touches, the tendrils scraping through my hair.

It had been the closest I’d seen Azur to crying. When her soul gem had lit up and illuminated his face, his expression had been so fierce and impassioned that I’d embraced him for seemingly hours afterward.

“Raazos’s blood,” Azur had breathed at that first flickering of light.

“No,” Kalia had said, shaking her head as silver tears of joy had tracked down her cheeks. “This is Alaire’s mercy.”

Maybe it had been both.

And now tonight, Aina’s soul gem was glowing again. Even brighter than before. And her sister’s was too, right beside her.

Kalia and I placed the starwood bloom on the offering plate. The first bloom that had begun to grow among the deadened vines we had revived. Azur placed the dagger.

Together, we felt the souls sing.

Azur came to me, embracing me as the Alara opened to us. And then we left the souls to celebrate the moon winds with one another, stepping out onto the terrace that overlooked the lore fields.

Kalia went on ahead to Laras’s celebration below. But Azur and I stayed rooted in place as the winds burst all around us, as the music grew louder and the sounds of voices and laughter echoed through the villages.

“I love you, wife,” he whispered suddenly in my ear, his arm holding me close to his side.

As always, whenever he said that, my heart flipped backward and forward, like we were flying. Azur always worried that he didn’t tell me enough, and so he endeavored to say those words more. I’d always told him that I didn’t mind it because I knew how he felt. His actions told me every single day. Words were simply words…though it was nice to hear them every now and again.

“I love you too, husband,” I told him, smiling up at him, watching his pleased grin spread.

We’d gotten married again last month, in a private ceremony at the keep. His family had been in attendance. So had mine. I hadn’t needed another ceremony to bind myself to him, but I’d known that it was important to Azur. In the end, it had been one of the most beautiful days of my life.

His kiss was sweet and gentle as the bright, silvery moon shone down on us.

“Let’s go celebrate,” he murmured with a grin, his fangs flashing.

He tugged on my hand, leading me down the slope from the shrines.

“Laras awaits. And I’m eager to dance with my wife.”