Page 34 of Hunger in His Blood (Brides of the Kylorr #3)

CHAPTER 34

ERINA

T he gardens were just how I’d remembered them.

Only quieter now because it was before dawn and even the horticulturists were asleep…or taking their first meal of the day in the warm kitchen.

Me? I hadn’t been able to sleep. I’d tossed and turned in my old room in Kaldur’s wing of the keep all night. I’d woken briefly and thought I’d still been back in Laras. A fear of dread had struck me that I was still back there.

I hadn’t been able to sleep since. I’d thought of Kaldur, of everything that had happened last night, of the child in my womb, of his offer to help Luc and Syndras, to my ever-tumultuous feelings about the Kyzaire of Vyaan.

I’d taken my notebook and my pencil tin…but truthfully, I hadn’t drawn or written anything in weeks, besides half-desperate letters.

In Laras, I’d merely been too exhausted to even think of flipping open my notebook. My inspiration was gone, my creative soul a little battered and bruised.

I’d hoped that being back in the gardens might shake some loose. The feeling of awe and beauty I so loved. This keep, these grounds had always inspired me.

Only I felt nothing now. That scared me.

I felt the want to create wiggling inside me as the soft sole of my boots met familiar cobblestones and winding paved pathways. The morning was chilled and brisk. Small, dripping icicles hung off the petals of one flower where the wall hadn’t blocked the wind chill.

I studied the bloom. Beautiful, though a little wrinkled from the bitter cold. I flicked off the icicles and smoothed the petal, soft and velvety beneath my fingertip.

Maybe one day, that could be me again. But right now, I felt a little shriveled up, beaten down, and heartbroken. I’d felt that way since leaving Vyaan…but Luc’s rejection had made it all the worse. Seeing his defeat had killed something in me, the perpetual glimmer of hope and optimism I’d endeavored to keep close.

I felt like I’d left a big part of me in Laras, a vital piece.

Would I find it again in Vyaan?

I didn’t know.

My hands moved to my rounding belly. The firm press of it felt strange and foreign still. I’d barely given much thought to what a child would actually mean. It had been about two weeks since I’d discovered the pregnancy. Nearly halfway through it, if the healer was to be believed.

“Erina.”

I closed my eyes.

Kaldur.

I turned to regard him, approaching me swiftly down the pathway. Seeing him made a pang shoot through my heart. His hair was disheveled, his clothes askew, as if he’d just woken up and thrown them on.

“I don’t like you leaving the keep without telling me,” he said .

My expression remained stoic. “I didn’t realize I was a prisoner here.”

Kaldur blew out a sharp breath. His hands were trembling, I saw, when he raked them through his hair. He stepped up to me, the spread of his warm hand coming to my cheek.

“I just got you back,” he said, voice hushed. He smelled like how I remembered. Clean and comforting. “I still fear you’ll disappear again. A part of me believes you’re still just a dream, that I’ll wake up any moment and you’ll be gone again.”

There was a haunted hollowness in his gaze when he said the words. I felt a flutter of sympathy, of guilt, before I forced the emotions away.

“Besides,” he said, “news of our child will spread.”

Our child.

The words struck me nearly dumb as I stared up into his eyes.

“And right now,” Kaldur said, looking as though he was trying to find the words, “well, let’s just say that enemies are everywhere. And House Kaalium has made many beyond our borders. You need to understand that now. My brothers have guards appointed to their mates as a precaution. No more wandering until I secure one for you.”

I…I was out of my element here. Guards? But why? This was normal ?

I stepped back from his hand, and it fell between us. I looked at his chest, at the silver buttons, one not properly clasped as if he’d hurried to get dressed, as I digested the words.

“I don’t need a guard. And no one has to know I’m pregnant yet,” I said.

Kaldur made a sound of disbelief. “You know better than that. Keepers know everything. You think the news won’t spread? And besides, you can’t stay in the keep forever. You’ll be expected to attend events with me.”

“I wasn’t before,” I said. “That doesn’t have to change. ”

“Everything has changed, Erina,” he growled, drawing my eyes. “I’m not going back. We’re not going back.”

“And just because you decided that it means I have to accept it too?” I shot back, raising a brow.

