CHAPTER 30
ERINA
Three days after I’d posted the letter to the keep, addressing it for Maudoric’s attention, since I knew everything passed through her first, there was a reply.
I found it wedged beneath my door when I trudged in after another long day at Kyndri’s. I’d asked to work longer hours so that I could make seventy credits instead of the usual fifty. But I only got a handful of hours of sleep because of it. Even Kyndri had started to looked concerned, and I feared that she’d decide to cut the hours back, if only for my own health.
But I needed to make another week’s rent at Ikrin’s. I had to pay him in two days, and it would wipe out nearly everything.
It will buy me another week while I wait for Kaldur’s reply,I thought.
That had been the only thing pushing me forward.
But that evening, my heart lurched when I saw the letter and the wax seal on the backside, the familiar seal of House Kaalium, and my hands shook as I gently tore it open.
I began to read.
To Erina Denoren,
I cannot verify the truth of your claim, especially given your relationship with Luc Denoren. Therefore, I am of the firm belief that what you claim is false and this is another attempt on your part to obtain more credits from me.
In your creditory account, you will find the ten vron that was owed to you. No less and no more. This is the last that I will ever give you. Any other letters or attempts at communication will be ignored.
It was signed by Kaldur, written in a sure, firm, tidy script.
For a moment, I thought maybe it was a cruel joke. But the signature was familiar, from what I remembered of it on the blood-giver contract, that night in the starwood blooms when he’d fed from me for the first time.
I sat on my bed, staring down at the letter in my hands. The parchment was thick, expensive. When I saw a tear drop land on it, blurring his signature, that was when I got angry.
He wasn’t anything like how I’d thought he’d be. I’d known that when I’d left Vyaan, but this letter demonstrated a new cruelty that I hadn’t thought him capable of.
And I knew what it was. It was a payoff. It was a rejection. It was him washing his hands of a potentialchildthat he’d sired. Maybe there were others. Maybe he did this all the time.
And it made zero sense to me, how Kaldur could be this person. Then again, perhaps I was a terrible judge of character. Perhaps I hadn’t known him at all.
Perhaps what KaldurandLuc had said was true. That I needed to grow up. That I was naive and foolish.
Maybe this was how I would learn. Not to trust people I thought I could.
Despair swirled in my chest. I didn’twantthat. I didn’t want to become that kind of person.
But it was clear to me that I would find no help or responsibility in Kaldur. He’d sent money to pay me off, and even now, I felt like it was poisoned. I would loathe ever touching it in that cursed account…but I also knew I needed it.
Laras chewed me up and spat me out,I thought.
And I missed home, missed the familiarity of Vyaan, streets that I knew like my own handwriting. Even though being there would always remind me of Kaldur in a way.
I sat on my bed, reread the letter perhaps hundreds of times as I weighed my options.
The first of which was that I could continue scraping by in Laras. I could work myself hard at Kyndri’s Landing, try to save up enough money for when the child eventually came. But in only a couple weeks, I would show more. Just this morning I’d finally noticed my belly beginning to round.The rapid speed of a hybrid pregnancy,I remembered the healer telling me.Dangerous,he’d also said.
What if something went wrong?
The second option was to return to Vyaan. Syndras would help me. Even though she could no longer afford to keep me in her employ, she was still a noble with connections to great Houses. Finding a more comfortable job, with better pay than what I would find here, would give me a better chance to get my feet firmly planted where I could actually save money for the baby.
This time I wouldn’t reject Kaldur’s money, but I refused to touch it unless something went wrong in the pregnancy. It would be my safety net, just in case.
“Not a lot of options,” I whispered.
