Page 46 of Hunger in His Blood (Brides of the Kylorr #3)

CHAPTER 46

ERINA

“ Y ou’ve sighed enough to fill my entire House with your worries,” came Syndras’s wry observation, her bright eyes peering over the rim of her cup as she took a sip of wine.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Then sighed again. Then laughed, the sound sheepish. “I’m sorry.”

“Is it the child?” Syndras asked, her voice knowing. Her lips curled. “Or the father?”

My eyes went to Braanelle, who was standing stock-still by the door of the sitting room. I’d decided to visit Syndras this afternoon after she’d written to me yesterday.

Braanelle met my eyes, inclining her head briefly, before she stepped from the room, closing the door behind her until it was just me and Syndras.

“The father,” I answered. “Not that anything has been bad between us. It’s the opposite actually. Everything has been perfect. But that’s the problem.”

“Ah,” Syndras said. “I understand.”

“You do?” I asked, a little hopefully.

“My dear girl, I’m older than some of the trees in Vyaan,” she said softly, setting down her teacup on the small table next to her. One of her keepers, Finly, had brought in a small tray earlier, laden with special treats. “Tell me what’s been troubling you.”

Relief threaded through me as I looked at Syndras, who was, perhaps, my only friend outside of Kaldur. Maudoric held affection for me, yes, but I felt like I could tell Syndras whatever I needed. With Maudoric, it was difficult because her loyalties would always lie with House Kaalium, as did Braanelle’s. I didn’t want to put them in a difficult position.

I stared down at my belly, running a hand over where our daughter grew.

“I’ve been happy,” I confessed.

Syndras laughed. “That is terrible news indeed.”

“These last few weeks have been…they’ve been everything that I always imagined they could be,” I added. “With Kaldur.”

She sobered. “And you don’t trust it.”

“Exactly,” I breathed, my shoulders sagging. “I keep waiting for the bad.”

Syndras rose from her chair, reaching for her cane. Her wings were weathered, the membranes slightly wrinkled. I knew it had been years since she’d last flown. I frowned when I watched her walk over to me.

“Hush—you’re pregnant,” she said when I began to fuss. “I’m merely old.”

I sighed but waited as she took the seat beside me on the chaise. She took my hand, her palm cool to the touch. She turned it over, inspecting the flattened surface, running one finger down my middle one.

She met my eyes, and in her patient way, she said, “Tell me, my dear. And I’ll give you what advice I can.”

Advice was what I desperately needed.

Syndras saw my struggle, however, to form the words of everything that was jumbled in my mind .

Instead, she asked, “Tell me one thing. Do you love him?”

The answer seemed to ring through my entire body. Syndras probably saw it plastered over my face because her expression was almost sympathetic, though understanding.

“I think that,” I began, “the heart is such a stupid, foolish thing, with no sense of self-preservation at all.”

“That has been my experience, yes,” she said, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “And isn’t it marvelous?”

Syndras’s hand was as soft as silk when I gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I do love him,” I said quietly, the confession easy, “but it’s hard to trust myself with that love.”

“It’s not about him, then?” she asked, trying to puzzle it out in her careful way.

“It’s both—me and him. I don’t trust myself because I’ve been so wrong about him before. But I’m also afraid. I’m afraid to give in to that love because if I do and he breaks my heart again, it will shatter me completely. Into trillions of little pieces with no hope of piecing myself back together this time.”

Understanding dawned on her face.

“I know what I want to do,” I added. “I want to just…sink into him. I feel so shackled by this fear, and I just want to be free of it. I want to be free to love him.”

“There’s no stopping you from doing that.”

“It’s this barrier I keep encountering. In me,” I admitted. “And I don’t know how to get over it. I don’t know what to do. We’ve been so happy that it feels strange. So it breaks my heart a little because I know he feels this wall I’m still keeping between us. It hurts him too, but he’s been so patient. And even with the baby, gods , he’ll make an incredible father, and that alone just makes me want to—to launch myself at him and never let go.”

I was crying again. I didn’t realize it until Syndras reached forward to wipe the tears away from my cheeks. I cried so often these days, wild emotion pumping through me like a factory. Yesterday I’d cried over how perfectly a pattern had been stitched onto the shirt I’d been wearing, much to Kaldur’s bewildered concern.

“Breathe,” Syndras told me, her voice calm, the stable rock I desperately needed right now. “And, in my opinion, it’s perfectly normal to feel this way, Erina.”

“You think so?” I asked, relieved.

“Naturally,” she said. “You didn’t tell me everything about what happened between you two, and I don’t want you to. Some things are between couples, and no one else should know. But you told me enough for me to fill in the gaps. He hurt you. He broke your heart. He was your first love, and that one always hurts the most. He wasn’t gentle about it, was he?”

I swallowed. I shook my head.

“Of course it’s natural for you to have doubts. He made a mistake. A terrible mistake. And you can spend your life punishing him for what he did,” Syndras said. “A broken heart can become a terrible weapon if you’re not careful, after all.”

Hearing those words made my heart twist. Because I didn’t want that.

“ Or …you can make the hard choice to forgive him and choose to build a life with him. But in making that decision, you will need to promise to let the past go. You need to cleanse yourself of it. Him too, because I’m sure he’s been punishing himself.”