I sucked in a breath when his hand wrapped around the back of my neck. His skin was hot, and when he stepped into me, I felt even more heat pour off him. Even through my coat. I only wore my nightdress beneath it, and boots with holes in them, but I still felt that heat.

“One thing you will get used to, Erina, as the mate to this Kyzaire , is that when I make up my mind, I do not change it. I can be impulsive, yes. My temper sometimes gets the best of me. And I can be stubborn to a fault. But one thing I am not is an oath breaker.”

My breaths were shallow as I looked up at him.

“I regret what happened between us,” he continued. “I regret the way I treated you. I regret that I lied to you, that I made you feel like I didn’t care about you. I regret that night in my study. I could have simply been honest and it would have saved us a lot of hurt.”

My heart was beating so fast and strong in my chest that I knew Kaldur would be able to hear it. His eyes were mesmerizing, like zylarrs . Just as I’d remembered. With the dawn mist swirling around us, I felt like I’d been transported to an otherworldly realm. I felt the burst of beauty around us as the sun finally broke through the forest tops.

“This is my promise to you now, Erina,” Kaldur said gruffly. “I promise to give you the respect you deserve as my blood mate. As the mother of my child.”

I breathed in deep when I heard the catch in his voice at the words, feeling a swell of emotion rise as I fought against it.

“I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I’m selfish enough to demand it of you. I know I’ve given you no reason to believe me when I say that it will different from now on…but in ti me, I hope you will. I only ask for time. Please, dallia. I just need time to prove that we can be right for each other.”

I cleared my throat when it went tight.

“And what about Luc?” I couldn’t help but ask.

I’d thought about that one night in Kaldur’s study too many times to count, replaying that night over and over in my head. I’d realized belatedly that Kaldur believed I loved Luc romantically, not because I considered him my brother. It was the only thing I wished I’d clarified that night, not that it would’ve mattered then.

Kaldur’s lips pressed together. “What about him?”

“You believe I love him, don’t you?” I asked. “You asked me last night if the child was yours or his, after all.”

The Kyzaire ’s jaw gritted so tight that a muscle popped.

“He doesn’t matter to me,” Kaldur grated. “Even if you do love him, I’d already made up my mind to steal your affections all for myself.”

Disbelief shot through me. “What? That’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t test me,” he rasped. “I can be infinitely charming when I set my mind to it.”

“But what you don’t understand is I don’t want the facade you give everyone else,” I said. “It’s not real.”

Kaldur’s brow furrowed.

I cleared my throat again, turning my head to dislodge his hand at the back of my neck.

“My point is…a part of you believes that Luc and I are involved. Enough for you to question the pregnancy.”

“I was surprised last night, Erina,” Kaldur argued. “And half-mad, starving for you, so fucking relieved I’d found you, and on the verge of a rage. If you tell me that the child is mine, then I believe you.”

“But you believe that I would give myself to you if I loved another so deeply?” I questioned. I wanted to understand. “Is that who you think I am? You thought I was pretending to care about you? That my feelings for you weren’t genuine? ”

“We still don’t know a lot about each other, Erina,” Kaldur told me, his voice firm even though his eyes were molten in the rising sun as they pinned me in place. “I didn’t know what to believe, but I’m ashamed to say I believed someone that I shouldn’t have.”

Velle, he meant. And Lydrasa, perhaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been Velle who’d written the letter with the noble female’s help. Velle would have had access to the letters coming into the House. She was the one who usually collected them and brought them to Maudoric. Perhaps she’d recognized my handwriting.

“But what I can tell you is that I’m fucking jealous,” Kaldur grated. “And for me, that is a strange and new feeling. I’m not…I’m not handling it well.”

He was jealous?

I had half a mind to let him suffer some more. It would feel good, wouldn’t it? To let him hurt the same way he’d hurt me? He deserved it, didn’t he?

I turned from him, flitting away from the center of his embrace. It was hard to think when he was so close, when his scent was enveloping me.

“You should have just asked me,” I told him, staring over the calm and quiet of the morning garden. “Because if you had, I would’ve told you that Luc Denoren is like a brother to me. And I can tell you that the mere thought of being romantically involved with him makes my stomach churn.”

Kaldur’s sharp, stunned breath was all I heard. When I turned around to face him, I saw his expression looked thunderously dark as he digested what I told him.

