CHAPTER 2
KALDUR
Lydrasa clicked her tongue at me when she flitted over the shards of glass littering the floor. I shot her an edged smirk as I tucked my softening cock back into my trews, tying up the corded black laces.Tight, so my amorous lover wouldn’t try to tempt me for a second round.
“So destructive,” she scolded softly, a coy smile playing over her darkly painted lips. “But I do so love the sound of shattering glass. There’s a musicality to it, especially when it’s accompanied with sharp, impatient moans.”
I ignored the words. My mind was already sliding to the meeting I had with my brothers in a short while. Now that the buzzing under my skin had dulled, chased away by an orgasm, I could focus. Azur, my eldest brother, would likely want an update on the South Road—one of the largest infrastructure projects House Kaalium had worked on in the last four decades. The road was nearing completion and?—
Something fell and shattered. Not into hundreds of shards like the glass orb, but I saw large jagged pieces of what looked like an embellished green vase.
Lydrasa was not one to be ignored.She stood next to the round table the vase had been placed on, her finger skimming over the now empty surface.
“Beautiful,” she commented, but her blue eyes were narrowed on me. “Like a symphony.”
My sharpened smile belied the jolt of irritation I felt burst in my chest. The perfume that the human keeper had been wearing still made my nose twitch, adding to my ire. My voice was a purr when I chided, “Enough, Lydrasa. My keepers have enough to do besides cleaning up your messes.”
“Have Velle do it,” she suggested, quirking a brow.
“Who’s Velle?” I grumbled, running a hand over my horn before I gestured to the door. “I’ll see you out. I have a meeting soon so unfortunately,zendra, you will need to leave.”
Zendra, a common sweet name that meantflower bloom, was meant to soften the words. Lydrasa both pouted and preened, but I knew it was all for show. She was eight years older than me, had been nearly married thrice, and knew almost everyone of importance in Vyaan and Krynn’s capital of Laras. Everything she did was for show…or because she was bored.
But she made a decent ally—and a more than adventurous lover.
A flash of the human keeper’s shocked face when she’d discovered us flitted into my mind. Now that the tight squeeze of lust and desire had eased its fist around me, I felt a prick of discomforting guilt. I was certain my proclivities were well discussed among my keepers…but that didn’t mean I wanted one of them to be witness to it. The human keeper was under my employ, and I should’ve been more careful, more discreet.
I could just hear Kythel, one of my brothers, say in his disapproving way,You fuck like alyvinin heat. Have more control. Your keep is not your brothel.
I chuffed out a sharp breath and then went to take Lydrasa’s arm. Her left wing brushed my side as I led her from the room.
“Aren’t you happy I came?” she asked, a demure smirk appearing on her lips at the double meaning.
“Your company is always a pleasure,zendra,” I replied smoothly. “I’m only sorry I can’t entertain you longer.”
Luckily I spotted Maudoric just down the dark hallway of stained-glass windows. She was speaking to the human keeper who’d interrupted us—the one with thick, dark red hair and whose cheeks were always flushed pink. Even from here, I swore I could smell her perfume, so I stayed back, catching Maudoric’s attention with a small snap of my wing. The girl had her head hung, likely having received a scolding from my Head Keeper, but for what I didn’t know. I watched as Maudoric dismissed the girl, who went scurrying down the hallway. Our eyes met briefly when she looked back—sad brown eyes that glimmered in the darkness—and that familiar wiggling of guilt returned to me. I rubbed at my chest, briefly, frowning.
Then the hallway swallowed her up and she was gone.
When my uncle had been in charge of Vyaan, before this territory had become mine to oversee and protect, I’d come to visit the keep to learn from him. From the time I’d been a young boy with soft horns, every season I’d come here. And every season I’d avoided this hallway. I’d never once walked down it, preferring to take the long way round. Too many lost souls here. Ancient souls.
When Maudoric stepped up to the both of us, I released Lydrasa. To my Head Keeper, I said, “Please see Lady Lydrasa home. I’ll be in my study if you need me.”
“Gladly,” Maudoric replied, her smile polite but tight on the daughter of House Azola.
Maudoric was as shrewd and disapproving as Kythel was, and that was why I’d hired her. It brought me joy to watch the lines around her mouth deepen, even when I knew that she would do anything for me. I loved her like I would an aunt—and I certainly tested her like she was. She’d been one of the cooks under myuncle’s rule, and she’d run her kitchen like she now ran my keep: efficiently and without mercy. The only exception was for me. Not even my brothers escaped her ire sometimes.
Though shehadtaken a liking to Millie, Kythel’s wife and blood mate, when they’d come to visit during the last moon winds. But Millie’s father had been a renowned chef, and they’d bonded over their love of food. I knew they sent letters back and forth to one another, usually sharing recipes, and I also knew that Maudoric, who I would’ve never described as sentimental, kept the letters pressed into one of her favorite books to keep them flat and protected.
While Maudoric and Lydrasa went down the dark hallway, I went down the other, my thoughts already turning to my meeting with my brothers.
When I arrived to my study, I immediately patched in the Com call on my Halo orb, knowing I was already late. I didn’t sit at my desk. Instead, I stood, pacing, already feeling the buzzing begin beneath my skin. Frustration pricked, but I tried to ignore it. I didn’t know what else to do. It had started nearly two years ago and made me feel constantly on edge. I’d consulted healers and mystics. I’d tried to fuck it out of my system—which helped briefly. I’d tried a variety of different blood from blood givers—which didn’t help, even when I gorged myself. I’d tried herbal blends smuggled in from the Kaazor to the north. I’d tried smoking copious amounts oflore, drinking the strongest of Southern brews. Nothing helped calm it except for sex…and even then it was mere moments of relief.
When it had first begun happening, I’d thought it might be blood sickness—the disease my mother had died from. I’d been tested in private, but the results had been negative, mercifully.
In the last year, I’d given up. I took my release wherever and whenever I could because sex was the only thing that helped. And if Kythel wanted to be disapproving about my choices, then I would ignore it. He could never understand what this felt like.
Speaking of,I thought, seeing his form project into my study. The rest of my brothers flickered in after him until it felt like we were all together once more. Azur, the eldest—though he was only the eldest by a few moments over Kythel. Thaine—the sibling I was closest to, though we couldn’t be more opposite. And Lucen, the youngest of the brothers, though I always considered him the best of us all.
