Page 27 of Hunger in His Blood (Brides of the Kylorr #3)

CHAPTER 27

ERINA

“ I can’t believe you’re really here,” Luc said, over a swiftly emptying jug of brew.

I’d opted for a sweet juice, given my new aversion to brew. We were at Kyndri’s Landing, at one of the back tables I’d wiped down just earlier that afternoon. It was slow and quiet after the initial afternoon rush, so Kyndri had allowed me some time off when I told her I’d seen an old friend. But once the workers started coming in, she needed the table back.

“It’s been…six years? Seven?” Luc asked.

“Ten,” I corrected with a soft smile, gazing at him. “Almost ten.”

Something flashed over his face. I was trying to match up the pieces of the Luc I’d known with the older male in front of me now.

Truthfully, I was failing. There were pieces of Luc I recognized, like the way his eyes crinkled up when he smiled. Or the way he said certain words, like how he elongated the a sound in Vyaan.

But much of him had changed. His gray skin looked stretched tight over him, new scars having appeared along his arms and one long one that ran beneath his tunic around his neck. His eyes were still a lovely blue, but he couldn’t quite meet mine for very long. His hands were no longer smooth. They were calloused and rough, the back of his knuckles scarred.

I took his hand in mine, squeezing. “It’s been a long time,” I said, uncertainly. “But we found each other.”

“You look the same, Erina,” Luc told me. He drained the contents of his jug, raising his hand to catch Kyndri’s attention for another round. He’d had two already, and when Kyndri brought the third, Luc swallowed a good mouthful before saying, “You haven’t changed at all.”

“You’ve changed,” I said, smiling when I looked up from the foamy brew. “Did you get my letters? I went to the building you stayed at. I talked to Ikrin. I’m staying there now too. He said he hadn’t seen you in months.”

“Ah,” Luc said, scratching the back of his neck. Something else that hadn’t changed. He’d always done that when he was nervous. Was I making him nervous? That had never happened before. “That place was always a dump. I was glad to be rid of it.”

“But you never got my letters?” I prompted.

“No,” he replied. “Ikrin doesn’t hold anything for past residents. I’d meant to write once I got settled again—I really did. I just…I didn’t realize how long it’d been.”

“It’s okay,” I said softly, squeezing his hand. He pulled it back, using it to take another draw on his drink.

But I was hurt he hadn’t thought to tell me where to reach him. It would’ve saved me a lot of worry since I’d arrived in Laras. I’d thought the worst. It had kept me up at night sometimes.

“I just didn’t know how to find you.”

“When did you come?” he asked.

“A few weeks ago,” I replied, the stench of the brew a little too overpowering. I breathed through my mouth. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere. It was lucky I happened to spot you today.”

“And how long are you planning to stay?” came his next question.

The question caught me off guard. He’d spoken it casually, as if I was just visiting him as I passed through.

“Well, I—I left Vyaan,” I stammered, cocking my head to peer at him. “I left to come find you. Just like…just like what we always talked about.”

Luc looked at me. He sighed. “Erina…”

He shook his head, and I felt my stomach drop.

“All our plans,” I said, my heart suddenly speeding. “Of living in Laras. You running your merchant shop and me writing our stories to get distributed one day.”

“Erina—”

“No, they…they were good dreams, Luc. They were our dreams. What we always talked about. What we promised each other. When we were children and in our letters. We were?—”

“We were children , Erina,” Luc said quickly, a thread of irritation lacing into his tone. “Children just trying to get by, to pass another year, so that we would be one year closer to starting a life.”

“You…” I trailed off, biting my lip. “You said in your letters that you were running the shop. That you had trade deals in place with merchants. You said you would send for me. Even recently, this last year, you promised…”

Luc drained his jug for a third time. I looked at him. Really looked at him. His clothes fit him well but were threadbare in some places. Salt clung to the material in the creases, but whether it was from sweat or the sea, I couldn’t be certain.

