Chapter 22
Gemma
“L udayn.”
“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.”
Ludayn’s smile was small. “Me too.”
She placed her hand on my shoulder, squeezing.
Then she took a deep breath, going to my wardrobe, shuffling around for something in one of the drawers. She changed the subject and asked, “Would you like to wear this band in your hair tomorrow?”
She held up a wreath of shimmering silver and intricately carved flowers.
“We can leave your hair down—which you should because it’s so lovely,” Ludayn murmured, looking at the black strands with longing . Like she jealous of my hair when I’d always been jealous of my sisters’. “It’s always tied up.”
“I’m working out on the terrace with Kalia in the morning, so it’s better if it stays up,” I informed her, even though the band was pretty.
Ludayn sighed. “Very well.”
Not wanting to see the disappointment on her face, I compromised with, “Maybe for the ball. If Azur lets me attend.”
She grinned. “Perfect.”
When she said good night a short while later, stoking the fire in my hearth and turning down my bed, I went out to the balcony, my eyes searching the skies for any sign of a maddening Kylorr male with embers for eyes. I didn’t see him.
The restlessness was building again. It was like my body was producing too much blood and it needed to be fed from to manage it. My skin felt tight. Aching.
“Enough of this,” I whispered fiercely, determination shooting through me. I was dressed for bed, in a thin shift dress, but I wouldn’t let that deter me.
Spinning toward the door before I lost my nerve, I ventured out into the darkened keep.
Then I went out in search of my husband, wanting answers.