Velle, he meant. And Lydrasa, perhaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been Velle who’d written the letter with the noble female’s help. Velle would have had access to the letters coming into the House. She was the one who usually collected them and brought them to Maudoric. Perhaps she’d recognized my handwriting.
“But what I can tell you is that I’mfuckingjealous,” Kaldur grated. “And for me, that is a strange and new feeling. I’m not…I’m not handling it well.”
He was jealous?
I had half a mind to let him suffer some more. It wouldfeelgood, wouldn’t it? To let him hurt the same way he’d hurt me? He deserved it, didn’t he?
I turned from him, flitting away from the center of his embrace. It was hard to think when he was so close, when his scent was enveloping me.
“You should have just asked me,” I told him, staring over the calm and quiet of the morning garden. “Because if you had, I would’ve told you that Luc Denoren is like a brother to me. And I can tell you that the mere thought of being romantically involved with him makes my stomach churn.”
Kaldur’s sharp, stunned breath was all I heard. When I turned around to face him, I saw his expression looked thunderously dark as he digested what I told him.
“I’ve never loved Luc in that way. I love him fiercely, yes. I always have, but as mybrother. As someone who protected me and looked out for me when we were younger.”
“You share a name. I thought…”
I laughed, but it was humorless. “We were children when wetook that name. You know how we came up with it? It’s from my stories.Ourstories, because Luc and I worked on them together. And we named our hero Kavelyn Denoren because Luc liked the way it sounded. He’d heard the name once, and it had stuck with him all those years. And we were orphans with no name of our own and so we took it together. Kavelyn Denoren was born. And so were Erina and Luc Denoren. Bonded forever—maybe not by blood, but by dreams. And hope that our lives would turn out like Kavelyn’s.”
I didn’t realize I had started crying until Kaldur frowned, stepped forward to wipe the tears off my cheek.
I was embarrassed, turning my face to the side to compose myself. I shivered in my jacket, wrapping it tighter around me.
“So now you know,” I finished. “The real truth. You should have just asked.”
I’ve only ever loved you in that way,I couldn’t help but think. But that had been a naive love. One sickened with ridiculous hope and childish romanticism.
I knew better now.
“I’m sorry,” came his gruff words. Kaldur stood there as sunlight crept over the entirety of his body, like he was a beautiful sculpture in a gallery. “For what it’s worth, Erina Denoren, I’m sorry.”
It was small, but it was something.
“Am I really yourkyrana?” I asked, my tone sounding stiff, distant. Another thing that had kept me up at night. How had I not seen the signs if I was? Was I blind?
Kaldur inclined his head. “Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since that afternoon. When you cut yourself on the vase shard,” he told me. My eyes widened, a hitch of my breath sounding.That long?That was why he’d left? Why he’d called me into his office later that night? “I smelled your blood for the first time, and I knew. Right there and then.”
“You knew immediately,” I said softly. That was rare, or so I’d heard.
“I likely would’ve known sooner,” he added, “if you hadn’t used that perfume so much.”
Was that why he’d been so grumpy about it? Oh…because he’d thought it had been a gift from Luc, from my supposedlover?
“Without it, you smell otherworldly to me. The sweetest of gifts from another realm, from a godly one,” Kaldur continued, his voice hushed. “I knew you were mine that afternoon. And I had done everything since to try to convince myself otherwise.”
Because I was a keeper from no great family, from no family at all, I knew. Below his station in life. That realization still filled me with disappointment even though it was a reality I couldn’t change.
“You found me lacking,” I said quietly. When he opened his mouth, I said, “It’s the truth. Don’t try to deny it because it sounds pretty.”
“I wasn’t going to deny it,” Kaldur admitted. “I have a lot of flaws. Thinking highly of myself, perhaps too highly, is one of them—at the expense of everyone else. But one thing I am not ashamed about is that Iremember. I remember history—darker moments of my family’s history, to be precise—and I know how vital it is to prevent it from repeating itself. I am highly aware that my family has not always been loved or even respected within the Kaalium. How can a lineage as ancient as mine be?”
“And you didn’t want to tarnish your legacy here with a keeper,” I finished for him, raising my chin.
“Do you know what happened here?” he asked. “Before I took over this territory? You might have been too young to remember.”