“There is no shop,” I said quietly. “Was there ever?”

And why had he lied to me?

Luc ran his hands through his hair. His eyes were more glassy than they’d been when we’d first sat down. His elbows were planted on the table as he scrubbed a hand over his face. Salt flecks dusted the table.

“Briefly,” Luc said, lowering his hands. “There had been a shop.”

“When?”

He laughed, but it sounded bitter. “About two years in when I first came here.”

Eight years ago? I felt like my lungs were being squeezed by a vise.

“You…you always said the shop was going so well. That credits were pouring in. That’s why you didn’t want money I sent. I don’t understand.”

Luc, for his part, looked embarrassed. “I didn’t want you to keep sending money, Erina. It was yours. I didn’t want you to know…to see what a failure I’d become.”

My brows drew together and my throat tightened. “But I would never think that of you! How can you say that?”

“Because we had all these plans!” he burst out, frustrated. “But they weren’t plans, Erina. They were dreams. Dreams so unattainable for people like us. You want to know what happened to the shop?”

I nodded, frowning.

“The noble House next door didn’t like that I was drawing in commoners to the area. He paid off my merchant partner, who stopped selling me goods. No one would trade with me anymore. The price for the shop went up, which was conveniently owned by one of the noble’s friends, and I had no money coming in. I had to close it within a few months. All my money, everything I’d saved since we were children…” he breathed. “ Gone. All because of one wealthy noble who’d decided my fate for me. I’d never even had a chance. To prove myself.”

“Surely that’s against Laras law,” I argued. “They can’t do that.”

“There was no proof,” Luc said. “It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have opened a shop in that district, but I’d wanted…I’d wanted to be better. I’d been impatient to be better.”

The confession dropped from him, and it twisted my soul.

“I’d wanted to be like them . To pretend that I was someone different. Laras had been a fresh start. That’s what it was meant to be—a new life. One I carved out for myself. And a wealthy noble showed me how futile it was to pretend that I was anything but a poor, stupid orphan from Vyaan.”

“Don’t say that,” I told him.

This was so unlike the Luc I’d known, the boy who’d been so full of determination and drive. Who had set his mind on one goal: succeeding in Laras. He’d seen it as his ultimate test, perhaps to prove what he was telling me right now. That he was more than how he’d grown up.

“You can be both,” I told him. “One doesn’t determine the other.”

“It does here,” he said, that same bitter smile crossing his lips, one I’d never seen before. “I learned that years ago.”

“What…where are you working now?”

“The docks,” he finally admitted.

“Fishing?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Sorting exports and imports.”

I looked down at the salt flakes on the table. When he saw me looking, he wiped them away with his calloused palm. They scattered to the ground, and I’d need to sweep them up later.

“I can help you rebuild the shop,” I told him, unable to stand the defeat in his voice, when I reached out to steal his hand again. “We can do it together! I’ll help you this time.”

“No,” Luc said, pressing his lips together as he waved down Kyndri for a fourth jug. “Just leave it, Erina.”

“We can do it!” I insisted. “I have some money saved up. Not a lot, but it can?—”

“I said no,” Luc barked, raising his voice. I reared back. He’d never yelled at me before, not once. He glared at me now. “ Leave it .”

Kyndri came by—sans the jug of brew. “Is there an issue here, Erina?”

“No,” I said, looking up at the Kylorr female, who’d been kind to me. “No, everything’s fine.”

She gave Luc a warning raise of her brow and then went back to the bar. It was quiet at Kyndri’s Landing with only a few patron tables filled, most of whom were looking over at us without trying to hide it.

“I’m sorry,” Luc said, frustration still evident, “but no. I have stable work now. I’m not giving that up for anything. You don’t know what it’s like, Erina…to have nothing. To be hungry. To sleep wherever you can. The things you think you’re not capable of until you’re backed into a corner with nowhere else to go.”

