Swiftly, my gaze flicked to Maudoric. “What do you mean ‘left’?”
“She had her traveling bag with her,” Maudoric said quietly, staying completely still. She was the only one in the keep whoknew for certain that Erina was mykyrana. I’d never been able to keep anything from Maudoric. She was the only one I trusted with the knowledge. “I checked her quarters, and most of her possessions are gone. I’ve been searching for her for the last couple hours. I had the gardens swept and the keep searched. She’s not here.”
I stood from my desk, tension beginning to strum through me, that familiar rumbling that I’d woken with returning in full force.
“Then check again,” I ordered. “In the village.Everywhere.She’s here. She has to be. She wouldn’t leave. Especially since…”
I didn’t want to voice it out loud.
Especially since she wants what I can give her.
“Kaldur,” Maudoric said, “I don’t think you’re going to find her in the keep. I came to you now because I just got an alert that your payment to her was rejected. It processed back into your accounts. I asked the creditory, and they said it was patched through early this morning in the village.”
I paced alongside my desk.
“No, that can’t be right. Check again,” I said. “She needs the money. She wouldn’t have given it back. That was her whole reason for agreeing to our arrangement.”
“I’m telling you, she rejected it,” Maudoric pressed. The look in her eyes was one of sympathy. Andworry, especially when I saw her picking at the skin around her claws, a nervous habit she tried to hide. “I think you need to send out scouts to look for her. She’s not here. I wanted to be certain before…”
Was this why she’d worried earlier?
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Panic began to rise, but I pushed it down.
“All right,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Have the village searched. I want to speak with whoever saw her this morning.”
“Velle,” Maudoric supplied.
Of course.
“Where is she?” I asked, already on my way toward my study door. I was in denial. She couldn’t be gone. She wouldn’t leave. Surely.
You gave her no reason to stay,a voice whispered in my head.
Last night she’d overheard me with Lydrasa. And when she’d come to confront me about it in the dead of night, I’d denied nothing because I had wanted to hurt her.
Keep your credits. I don’t want them,she’d told me. I’d brushed aside the words, thinking that she was being unnecessarily dramatic to get her way.
Now? I wasn’t so sure. I went over every detail of what she’d said. I remembered everythingI’dsaid—and a lot of it was ugly.
“Send out scouts now,” I repeated to Maudoric. “I want her found.Tonight.”
But that sense of foreboding warning still lingered. It had never left me today.
Now I knew why.
Four hours later,I was drinking and smokingloreby the fire, nursing a tumbler even though I wanted to chug down an entire bottle of Kyne liquor. Anything to dull the restless anger that made me feel like I was on the precipice of a berserker rage.
I’d never been so close before. That fear itself kept my rooted in place, when all I wanted to do was fly over every inch of Vyaan.
Maudoric herself had shoved alorepipe into my hand to keep me calm, worried I’d wreck the entire keep. I’d nearly torn it apart looking for Erina. I’d had the grounds searched three times. Every nook and cranny of the village. Every tavern and inn that offered beds. I’d even had thedyaans, the blood-giver establishments, questioned. I’d gone myself to all the old Houses Erinahad been a keeper at, asking the nobles if they’d seen or heard from her.
Syndras of House Terasyn, who she’d been closest to, was out of the territory, so I knew she wouldn’t have gone there…but it hadn’t stopped me from journeying to Syndras’s daugther’s home and asking regardless.
“I know where you are,” I murmured, taking another drag on mylorepipe, holding my breath before slowly releasing it. I’d need to be smoking constantly, or else I would go into a rage.