“I’ve never loved Luc in that way. I love him fiercely, yes. I always have, but as my brother . As someone who protected me and looked out for me when we were younger.”

“You share a name. I thought…”

I laughed, but it was humorless. “We were children when we took that name. You know how we came up with it? It’s from my stories. Our stories, because Luc and I worked on them together. And we named our hero Kavelyn Denoren because Luc liked the way it sounded. He’d heard the name once, and it had stuck with him all those years. And we were orphans with no name of our own and so we took it together. Kavelyn Denoren was born. And so were Erina and Luc Denoren. Bonded forever—maybe not by blood, but by dreams. And hope that our lives would turn out like Kavelyn’s.”

I didn’t realize I had started crying until Kaldur frowned, stepped forward to wipe the tears off my cheek.

I was embarrassed, turning my face to the side to compose myself. I shivered in my jacket, wrapping it tighter around me.

“So now you know,” I finished. “The real truth. You should have just asked.”

I’ve only ever loved you in that way, I couldn’t help but think. But that had been a naive love. One sickened with ridiculous hope and childish romanticism.

I knew better now.

“I’m sorry,” came his gruff words. Kaldur stood there as sunlight crept over the entirety of his body, like he was a beautiful sculpture in a gallery. “For what it’s worth, Erina Denoren, I’m sorry.”

It was small, but it was something.

“Am I really your kyrana ?” I asked, my tone sounding stiff, distant. Another thing that had kept me up at night. How had I not seen the signs if I was? Was I blind?

Kaldur inclined his head. “Yes.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since that afternoon. When you cut yourself on the vase shard,” he told me. My eyes widened, a hitch of my breath sounding. That long? That was why he’d left? Why he’d called me into his office later that night? “I smelled your blood for the first time, and I knew. Right there and then. ”

“You knew immediately,” I said softly. That was rare, or so I’d heard.

“I likely would’ve known sooner,” he added, “if you hadn’t used that perfume so much.”

Was that why he’d been so grumpy about it? Oh…because he’d thought it had been a gift from Luc, from my supposed lover ?

“Without it, you smell otherworldly to me. The sweetest of gifts from another realm, from a godly one,” Kaldur continued, his voice hushed. “I knew you were mine that afternoon. And I had done everything since to try to convince myself otherwise.”

Because I was a keeper from no great family, from no family at all, I knew. Below his station in life. That realization still filled me with disappointment even though it was a reality I couldn’t change.

“You found me lacking,” I said quietly. When he opened his mouth, I said, “It’s the truth. Don’t try to deny it because it sounds pretty.”

“I wasn’t going to deny it,” Kaldur admitted. “I have a lot of flaws. Thinking highly of myself, perhaps too highly, is one of them—at the expense of everyone else. But one thing I am not ashamed about is that I remember . I remember history—darker moments of my family’s history, to be precise—and I know how vital it is to prevent it from repeating itself. I am highly aware that my family has not always been loved or even respected within the Kaalium. How can a lineage as ancient as mine be?”

“And you didn’t want to tarnish your legacy here with a keeper,” I finished for him, raising my chin.

“Do you know what happened here?” he asked. “Before I took over this territory? You might have been too young to remember.”

I frowned and shook my head.

“My uncle ruled here once,” Kaldur told me, beginning to pace a little, as if he couldn’t keep still with the memory. “But no one ever took him seriously, even though he was a fair leader. I learned a great deal from him. But his affairs, his parties, his excess were well known throughout the Kaalium. He had affairs with his keepers, and one in particular he thought himself in love with.”

A familiar tale, I thought.

“Many have always compared me to him. They think it’s a compliment because he’d been well-liked once, but I never took it as one,” Kaldur admitted. “I had my wild years, but when I took over Vyaan, I took my responsibility and my pledge to my people seriously. So it always cut deeply when they made their jokes about how similar we were.”

“What happened to your uncle?” I couldn’t help but ask, wrapping my arms around myself.

“He announced his mistress publicly, humiliating his wife, my aunt, in the process. Soon, he broke their marriage too because he wanted to wed his mistress instead. But my aunt got her revenge,” he said. “She stripped him of nearly everything and dragged him over the spikes within the noble Houses, sowing discord and mistrust. Soon not even the nobles respected him. They laughed at him behind his back. The moment he fell in love with his keeper, he lost control of his territory.”