My brow furrowed. I couldn’t stomach this—the defeat and hopelessness I saw in Luc now. It was a tragic, terrible thing.

“The universe isn’t fair,” Luc said, staring down at the wood grain of the table, tracing the patterns with his eyes. “I guess I just expected that maybe it would have pity on me after all these years. But I learned my lesson a long time ago.”

I thought about what he’d said for a long time, my gut churning. Finally, I asked, “Then why did you lie to me?”

Luc sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” I insisted. “So tell me.”

His shoulders sagged. He picked at a loose thread on his cuff. “Because I couldn’t stand to admit to you that I’d failed.”

Tears sprung into my ears, at the sorrow and mortification I heard in my dear friend’s voice.

“All those years of talking, of planning…and I’d failed within mere months. I felt pathetic. You were my one string tying me back to who I used to be. And sometimes I miss him. He’s not me anymore, but I like to remember him. ”

The way he said the words made a pang of hurt reverberate through me.

“And is that all I am?” I couldn’t help but ask. “A memory to you? Someone you can write to when you want to feel better but forget about the rest of the time? Forget the promises we made?”

Luc blew out a breath. “Like I said, we were kids, Erina. It was a long time ago. Nearly a decade. I’m not that person. And if you are…you need to move on. You need to grow up and face reality.”

“I love you and I always will,” I argued. “You were and have always been a brother to me. Years apart don’t change that. You can sit here and try to convince me otherwise. But I know you, Luc Denoren. I always have. And this isn’t you.”

“I can’t give you what you want,” Luc told me, his eyes shining. “I don’t think I ever could.”

“All I want is for you to be my friend,” I said. “I don’t care about anything else. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And if we have to live here in Laras and work at the docks or at inns, then all right. But at least we’ll be together again. We can be in each other’s lives, to some capacity. Wouldn’t that make this life even a little better? To have a friend you can trust and rely on?”

“You’re living in the past,” Luc finally told me. “You should go back to Vyaan. Go work at a noble House. You’ll be more comfortable there. Laras isn’t for you. I barely think it’s for me.”

Luc stood.

“Wait,” I said. “At least tell me how to find you.”

“Don’t,” Luc said, his teeth gritting. He didn’t meet my eyes. “Please, Erina. Looking at you…it just makes me remember Vyaan. It hurts to remember. I don’t want to see you, all right? Just leave me be and go home. I’m begging you.”

My chest squeezed tight, shock spearing through me.

Luc put down a handful of small coins on the table. “Goodbye,” he said, gruffly.

“One day,” I said quietly, holding his eyes as I stood from the chair, “one day when you’re walking down the streets of Laras, you’ll look into one of the shop windows and see Kavelyn’s adventures staring back at you. Our Kavelyn Denoren, who we poured all our dreams and hopes and fears and triumphs into. Whose name we took for our own, so we would always be tied together. And when you do see our work, I hope you remember.”

Luc closed his eyes when they watered.

“I hope you remember the boy—no, the beautiful soul I knew. Because that Luc Denoren saved me in so many ways, and I will always love him for it, no matter what. He protected me. He made me believe in myself. He encouraged me to always keep dreaming and, more importantly, to always keep trying . I hope you remember him one day too. I will never forget him.”

He leveled me a quiet stare, looking struck by the words and unmoving.

I went to embrace him, breathing in the brininess and his warmth. I felt relief when his arms came around me tight.

“You know where to find me if you ever need me,” I whispered into him. “You’ll always be my brother, Luc. And I’ll always be here for you. But please…don’t give up.”

If he did, it would break the last of my already broken heart.

Then I let him go. We stared at one another until finally, Luc inclined his head. He turned, and I tried to hold my tears back.

When he left Kyndri’s Landing, I couldn’t help but fear that it might be the last time I ever saw him.

The nausea churned in my gut again at the mere thought. Thankfully, this time, I made it to the washroom.