Azur was just as intimidating as I’d remembered. I’d only spoken to him briefly the morning after my cottage had burned in Stellara, but I’d still been half in shock then, not really processing that he was the eldest son of House Kaalium and Kythel’stwin. He’d been there in the aftermath, but I’d gotten the same impression I had now: he was trying to read me.
“I’m worried about my brother,” he confessed. “I left from Laras this morning, but I wanted to see you first.”
“What is it that you want from me?” I asked softly.
His lips slid in a half smile that reminded me, stunningly, of Kythel. “Astute,” he commented. “Perhaps I just wanted to see how you were doing after the fire. Because I would not be here if I didn’t want something from you?”
“No, I don’t believe you would be,” I said honestly.
“My brother loves you,” Azur said, as easily as Kythel had said it earlier this evening. I wondered what Kythel had told him about us. “But more so, you’re hiskyrana. My wife is mine. And that’s why I’m worried about him. Because I know the strain of being parted from her. The ache.”
“He didn’t want to feed earlier and—”
“I’m not talking about feeding,” he said. “That can be always dampened. Suppressed. I’m talking about thebond. Because at this moment, your bond is an uncertainty. A lingering doubt.Thatwould eat at him. It already has. I can see it. I can feel it.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I confessed quietly. “It was Kythel’s decision. He’s the one who chose to walk away.”
A sharp exhale left him.
“You say it was his decision,” he said. “But now the decisions isyours.”
I started. I understood that, of course, but to it hear it spoken by Azur…
Rubbing a hand over his horn, he peered around the darkness of the meadow. Even the insects I’d heard earlier were silent in the presence of aKyzaire.
“I suppose I just wish to know if you’re going to choose him. Or if I need to be there to pick up the fragments of him left in your wake.”
I frowned. “I don’t want to hurt him. That’s the last thing I want. I still love him, Azur. It hurts me to see him like this too.”
“But you don’t know if you want him.”
No, I do,I thought. My instinctive answer was surprisingly loud, pounding out a beat inside my withered heart with finality. That want had never left me, even when he’d broken my heart. I believed I’d already made my decision in the gardens this evening. Perhaps I’d even made it when Kythel had confessed his love to me—openly, honestly.
I’d just needed time to make sure it was whatItruly wanted. Patiently and carefully. Kythel had been right. Marrying into a family like House Kaalium…it couldn’t be taken lightly.
But I loved him enough that I didn’t care, that I didn’t fear what it would bring.
It was a surreal experience, speaking with a virtual stranger about love of all things in a dark, dark meadow. Especially knowing thepowerof this Kylorr, his influence.
Azur said quietly, peering at me, “No, you know your decision. But he hurt you enough that you’re wary to trust him.”
“We spoke this evening,” I admitted quietly, meeting his red gaze in the dark. “He told me about Aina. About…about what your mother said to him. The guilt he’s carried for years.”
He closed his eyes briefly, shaking his head. “I know the pain it’s caused him. But weallshoulder the blame for what happened. Raazos’s blood, I married my wife, intent on making her life a living hell, obsessed with destroying her family, destroyingher, because of Aina.”
The guttural emotion I heard in his voice…I hadn’t expected such vulnerability from Azur.
“In the end, she forgave me. Sometimes I still don’t believe I deserved her forgiveness. Sometimes I still don’t believe I deserve her,” Azur said. “That’s what Kythel told me about you the night your cottage burned. He told me he didn’t deserve you.”
“He did?” I asked, my throat tightening.
“Doyoubelieve that? That he doesn’t deserve you?”
“No, I don’t,” I said truthfully. “I’ve traveled the Four Quadrants, and I’ve never met anyone like him. I doubt I ever will.”
He inclined his head. There was relief in his expression. What was it that he saw? What was it that he heard?
“I’m going to return to Laras, Millie,” Azur said slowly, watching me with every careful word. “Return to my wife. I don’t think my brother will need me after all.”
