Like a mask settling in place, erasing that brief glimpse of vulnerability I likely hadn’t been meant to witness, she smiled. Like an ocean wave sliding over sand, polishing it smooth, her nerves disappeared.
“Where would you like to feed from this evening,Kyzaire?” she asked me, voice husky and quiet, though her smile felt plastered on her face. A practiced smile, I knew.Professional, even.
“Wrist,” I told her gruffly.
She remembered,I thought as I watched her nod and turn away to look into the hearth, where an orange fire was blazing. Her long, graceful arm reached out, straight and still.
Stepping up behind her, I took hold of her wrist. She didn’t look at me once, which was why I preferred RaanaDyaanover the rest. Other females in other houses would be vying for my attention, trying to entice me in other ways that went beyond the taste of their blood.
Lowering my head to her wrist, my pupils dilated, the room growing brighter. My body hummed in anticipation.
At the first spark of her blood on my tongue, my grip on her tightened. My eyes closed. Rich and decadent but not too thick or tart, her blood began to satiate that gnawing, aching hunger that I’d felt ringing through my bones. It had been a few days since I’d last fed, from a blood giver in Vyaan, when I’d been in my brother’s territory. I needed this.
I got lost in her blood for a brief moment. I always hated that—that brief loss of control when I wasthishungry. That was why I didn’t like to be watched as I fed.
The discomfort, however, ebbed the longer I drank. When I’d had my fill, I released her wrist, not wanting to touch her for longer than absolutely necessary, and then backed away. The heavy fatigue I’d felt, the tightness at the base of my neck, the weighty feel of my wings, lifted. I felt better than I had in days, though I knew I desperately needed sleep too.
“Thank you,” I told her, though my words sounded hollow.
She swiped her finger over her own fangs, catching venom, and pressed it to the small wound I’d left behind. Her practiced smile greeted me when she faced me and asked, “Would you like me to escort you back to the lounge,Kyzaire?”
“No,” I told her, the walls of the room suddenly feeling much too close. “That won’t be necessary.”
I felt her eyes on me as I left, returning to the dimly lit stairwell and descending to the main floor. There was a scent in the air, one that made my fangs ache and my venom flow, which didn’t make sense considering I’d just sated myself on the giver’s blood. I stilled on the landing, trying to determine where it was coming from, nostrils flaring.
Strange.
Deciding to forget it, I shook it from my head. It evaporated like afternoon mist, and I strode forward into the lounge, spying my two brothers drinking from shining goblets in a private corner, nearest the window that overlooked the front courtyard.
The lounge was quiet tonight, though I’d heard quite a crowd in the common room of thedyaanwhen we’d entered. The moon winds were approaching. Sometimes, the week leading up to them could feel frenzied, the need to feed much more pinching.
I slid into the black high-backed chair, my wings slipping easily around the velvety spine.
“Better?” Thaine asked, a knowing expression on his features as he sipped from his goblet.
I gave a brief nod, the taste of the giver’s blood still lingering on my tongue. There was a goblet waiting for me, and I quickly reached for it, taking a long draw. Perhaps unintentionally, most of the Drovos wine variants paired beautifully with the thick, earthy richness of Kylorr blood. The Kylorr had our own winemakers—though most lived in the South, nearest Salaire—but the Drovian winemakers were consumed in their art. They lived and breathed their craft, their strides toward perfection almost obsessive. Drovos was a small planet on the outskirts of the Third Quadrant.
Otherwise unremarkable…except for their wines. They’d made a name for themselves throughout the universe because of them. As such, it had made their race—not just the winemakers—very wealthy indeed.
I savored the bite on the back of my tongue. A full-bodied wine with high tannins from the extended aging in their underwater casks. As always, there was a slight tang from the Drovos sea. Perfection. I’d always wanted to journey to Drovos—to see their forested vineyards ofbrolberries, smell the fermentation process in their highly acidic soil, and watch their ships pull up their casks from deep below the sea.
“It’s good,” Kaldur drawled, tipping up his goblet. “But I prefer the brew from Vyaan.”
He said it just to vex me, but I flashed him a small smirk from across the black circular table. My goblet landed on the shining surface with a harsh thud.
“Did you learn anything from the port master today?” I asked him. “About Maazin?”
Kaldur’s wings rustled before he let them relax again. I’d been kept in meetings all day and figured my brothers might as well make themselves useful while they were visiting from their respective provinces.
“There’s little in the records in your library, but Thaine found his name in an old port ledger. I left it in your office,” he said. “I asked the dock master personally about him. He said he remembered Maazin but that he didn’t dine or socialize with the rest of the dockhands—he kept to himself. He thought he might have been living somewhere in Raana.”
“Here? I find that strange,” I murmured. “Why work at the ports only to travel so far inland to sleep? They have accommodations specifically for port workers.”
Kaldur took another sip from his goblet, his gaze straying to the other patrons within the lounge. There was a group of four Kylorr and one Keriv’i on the opposite side of the room. A Kylorr couple. A lone male in a darkened corner, eating voraciously from a shadowed platter. Another group of three Kylorr females, one laughing musically at something that was said.
I knew all of them. Sena and Jerr of House Kraan were the couple. Two of the females I recognized as vendor owners from the food market. The third female was the one who organized the entire market. Three of the male Kylorr worked in the high offices of the export port of Erzos. The Keriv’i, whose name was Makav, owned an apothecary down the road—oils and salts and stimulants. The last male of their group was Hanno, a noble from House Arada.
I knew everyone except for the male in the corner. In the lounge of RaanaDyaan, which typically only catered to those who could afford its high price, I usually recognized everyone. Perhaps he was a traveler passing through. Judging by the expensive material and cut of his vest, I thought he might be from Laras.
