I remembered Lydrasa mentioning a Velle. I looked at the woman—a hybrid female with deep blue hair—whose eyes widened when she saw me enter, her wet hands coming to her hair to smooth it back. She was pretty, but…I remembered her now. She had hungry eyes, and so I’d stayed far away, recognizing the signs of a female whose sole ambition was status and wealth. AKyzairecould give her both, and I wasn’t foolish enough to fall into the trappings of a pretty keeper. My uncle had, and it had cost himeverything. I remembered that lesson well.
Lydrasa was gone. But then I remembered the keeper. Remembered that I needed to do something first, something which might be unpleasant enough to distract me.Apologize.
“Vaan,” I cursed under my breath. “Maudoric, where is that keeper you spoke to earlier? The one in the hallway?”
Maudoric disapproved that I didn’t know the names of the keepers in my employ. In my defense, there were too many and they did their jobs so well that I rarely saw or interacted with a single one outside of my Head Keeper and Leeta, who served me most of my meals.
“Erina,” Maudoric began, “is cleaning up broken glass in the private sitting room you and the Lady of House Azola were occupied in.”
That burn of discomfort returned.
I grinned at Maudoric, stooping down to press my lips against her cheek. She didn’t react, though I swore I caught the stray edge of a smile. “Thank you for reminding me. What would I ever do without you?”
“Perish,” she drawled. It was her version of a tease though her expression remained stoic.
I chuckled and then turned out of the kitchens, avoiding the main stairwell that would lead to the North Wing. Instead, I went around from the East Wing. When I came to a stop in front of the familiar door, my nose burned from perfume—something spiced and yet strongly floral.
The keeper—Erina,I reminded myself—was inside. Good.
Now I didn’t have to track her down.
CHAPTER 3
KALDUR
When I stepped inside the room, I heard a sharp sniffle though I didn’t see her.
“Erina,” I called out, my eyes zeroed in the high-backed chair that was hiding her from view.
I heard the catch in her throat and what sounded like her patting her cheeks. I frowned.
A crown of dark red hair popped out behind the chair, plaited into a messy braid that hung over her shoulder, though it couldn’t contain a few wild, wavy tendrils that had escaped it. Her eyes—glassy brown now—were wide with disbelief and her face was a bright pink, mottled with splotches across her round cheeks and down her neck.
She’d been…crying. I rubbed at my chest again, my wings going a little restless behind me with that knowledge.
“Kaldur,” she greeted breathlessly, though she seemed too shocked to stand from her kneeling position. I paused, the sound of my name jarring and surprising falling from her lips. Her face flamed a deeper red, and she quickly corrected, “Kyzaire. My—my apologies. I—I didn’t mean…”
Kyzairewas a word in the Krynn language meaning “HighLord.” A respectful term that I heard more than I heard my own true name.
Truthfully, I preferred hearing the shock of my own name from her. It was refreshing. Something I didn’t expect. Something that wasn’t quite forbidden but that toed the line of it…and that piqued my interest.
Yet I couldn’t quite ignore the way my nostrils burned as I drew nearer.
“May I ask you something?” I asked.
She nodded, though she didn’t seem like she was quitepresent. Like she couldn’t understand how I could suddenly appear in this room or how we could be in this room together.
“Why do you wear that awful perfume, Erina?” I asked, flashing her a small smile to take the sting out of my words.
She blinked her glassy eyes. She really was quite pretty, I realized with a start, in that innocent kind of way, which had never been my type. And her being a keeper most certainly made her off limits, despite what my brothers believed I did withtheirkeepers when I visited the different provinces.
It was a High Lord’s responsibility to care for the people under their employ. I would never involve myself with a keeper—at my own home or at my brothers’—for that reason alone. Though I had certainly fucked my way through some of the noble Houses in the last couple years and had my fair share of dalliances in different provinces, they’d always been outside my own keep.
“My…my perfume?” she repeated, slowly seeming like she was returning to herself. “It was a gift. One I promised to wear every day. I didn’t realize it was so…so overwhelming to the Kylorr. I should have known better—you have much better senses than we do. It’s just cheap, you see. He couldn’t afford anything else. And I never minded it.”
Ah. A lover of her own, then.
“And the smell, it reminds me of what I imagine the garden forests of Noxily would smell like.”
