I shook my head, leaning my cheek against his chest. “Any news of my father?”
It was a question I’d been bursting to ask him all day.
His hand stroked a line up and down my back. “Setlan reached Horrin this afternoon. He’s located your father and is filing the appropriate permits to transport him back to Krynn.”
“They didn’t cremate him, right?” I asked, needing to be sure, my heart pounding in the cage of my chest.
“No,” he said, and I made a little sound against his chest. “Setlan will personally accompany him to Erzos. He will be on Krynn within the week.”
Everything I’d wanted…
I nearly couldn’t believe it.
“Thank you,” I breathed, forgetting how quickly he’d gone cold on me last night. Detached. I didn’t care. He was right. We’d made an agreement. He was holding up his end of the deal, and I would hold up mine.
“You weren’t at RaanaDyaantonight,” he said.
I could hear a gust of wind roaring toward the house, coming from the North, and instinctively, I took a step back from the door, though I tugged on Kythel’s vest to take him with me.
He followed, matching my steps. Looking up at him, I saw his gaze was fastened on me. My heart twisted. So maddeningly handsome. And the intensity, the need in that gaze? It sent a thrill through me. That this powerful, beautiful, complicated male wantedme.
My back hit the wall next to the stone stairs that led up to the bedroom. Above me, Kythel loomed, his eyes dropping to my lips, his head dipping.
“You didn’t answer me.”
“You didn’t ask a question,” I replied, feeling more like myself. Gleeful and relieved after the news of my father. Even the moon winds couldn’t dampen my spirit…though something might’ve been able to.
Unconsciously, his lips curled, but then he remembered to look stern and disapproving again.
The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Are you and Lyris engaged?”
Kythel stiffened. “I already told you—”
“I overheard her in the apothecary shop today,” I told him. “She expected a proposal tonight.”
Kythel was quiet above me as his hands trailed to my hips. His wings braced against the wall behind me, bracketing us in until all I could see was the glow of his eyes. Even the intensity of the storm outside seemed to lessen in the comfort of his wings. I waited with bated breath, wondering how I would feel if his answer was indeed yes.
“No,” he said. “I made no such proposal tonight. I cut my dinner with House Arada short.”
A sharp stab of relief made me smile. He scoffed when he saw it, which only made mine widen.
“Why?” I fished, though I thought I knew already.
“Don’t act coy,sasiral. You know why,” he told me, narrowing his eyes on me, though his small glare held no true bite. “What is this mark on your face?”
He took my chin in his grip, turning it to inspect it in the dwindling firelight. Lesana’s ring. The bruising that had begun to bloom overnight.
“It’s nothing,” I lied, jerking my face out of his hold.
But I felt a thrum of tension vibrate through him.
He took my chin again, tilting my face to the side. He blew out a sharp breath, and when he spoke, his voice was blacker than it’d been before: “Don’t lie to me. There’s a marking here. Like it was etched in metal. Did someonehit you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say, but I was becoming wary of his growing anger. The way his shoulders seemed to bunch, muscles growing, just like they’d done last night after his first feeding. A physical response from a flood of chemicals, rarely seen among species outside of the Kylorr. It was what made them so dangerous.
“Tell me who struck you.”
I shook my head, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth.
