I processed his words. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought myself.

“I’m still trying to do that myself,” he confessed. “I know it’s hard, to silence those thoughts. To forgive yourself. But you’re not alone.”

Whatever it was from his own past, however, he didn’t tell me, and I didn’t push. He would tell me in his own time, if he wanted to.

“Maybe…maybe we can try to learn together,” I whispered. I was tired. I felt like I could let my eyelids droop, that I would be perfectly content to sleep in his lap for the rest of the night.

His lips pressed to my temple. He grunted, “Perhaps we can.”

Silence lapsed. I listened to the wind howling but strangely, the edge of terror had softened.

Azur shifted. He pulled a familiar orb from his pocket. He held it in full view, small and silver. A model so new that might’ve not even been released onto the market yet.

A Halo orb. I recognized the delicate pattern of the striations on the orb’s surface. I stilled and pulled back to look up at him, my sleepiness forgotten.

“For me?” I asked.

“For you,” he replied.

Chapter 27

Azur

Fascinated, I watched the way the emotions flitted over my wife’s face. The bewilderment, the realization, the hope, the joy. Even the wariness when she thought I might pull my hand away. That reaction had cut me deeper than I’d thought it would, making me realize just how much of a monster she thought me to be.

She still didn’t trust me because I’d never given her a reason to.

“I am sorry,” I told her. Apologizing the way my own mother had taught me to. Holding one’s eyes, looking deep, and not rushing the words. Elongating them, even, dragging them out until they were gentle and soft.

Gemma’s gaze widened but she never looked away. As if she’d never even fathomed that I knew how to apologize for my actions. If only she’d known the terror that Kythel and I had been growing up in this keep, making trouble wherever we’d gone.

“I was cruel that night. And all the nights before,” I added gruffly. “I had no right to say that you were trying to manipulate me. What I do think is that you’re trying to adapt to Laras…to me. I haven’t made it easy. I had my own reasons for it. But I know that we cannot continue like this or else we will tear each other apart.”

Her eyes flickered in knowing. Understanding.

“You are not a prisoner here,” I said softly. “You are my wife. The Kylaira of Laras. No one is allowed to deny you anything. Least of all me.”

Gemma’s lips were parted. She seemed to have forgotten the storm because when a booming howl of wind—which sounded like thunder in the distance—shook the windows, she didn’t even blink.

“You’ll let me call my sisters?” she asked, as if she needed to make absolute sure what I was offering.

“Yes,” I said.

Gemma snagged the Halo from my grip before I could blink, cradling it into her hands like it was a precious gem. She was wearing one of her new dresses, I was pleased to realize. Though I knew dozens of pants and vests and tunics had been among her massive order—no doubt thanks to my sister—she still chose dresses during the day. Which, in my endless frustration, had led to rampant fantasies of slipping my hand up her skirts to find her bare.

“I—I didn’t tell you about my mother to make you feel…to make you feel like…” She trailed off, biting her lip in indecision as she floundered for how best to say the words.

I pressed my lips tight, feeling my fangs dig into my bottom lip. “I know, Gemma.”

She looked down at the orb, which fit perfectly in her palm though it had felt like a marble in my own fingers. It should’ve been concerning how perfectly she fit in my arms, how soft and comforting her weight felt nestled in my lap, how quiet it was in the confines of my wings. The hunger was difficult to ignore, given how her scent filled the space, how the heat and rush of her blood called to me, beckoning me forward.

“I don’t want to continue like this either,” she said softly. She tilted her head back up to meet my eyes. “It will make for a miserable life, and I don’t want that.”

I swallowed hard. Accepting a life with her, as my wife and kyrana, would mean that Aina might remain in Zyos. Unless Raazos set her free, which he likely wouldn’t do without her soul gem in place. And without vengeance against House Hara.

“Do you think we could learn to be with one another?” Gemma asked. Uncertainly. Carefully. Even I heard the vulnerability in her voice. “Do you think we could begin again?”

I likely didn’t deserve another chance. Just as Aina hadn’t deserved to have her life cut brutally short.

But Gemma didn’t deserve this either. The realization that she was just as much a victim of her father’s crimes as my family was…it was beginning to weigh on me. Painfully. It felt like the sharp point of a blade slipping beneath my ribs, making it hard to breathe.

She didn’t know what her father had done. I knew that with blazing certainty. The Gemma I knew wouldn’t stand for it.

I pulled out my dagger from the sheath at my hip. Briefly, Gemma’s gaze dipped to it, her breath hitching, but then met my eyes again, waiting patiently to see what I would do.

I took her palm and she held it flat, watching as I lowered the blade. Just like at our marriage ceremony, I intended to draw blood. She flinched but didn’t make a sound as I slashed a shallow cut over her palm, ignoring the way my venom began to drip, ignoring the tight heat that unfurled in my belly as the scent of her blood filled my nostrils.

Quickly, I slashed my own hand and then the dagger clattered to the floor. Pressing our palms together, so that our blood mingled, I drew in a shuddering breath.

Gemma’s lips were parted. We were close. So incredibly close, and I heard her set aside the Halo orb. It joined the dagger on the dusty floor of the library as Gemma shifted in my lap, positioning herself until she straddled my hips.

“Is that a yes?” she asked, her voice oddly guttural and husky, making my cock stiffen and my throat bob.

Our hands held fast, growing hot with the trickle of our blood, but Gemma didn’t seem to mind.

She reached up with her other hand to take one of my horns. A rough breath escaped my throat as she guided my head down to her tilted throat.

“Yes,” I hissed, brushing my lips over the flutter of her heartbeat. I pushed her hair back over her shoulder as she exposed more of her throat for me. “I need you, kyrana.”

Gemma gasped when I sank my fangs deep, but I was determined to take this slow. I would be gentle.

And so I took gently. As the moon winds rose to dizzying heights outside, Gemma moaned and gasped as I fed from her, taking little sips as opposed to long draws, dragging out her pleasure.

When she came, her orgasm seemed endless. She rocked softly against me, her eyes wide in wonderment, her cries cresting with the peak of the wind outside the keep.

And all the while, our hands held fast.

A new beginning.

Forgive me, Aina, I couldn’t help but think, breathing hard against my wife after I’d taken my fill, as her ragged breaths slowly calmed and I saw her eyes droop in drowsiness.

Forgive me.

Chapter 28

Gemma

“He’s traveling?” I asked, frowning. “Where?”

Mira’s lovely face looked back at me from the floating Halo orb. Like I’d suspected, it was the latest model, and it cast her image perfectly and in color, unlike the blue projection on the orbs we’d had in the Collis.

It had been a few days since the moon winds. A few days since that night with him in the library. A few days since Azur had gifted me the Halo.