Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Khayrivven
The door had closed. And nothing he did made the solid rock disappear. He’d almost ripped off a finger trying to reach through it, hoping it was a mere illusion like the one door in the stone chamber. His fingertip was still bleeding where it had scraped across the rough stone.
With a groan of frustration, Khayrivven slammed his fist into the wall next to the door.
“Lory,” he growled, but not a sound reached through the barrier that had closed for him.
He didn’t need to glance over his shoulder to know who had willed the lock to reject his magic.
The Master of Whispers had mentioned before that he didn’t trust Khayrivven not to interfere when Lory was to make her first kill, probably still remembering Khayrivven’s own hesitation on the day he’d slain Onyx, a woman so fierce and loving, she’d cracked Khayrivven’s heart.
A woman whose beautiful, deep umber face would haunt his sleep for the rest of his days.
Whose blood he could still feel on his hands when he closed his eyes and remembered her laugh.
Khayrivven would have screamed in frustration had not people still filled the yard behind him, and a small, saner part of him forced him to remain undetected.
The knife he’d picked up—Lory’s knife—was a dead weight on his weapons belt. He should have listened to his instincts, damned the consequences, and stayed right with his mate.
A shudder ran down his spine as he allowed himself to think the word for the first time, because, now that she’d claimed him, too, there was no doubt that was what she’d chosen to be.
Inside his chest, a bright orange glow reminded him she had to be alive, or he would have already been crawling in agony.
At least that was what the old books he’d studied said.
Lory had grown up thinking on her feet. She was swift in combat, skilled with a knife, a dagger, a sword—damn, all blades—she was a weapon herself.
Forged in the searing heat of Dunai’s streets and the unforgiving instructors of Ashthorn Ward, himself included.
She’d punched the man unconscious, for the Guardian’s sake; she could handle herself.
And yet… Yet something primal had awoken inside of him the moment she’d set those mesmerizing eyes on Brady and murmured an invitation to him.
The moment Brady’s hand had touched her…
Khayrivven was still battling down the monster that had awoken in him, eager to raze the world if anyone else ever touched her like that.
Remaining remotely rational was only possible because of the years and years of making himself do things, because of which he could now barely look in the mirror.
He could sit this out. He had to—or Lenya would realize his concern wasn’t that of a teacher for his student but running so much deeper than this era could ever understand.
Rubbing a hand over his face, Khayrivven wiped his expression of all emotion and leaned his shoulder against the wall, counting down the seconds until Lenya opened the door again, or the glowing bond inside his chest went out, throwing him into utter despair.