Not letting Dravka touch her would be a good first step to moving forward. His touch was a reminder of…
Of everything. And it was too wonderful and too painful to bear. Not right then.
“You don’t have to be afraid of her either,” Valerie told him, watching his brow bones slam down even further. “She won’t touch you anymore. Any of you. I promise.”
“Valerie, what are—”
“I have to go,” she told him. “I don’t have a lot of time before she comes back to Everton.”
“Let me come with you then.”
“No!” she said quickly.
Even Dravka seemed taken aback by her abrupt response.
But the thought of being alone with him, freed of this place with all its ugly memories…Valerie feared what would happen. They’d never been alone outside the brothel before. Together. In some ways, it would feel like an unshackling. An unshackling of the tensely restrained desire and want and need.
“No,” she said, though this time more softly. “You should stay here, Dravka. And you know why.”
His nostrils flared at those last words.
“I’ll be back later this evening,” she said, turning to the door.
Behind her, Dravka’s words made her freeze, her hand stilling on the knob of the entrance.
“I’ll find out what it is, Valerie,” he murmured. “I’ll find out what’s wrong. I’m the last being in this universe that you can hide from,mellkia.”
If he had been speaking to anyone else, his words would’ve sounded like a threat. But they weren’t. She didn’t know whatmellkiameant in Keriv’i, but she heard the way his voice softened as he said it, as if there was beauty and reverence in that single word, beauty and reverence he had saved just for her.
Valerie’s hand twitched and the door pushed open. A shaft of light peeked in the lobby of the brothel and she stepped outside into the early morning.
With Dravka’s words of promise ringing in her ears, she fled to the Garden District.
Chapter Eight
The moment Valerie left, Dravka stood in silence for a brief moment.
Then his gaze turned to the door that led down to her room…and the other room that lay below.
Keriv’is’ senses were better than humans’. He’d smelled the smoke shortly before Valerie arrived on the lobby floor.
Pressing his lips together, he journeyed down to the basement, his bare feet padding on the smooth stone of the staircase. The smell of smoke filled his nostrils and he turned left at the base of the stairs, slowly striding towards the black door at the other end of the hallway.
When he pushed it open, his eyes focused on the smoldering pile of…
He frowned, his mind beginning to whirl.
Why had Valerie burned her aunt’s whips? Those same whips that they had all felt lashing across their backs now were blackened from fire. A horrible stench was in the air. There was very little ventilation down in the basement and Valerie would smell the lingerings of smoke for many weeks.
Fear made him freeze.
Not for himself. But for Valerie. Her aunt was vicious. A sadistic monster who hid behind her smiles and her lies. Dravka was ashamed to admit that he’d fallen for those lies once. But the promise of a better life on Everton, of the life and promises that Madame Allegria had made to him and the other Keriv’is, had been too tempting.
Madame Allegria would no doubt punish Valerie for this.
What possessed you to do this, Val?Dravka wondered, staring at the smoking pile. The fire wouldn’t spread. There was nothing for it to catch on down here, but Dravka watched it in disbelief until the majority of it was snuffed out.
The only thing he could do was take Madame Allegria’s fury in place of Valerie. He would tell the older human female that this had been his doing. There was no way around it.
