Oh. Maybe it was rude to bleed in front of a Kylorr? No, that couldn’t be right. I’d seen my fair share of cuts at the orphanage, and I remembered a particular incident with Syndras where I’d received a nasty gash from decorative swords I’d been dusting. She’d helped me bandage it up without once blinking her red eyes.
Maybe it was rude to bleed in front of aKyzaire, then?
I didn’t know. I didn’t make it a habit to bleed in front ofKyzaires, Kaldur being the only one I’d ever interacted with.
I squeezed my hand into the fabric of my apron, the side of my enclosed fist bumping into the notebook beneath the folds.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, quickly.
Kaldur stood abruptly. As if my gaze was pulled by magnets, I saw that his white fangs were poking into the bottom of his lip. I’d been around enough Kylorr in my life—full-blooded Kylorr—to know that he must’ve been exceedingly hungry for such a response to happen. Or on the verge of a berserker rage, whichwas uncommon among their race unless threatened. I’d never seen one myself, but I had heard stories.
TheKyzaireturned, giving his wings a small pump to propel him toward the door more quickly. My heart was pounding as I slowly stood. The cut over my palm felt like it throbbed with my heartbeat.
At the threshold, he turned back to look at me. The expression on his face was one I could only describe astorment. His brows were furrowed low over his mirror eyes. The lines of his face had deepened, especially around his mouth, though his lips were in a firm, unyielding press. One of his fangs had pierced the flesh of his bottom lip, a bead of black blood appearing before he licked it away. His body and movements were so tight and stiff that he resembled one of the gray marble statues I dusted regularly in the front atrium.
He stared at me as if…disappointed? I couldn’t understand why.
And yet…those eyes. I felt the back of my throat burn at the intensity in that gaze, pinning me into place like I was an unfortunate specimen that was being studied. Now I knew that his eyes made me feel like shivering. I hadn’t known that before because they’d only ever skimmed over me, never settling. I knew he had the smallest silver scar over his chin, shaped like a crescent moon, a detail I was itching to add to my sketch from this morning, though it felt like I shouldn’t know that.
Forbidden,I thought. Everything about him felt forbidden.
Those eyes pierced me, and then a rough sound grumbled up from his chest. He turned, pushing through the doors hard enough that it made me jump.
Then he was gone.
It took long moments for my heart to calm as I stared at the empty doorway. Then I looked down at the shattered vase at my feet.
I pulled my notebook from the folds of my dress, careful notto get blood on the soft material. I flipped open to my sketch from this morning. With my charcoal pencil pinched between my pointer finger and thumb, I added a small crescent scar to Kaldur’s likeness.
A drop of my blood from the small gash across my palm landed on the sketch. I hurriedly tried to wipe it away, but it smudged the lines of charcoal, leaving a red hue right over his left eye. I stared at the red. Berserker red.
I snapped the notebook closed, my eyes flickering back to the door.
What had just happened?
Later that night,shortly after my nightly bath so my skin was still warm and my hair damp, I was tucked in the small window seat of my room, having drawn back the sheer curtain to look over Vyaan. It was a beautiful night, the moon a crescent—which I tried to ignore—and the lights of the city were shimmering. Candles in windows, the blue glow of the orb lights throughout the winding streets, the fires that glowed from within the taverns and inns.
My gaze trailed over the roads, a beautiful organic pattern that I’d drawn too many times to count from this very place. I had one of Luc’s letters open in my lap, one I’d reread hundreds of times. It was the first letter I’d received from him shortly after he’d moved to Laras. He’d promised to write me, to let me know he’d arrived with his traveling caravan safely.
His handwriting was a messy scrawl, rushed most likely. He’d always hated writing, though Wrezaan had insisted that we learned, a tutor appearing every week like clockwork for our lessons. Though, now that I was older, I knew it was Vyaan law for orphanages to provide a weekly tutoring session for allchildren, at minimum. And Wrezaan had only decided on the minimum.
I loved writing, and so the weekly lesson had always been the highlight of the week for me. For Luc, they’d been horrendously long and infinitely boring.
Luc’s letter conveyed his excitement at being in Laras, the capital city of the Kaalium. It had been a dream of his for so long. It was there he was determined to build a life, a fortune. I never knew where his obsession with Laras had begun, but Luc had consumed anything about it, whether it was stories from travelers at the merchant square he frequented or a book that he brought home from the archives for me to read to him.
Luc was a dreamer, perhaps even more than I was, and I’d always thought that a steep impossibility.
But for Luc, Laras was a glittering beacon of hope, a fresh start to acquire everything he’d ever wanted as an abandoned, poor child. He aspired to wealth, to status so he would never be overlooked or ignored again.
And he’d promised to send for me once that happened.
There was a small worry pressing more and more firmly at the back of my mind these last two years. Luc’s letters had become more infrequent. The last one I’d received had been three months ago, though I had sent many since.
I worried he would forget his promise. I didn’t care about wealth or status. I only cared to see my brother again, though we were not related by blood. But we shared a family name—Denoren, the name he’d come up with for the heroine of our shared story, and one we’d vowed to take together as mere children—and we were family in every sense of the wordexceptin blood.
Luc was my brother, and I knew he wouldn’t forget about me. He wouldnever. A part of me felt intense guilt for beginning to wonder if he had, if he remembered his promise.
I folded Luc’s letter carefully. I liked this one in particular. Itsounded most like the Luc I remembered, all starry-eyed optimism and an unshakeable determination.