Realization slowly began to bloom as I listened to the story. I realized this was one of Kaldur’s greatest fears…to end up like his uncle. Bound to repeat history, especially here , where it had happened in recent memory.

“I had to take over the territory sooner than expected, perhaps even before I was ready to,” he admitted. “And it took me a long time to gain the respect of the nobles here, especially since I was young.”

“And…your uncle?”

His expression was unreadable when he told me, “When the nobles turned on him, his new wife did too. She’d only truly wanted all the luxuries that came with her position, and she received none of it. She took another lover, another noble. And my uncle…he eventually took his own life, driven mad by heartbreak and his own failing as a Kyzaire .”

I nearly gasped. A tragic tale. A tragic warning , I realized. One Kaldur had apparently taken to heart.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, looking to the ground briefly, unable to meet his eyes quite yet. “I didn’t know.”

Not even the keepers had spoken of it. Though maybe the majority were too young to remember, like me. I hadn’t heard of this, though I’d grown up on the outskirts of Vyaan, where news hardly ever reached.

“So it wasn’t you specifically, Erina,” Kaldur finally finished, frustration evident on his features. “I’ve just always had to be more careful in Vyaan. I’ve never once gone near one of my keepers—the thought only made me remember the consequences of it. But then…you cut your hand in the sitting room that day. And suddenly all my fears that I would follow in my uncle’s footsteps, when everyone already expected me to, started keeping me up at night.”

I felt like he was only admitting a portion of the worries he’d carried.

“It doesn’t make it acceptable,” Kaldur finally finished, “but it was a decision I’d knowingly made…trying to keep you in the dark and at arm’s length. I thought I could fight this.” He laughed, the sound bitter. “But I was wrong. I’ve never been more wrong in my entire life, and I’ve made some pretty spectacular fuckups—believe me. And I regret it. I wish I could go back to that afternoon in the sitting room because I would change everything. But I can’t.”

We regarded one another in the rising sunlight of the morning as the icicles dripped off flower petals and a hint of warmth began to burn off the chill from the night.

“It’s not quite a truce, is it?” he asked.

“No, it’s not,” I said quietly .

Then again, I understood now. That didn’t erase the hurt and anger, however. I didn’t know what could.

Kaldur inclined his head.

“Come,” he said, drawing my hand into his. He pulled me back toward the keep. “I have a healer on the way. And you need to eat, not stand in the chill.”

“A healer?”

“Ekor,” he said. “The best in Vyaan. He’ll attend to you during the pregnancy and check in regularly to make sure both of you are healthy.”

“Oh,” I said softly. “All right.”

That was…thoughtful.

“But before you see him, I want you to eat. You look like you haven’t been,” came his gruff grumble.

“I could say the same about you,” I mumbled. He looked better this morning but not quite the Kaldur I remembered. My blood had helped last night, but…if what he’d said was true, that he hadn’t fed from another, then it had been weeks since his last true feeding.

I knew that Kylorr could survive off food alone, but blood was still a vital part of their nutrition, particularly for full-blooded Kylorr.

Kaldur pulled up short. “It was difficult when you were gone, Erina,” he admitted quietly. “But my appetite will return now that you’re here. I hope yours does too.”

I inclined my head and admitted, “I…I hadn’t been taking the best care of myself.”

There had simply been too much to do, and I’d been worried about stretching my credits.

“That ends now,” he said. “For both of us. I had Saira make a batch of your favorite bread. She’s prepared a full course, and I won’t let you leave the table until you’ve had nearly all of it.”

“You’re extremely high-handed, do you know that?” I grumbled, simply because I didn’t know what else to say. No one had ever cared if I’d taken my meals or not. The sudden attention was…odd. Nice, but odd.

Kaldur threw me a small grin over his shoulder as the keep grew closer and closer. The grin made my heart stop clean in my chest, small and secretive and meant just for me.

Stop, I ordered myself. Never again will I risk my heart with him.

“You have no idea how high-handed I can be. But you’ll learn soon enough.”

I didn’t know whether to be scared or intrigued.