That was not the question I’d expected him to ask.
“Y-yes,” I stammered. Then I frowned, cocking my head to the side. I looked from him to the sketch. “Don’t you? Did I…did I get something wrong?”
He let out a chuff of air, sounding amused. His voice was warm when he said, “Would that bother you if you did? If it wasn’t my perfect likeness?”
“Well…yes,” I replied. My embarrassment was gone as I shuffled to his side, examining the sketch and then back to his face. The sketch and then his face. Kaldur watched it all with glittering, narrowed eyes. I got the impression he was amused at my expense. “It’s in your likeness. Your complete likeness,” I insisted.
I would know. I’d catalogued every detail of him I could whenever I’d encountered him before. Every appearance had made my heart flip in my chest, and…he’d never really noticed me, had he?
“No, it’s not,” he argued.
“Where?” I demanded. “How?”
“Here,” he said, turning his jawline so I could see the sharp edge of it.
“What am I looking at?” I asked, though Iwasmomentarily distracted when he crouched so I could be very, very close to his face. I could almost smell the heat of him, the clean musk from his long morning flight.
He tapped underneath his jaw. There I saw the slight glimmer of a scar.
A shocked chuckle escaped me. “That’s not fair. How would I have ever seen that? I’ve never beenthatclose to you.”
A knowing smirk on his features. “You have been. You got this scar right,” he told me, tapping his chin.
“I added that one in,” I confessed. “After that afternoon in the sitting room when I was cleaning up the vase shards.”
“Ah,” he said quietly. When he’d smelled my blood for the first time. “Take a good look now, then.”
I did. I wasn’t even ashamed to say that I was greedy with his permission, especially when he was still crouching down for me. Our eyes were nearly level, and I was so close that I could hear the small exhale as it left his nostrils and I could see every minuscule twitch of his jaw.
My hands raised, uncertain, but I wanted so desperately to touch him. When my palm met his cheek, his nostrils flared. I saw something different enter his gaze, and suddenly the moment felt entirely changed. My fingertips traced the long scar over his cheek before ending at the corner of his mouth, feeling the depth of it, wondering how he’d received it. His gray skin was surprisingly smooth, suede-like, and unblemished, save for the silver scars.
When he didn’t protest, I boldly traced over his face, touching his stern brow, the sharp slope of his nose, the blade of his jawline, the slash of his cheekbones. All the while, his silver eyes had lost all signs of amusement. Instead they were heated with a familiar want, which made me feel like flying.
When my pinky brushed the edge of his soft lips, he made a gruff sound and, momentarily, his eyelids fluttered closed. I pulled my hand away.
I cleared my throat, my voice nearly a whisper when I said, “I’ll do better next time now that I’ve seen you so clearly.”
Kaldur trapped my chin with his fingertips when I went to pull away. “This is very good, Erina. Your drawing. You have immense talent. I hope you know that.”
I couldn’t help but beam with the praise. It filled something inside me that had long been empty.
“Thank you,” I said. He released me and then finally straightened to his full height. I wasn’t cold anymore in the brisk morning. My body felt warm and languid like I was under the gentle heat of a summer’s day.
To fill the stretch of charged silence that lapsed, both of us not quite certain what had just transpired, he flipped through the notebook more.
But then he landed on a drawing I’d done of Luc. One I’d done from memory. His familiar features stared up at Kaldur. He might’ve been done in charcoal, but whenever I saw sketches I’d done of him, I only ever saw him in color. Bright blue eyes, sometimes twinkling in mischief or deviance or determination. The light gray of his skin and his curling horns. He had no wings, and he carried the lean build of a human, like his mother.
It was a dirty secret of the Houses…that many of the orphans who ended up in places like Wrezaan’s were bastards of nobles. Bastards they had with their keepers or females below their station in life, some of whom were human. Many of the children I’d grown up with had been hybrids. Some had been human, like me. Others had been Bartutian mixes. Some full-blooded Kylorr.
But Luc had always straddled two worlds, and I thought that was why he’d been so driven to prove himself.
“Let me guess,” Kaldur drawled softly, his eyes suddenly piercing into mine. “Your purveyor of fine perfumes?”
The words reminded me of the vial that was sitting on my new dresser. But I heard a sharp edge in Kaldur’s voice, one I didn’t understand.
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “Luc. We grew up together. At…at Wrezaan’s.”
“Hmm,” came the sound. He studied me, but I felt the softness of the moment change. I felt awkward, uncertain of his mood. He snapped the notebook closed and handed it back to me. “Let’s go inside.”
