They’d received something new, something untainted.

And me? As the eldest son, I’d received Laras. I’d received our keep, the great keep of House Kaalium. With all its memories. With all its triumphs. With all its grief.

My eyes narrowed on the east wing, zeroing in on a specific stretch of windows.

My body felt depleted. Flying took much of our energy. It was why there was a blood giver encampment on the northern border, so our patrols and soldiers wouldn’t have to return to Laras to feed, to renew their strength when they’d been in the sky for hours on end.

Drinking from my wife was inevitable.

How could I begin to set things right for Aina’s soul unless I nourished myself with the blood of our enemy?

Raazos demanded it—the god of battle, protector of the three realms. If I strengthened myself on Hara blood, maybe I could reach out to Aina in Zyos. Maybe I could find her and tether her back to us.

But without her soul gem, without the vessel for her soul to fill, created from her very bones…maybe it would be a wasted effort.

I will still try, I thought.

With a growl, I propelled myself to my bride’s rooms, landing with a thump on the balcony just outside her bedroom window.

I shook some ice from my hair, inhaling a sharp, deep breath before I pushed open the doors.

She was in here. I could smell her. She made my mouth water even as nausea crept up on me, bitter and thick.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied movement. Gemma stood from a plush chair tucked into the corner. I knew it hadn’t been placed there. She’d dragged it over to the most private part of the room, facing all the doors and windows. Prey watching for predators. Burrowing and tucking herself away, as if she could hide from me.

Scenting her sudden fear, though she tried to hide it with the bold upturning of her chin, I felt anticipation rise. It coated my tongue, made my venom drip from my slowly elongating fangs.

Though it was obvious she’d been sleeping, she looked at me warily, her eyes tracking my every movement.

“Do you know what it is to be a bride of a Kylorr?” I asked her, keeping my voice smooth and soft as I latched the balcony doors behind me. My own rooms were just next to hers, at the end of the hallway—I had a view of the Silver Sea and the mountains to the north. Though her mere presence put me on edge, I wanted her close. I wanted her near.

I heard her sudden swallow. It looked as if Ludayn had shown her to her rooms and Gemma had immediately fallen asleep in the chair once she’d left. She was still dressed in what she’d been wearing on the ship, a shapeless black silk shift that covered her from head to toe like she was in mourning. But her eyes were bright. Watchful. Observant.

Tilting my head, I studied my bride. She wasn’t anything spectacular to look at. Her black hair nearly matched my own though it was pulled back into a tight, unforgiving bundle at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were wide. Her brows straight, dark little slashes across her morose expression. Her cheeks were full, no sharp bones, only a round face.

Her pouting lips were perhaps the most pleasing of her features to look at—plump and pursed—but they couldn’t save the rest of her appearance.

Then again, I hadn’t chosen House Hara’s eldest daughter for her beauty. I’d heard the Hara daughters were well sought-after. I’d heard they were great beauties of their race, but I couldn’t see it in Gemma.

And the speed at which her father had given her up to a stranger, a stranger from an alien race I knew he loathed…it had given me pause. Perhaps I’d miscalculated. Perhaps I should have chosen another of his daughters, one he seemed to want.

“No,” came her quiet reply in response to my question. Whispered in the still room. As if all the air had been sucked out of it. Even the fire flickering in the hearth didn’t dare make a sound. “I don’t.”

My bride bit her bottom lip to stifle her gasp as I gave my wings a small pump behind me, jumping easily toward her with speed that I realized unnerved her.

Good.

The closer I drew, the more I could scent her. That delicious, surprising, tantalizing scent.

My fangs elongated fully in a rush, hunger gnawing at my belly, at my tendons and muscles with sudden ferocity. I could feel the hunger in my wings even, in the blood that rushed in the thin membranes.

There was an inkling of suspicion of what was happening, but I immediately dismissed it. I would make it untrue. The only way I could dispel the nagging dread would be to take my first feeding. Then I would know for certain.

Gemma expelled a harsh, ragged breath when I circled behind her, when I clasped her waist with a hard grip and dragged her in front of a long mirror perched in the corner of the room.

It was jarring to see us both presented there. And for a moment, I caught sight of my own face and didn’t recognize it. It was a male with a hardened expression, with unfathomable coldness in his eyes, burning with the need to make her hurt. To make her ache, as we all had.

She was so small against me. So…different. I’d fed off human givers before. There were many living in Laras, many spread throughout the Kaalium.

But this was different.

This human was my wife now. My bride.

She was mine by right. By oath. By blood.

For a moment, I thought of Rivin’s careful, disapproving expressions. His careful words. His knowing eyes.

Then I shook him from my mind. Fuck Rivin. He wasn’t responsible for the lost soul of someone he loved. But I was. He wasn’t allowed to judge me as I tried to uphold a promise I’d made long ago.

Gemma’s brown eyes were wide as I gripped the high neck of her black dress and tore the material, exposing the smooth column of her throat. Laughable really. Had she thought that simply covering her neck would make me forget my hunger?

Her pulse was dancing and throbbing. My eyes zeroed in on it, listening to the beat and pump. Dizzying and beautiful.

“There is usually ceremony in this. I should have taken my first feeding on Nulaxy,” I whispered into her ear, making her shiver as I met her eyes in the mirror, as I ran a dull claw down the side of her throat. Still, they were sharp enough to make her flinch. I was nearly trembling with need, with hunger, grinding my back teeth down in an effort to drag this out. “Would you rather we have witnesses, my bride?”

It was meant as a taunt, but her expression of horror nearly made me want to call in Zaale or a nearby roaming keeper.

Then her expression changed completely. To my utter surprise, her own eyes narrowed in a glare, practically spearing me through our shared reflection with her sudden anger. The mirror was ornate. Silver and shimmering with the finest and strongest of Krynn’s metals. Still, I thought it might melt with her derision.

“Do it,” she hissed. “Get it over with already, husband, and stop talking about it!”

This was the Hara daughter I’d expected. Unbending. Proud. Stubborn. Iron-willed.

I flashed my fangs.

“I want you disobedient, little wife,” I purred. “Because it will be all the more pleasurable to break you.”

“You might have bought me, Azur,” she told me, her voice strong and even. “But you will never own me. You think I am frightened of what you could do to me? Well, I am. Does that please you? But if you think that you are the worst thing I’ve ever endured, then you would be wrong. So do your worst, husband. Feed from me. Make me fear you. Break me. But I will always be my own.”

We held one another’s glares in the mirror. In the darkness of the vast room, only lit by the dwindling firelight, I looked like a shadow behind her. One with glowing, hungry eyes.

A shadow that would consume her. A beast. A monster.