So yes, I was feeling quite miserable.
“No word from your daughter yet?” I asked.
“So eager to leave me,” Syndras grumbled. “But no. I’m having dinner with them tomorrow. Many nobles will be in attendance. Trust me—I’ll secure you a position somewhere by the night’s end.”
“I don’t know how to repay you,” I confessed. “You’ve always been so kind to me.”
“You keep this old female company and have always written to me,” she said softly. “When you get to be my age, you realize how little else matters except those in your life who you truly care about and who care about you.”
My throat burned at the sentiment in her voice.
“I do love you, Syndras,” I said. Perhaps I used that word more often than most, but perhaps I felt it more often than most.
“I love you too, my dear,” Syndras replied, but her voice was gruff. She didn’t like to talk about these things, and I bit back a smile as I returned to my work. She added, “And you know you can tell me anything.”
My smile died. “I know.”
We lapsed into silence as the storm raged outside the window. When I looked out, I saw sheets of rain sliding down it and noticed that the curtains needed to be beaten, an accumulation of dust lingering in the folds.
I’d do that tomorrow, I decided. Syndras had grown much weaker these last few years, even though she’d likely take off my head if I dared to say that out loud.
There was a terrible banging at the door.Thump, thump, thump.
Syndras’s head snapped up.
“Who in Raazos’s blood…” she muttered, pushing up from her chair with some effort. “At this hour, in this storm?”
“Let me get it,” I protested.
“No,” she said firmly. “This is still my House, and I’m not so old that I can’t greet my own guests.”
I bit my lip as I watched her go from the room, slowly and with care. I sighed when she was gone but went back to my sewing. The sitting room was far enough away from the main entrance that I knew it might be a few moments. Perhaps it was her daughter or one of her keepers, come to check on Syndras in the storm.
But before I knew it, the door to the sitting room slammed opened and I was staring at a male that, for a brief moment, I didn’t recognize.
Then I spied mirrored eyes, cutting through the low light of the sitting room, and I froze.
Kaldur.
He was dripping wet from the storm, his clothes plastered to his body like he’d been flying in it for hours on end. He was leaner than I remembered, the shadows of his face deeper, nearly gaunt.
He looked severe, intense, and angry. And…relieved. A bright relief so palpable he nearly swayed with it.
And I was nowhere remotely ready to see him again. Him being here was like a punch in the gut because even like this, he was still achingly handsome, handsome enough to make my heart sting.
Seeing him brought back all the hurt. Rushing back, as if it had never left.
Then panic flared. Luckily the sewing hid my rounding belly from view, but even a week after leaving Laras had made the rapid changes in my body all the more noticeable. Before, I could’ve passed the pregnancy off as a large meal. Now? No one wouldeverbelieve that.
“What…how did you know I was here?” came the first shocked words out of my mouth as he stalked toward me. He was dripping water all over Syndras’s rugs, and I opened my mouth to tell him?—
“You’re coming with me,” Kaldur told me. “Now.”
“No,” I said, easily. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Why is he here?I thought wildly.
“What do you want?” I asked.
