“Why didn’t you stay?”
“The heat,” I admitted, smiling. “My father was miserable. The heat there…it can be suffocating during the hot season. So thick you can hardly breathe. The horizon shimmers with it across the sand. If you look out beyond the city, it’s like you’re looking at something that doesn’t exist because nothing ever comes into focus. It’s a mirage. Ever changing.”
“Are their gods and goddesses as powerful as ours?” he asked, seemingly content to listen.
I laughed. “I didn’t stay long enough to find out. But with heat like that, you do need a higher power to pray to. Or else you might not last a single season.”
“Tell me what your favorite place was to live,” he ordered, the rough rasp of his low voice making more goose bumps spread.
“Rupon,” I said immediately.
“The small farming colony you mentioned before?” When I nodded, he asked, “Why?”
“I didn’t want for anything there,” I said, lifting a shoulder. My throat tightened, remembering those happy days. “We were content. Perfectly happy. We had a little house—a bit like this one actually—on the edge of town. The flowers there are unlike any you’ve ever seen. So bright and full, and they bloom all year. And the rolling hills. The meadows. The lakes, so clear you can drink from them. It was paradise. The best kept secret in all the Four Quadrants.”
His gaze was magnetic, drawing me in. “Why did you leave?”
“My father had a restless spirit,” I said, grinning even though I remembered the fight we’d had over Rupon: I’d wanted to stay. He’d wanted to return to Krynn. “He never liked to stay in one place for too long. I was used to it. He loved Rupon, but he told me that it made him miss home. Krynn. He wanted me to know Krynn, to see where he…to see the place he loved most.”
Understanding dawned in his gaze.
I didn’t want to talk about my father anymore. I remembered something he’d mentioned and said, “If you were training beneath an architect in Laras, then you at least believed you would become one, right? What changed?”
I wanted to understand him even though, at times, I wondered if that was even possible.
“What changed?” he asked, those eyes trapping me in their ice. “I did.”
CHAPTER17
KYTHEL
“In what way?” Millie asked.
“I realized that what I wanted was selfish,” I told her, that familiar place in my chest pinching. “That what I desired didn’t serve my duty to the Kaalium.”
Aina’s death had been the trigger of it all. Followed by my mother’s grief, the words I could never get out of my mind, playing on an endless loop whenever I deviated from my responsibilities. I’d been hearing her voice a lot this week.
Because the truth was that my selfish desires had likely cost Aina her life in the most tragic of ways. I never intended to make that mistake again.
I couldn’t.
So why was I here? In this cottage, talking with Millie Seren after midnight, when I should’ve been in my office finalizing thelore-planting schedule and the imports of stone for the South Road from Salaire?
Her hazel eyes shone in the firelight. Her hair was a mess, looped back in a low bun, though tendrils had made a valiant effort to escape.
I could listen to her talk for hours, I realized. A part of me mourned that she wasn’t from a noble House on Krynn. A part of me wished she was anyone else except a human server girl at RaanaDyaan.
Then I felt like a cold bastard for wishing that. Because it would be so easy. It would make this courtship all the sweeter—not that thiswasa courtship. It never could be. Even despite what I suspected, why her blood called to me so enticingly. I wondered if this was what Azur had felt. This aching madness. How he must’ve struggled to resist his enemy’s daughter, the self-loathing and guilt that must’ve eaten him up, gnawing and tearing at him.
Only he’d eventually fallen. Surrendered on his knees…but Gemma Hara had knelt beside him too.
“Doing what you want is a luxury that very few people have,” Millie said.
“Most humans I’ve met would disagree with you,” I said dryly. “The ones I’ve met believe you should pursue a life that makes youhappy.”
“Happiness is subjective,” she told me. “You would do anything for your family, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied without hesitation.