He had been. At first I’d thought that seeing his regret and guilt would make me feel better, that it would heal the part of me that felt broken.

In the end, however, it had just made me feel worse.

“He told me he loved me a few nights ago,” I confessed.

“Do you believe him?”

“Yes,” I said. “But even still, there’s this tiny voice in my head that sows doubt. How can I trust that he loves me? How can I trust that what he feels is for me and not because of our blood bond or because of the baby? ”

“You can’t ever know for certain,” Syndras said simply, shrugging. “That’s where faith comes in. You can choose to have faith, or you can always be uncertain in wonder. I, for one, know which one I’d choose.”

Her eyes strayed to the painting over the lit hearth. It was snowing outside, a cold and dark afternoon, but it was cozy and warm in her sitting room. It was my favorite place in this House. Even when I’d worked for Syndras, we would spend time in here together.

“My Axia reminds me of your Kaldur,” Syndras said. Her eyes roved over the painting of the handsome Kylorr male. Her husband, who’d long passed. His soul gem was enshrined in Vyaan, and every moon winds, Syndras still visited with him. “He was stubborn and high-handed. Oh so charming. You should have seen him at parties. He had everyone there enveloped within his wings. The most handsome male in the room. It was so hard staying mad at him. But gods , he made me so mad sometimes.”

I smiled, my nose stinging a bit at the raw emotion I still heard in her voice. To love someone for so long, even when they drove you mad, it must’ve been a soul-binding love.

“There were times in our relationship where I wanted to leave,” she said. “Times where he was struggling or I was too cynical. But you know when I fell even more in love with him? When I chose him and he chose me. Over everything. It would’ve been easier to walk away, but we fought for our love and it grew even stronger.”

I hadn’t known that, but I supposed in her long marriage, they would’ve struggled.

“I do still love him terribly. Even in the next realm, when we meet one another again, we’ll still give each other hell. And I’ll be happy.”

I started to tear up again. “You’ve lived a full life, Syndras.”

“Don’t act like I’m on my death bed yet,” she grumbled, though she patted my hand. “My Axia will have to wait at least two decades more before I join him in Alara.”

I bit back my watery smile, thinking over her words.

“Forgiveness is hard,” Syndras said. “But luckily for the Kyzaire , you are more forgiving than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s not a weakness; it’s a strength. It means you have an open heart. It would be a shame to close it because of fear.”

After Braanelle led me back to the keep that night and saw me safely inside, I was still thinking over Syndras’s words.

I didn’t want to live a fearful life. That much I was certain of.

Kaldur was likely still in his study at this hour, but I made a short detour to my studio first.

Inside, I couldn’t help but be hit by a sense of disbelief and awe, still not used to the realization that this place was mine . It was everything I’d ever dreamed of, every perfect little piece, and I’d already spent hours upon hours in here. Now that the weather was growing colder, spending all day in the garden wasn’t practical.

On my drafting table, I had sheets of sketches I was working on. Old sketches from my already finished stories of Kavelyn’s adventures. For binding purposes, they couldn’t be hidden away in my notebooks any longer. If I wanted them printed, I needed the final versions. I already had the written stories uploaded to my Halo. All I needed was the drawings that would accompany them.

That was what I planned to work on until the baby came. And every moment that I wasn’t with Kaldur or visiting Syndras in the village or in the wintry garden, I was in here, sometimes late enough into the night that Kaldur had to come collect me for sleep—with charcoal smeared across my cheek and pencils jabbed into my disheveled bun .

But I wasn’t here tonight to draw, though I neatened the pile, adjusting my pencils.

My gaze turned to the vase. Another of Kaldur’s gifts, beautiful in its brokenness. The lines of silver added character. They looked like roots of trees, winding around the vase, or a silver river that wrapped around the painted vines.

I went to it, picking it up in my hands, admiring it as I often did. I remembered that afternoon, picking up the pieces, cutting my hand on a shard of it. Because of this vase…everything had changed.

I spun it until I could see the gaping hole in the back. The shard that I’d stolen.

Going to the drawer of my drafting table, I pulled it open and plucked out the missing shard. Every time I thought of replacing it, of fully repairing the vase, something stopped me. I stared at the gaping hole at its back and thought of all the times I’d smoothed my fingers over the sharpened edge of the shard in Laras. Turning it this way and that way in my hands, remembering Kaldur.

I had tucked it in the drawer for another day, unable to face the restlessness in my heart. But I wasn’t afraid anymore.

The shard was familiar in my hand. I would need to send it to the potter to get the last piece soldered in with silver, but for now this would do.

Carefully, I placed the piece back into the vase. Its edges had crumbled away with time in my traveling bag and my repeated admiration—and even a talisman of my heartbreak and grief—so it wasn’t a perfect fit. Not anymore. But that was all right. It wasn’t the same as it’d been before, after all.

I stared down at the vase, stepping back to see it restored. In the morning, I’d send it to the potter, I decided.

Then I smiled. I backed out of the room and then went to go collect Kaldur from his study, feeling more at peace with myself than I had in a long time.

In a few days, the moon winds would come.

A time of rebirth.

I was finally ready.