Chapter 36

Gemma

“Oh, Azur,” I breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

It was a week later.

The evening before the harvest ball.

Even though Kalia was running around the keep and the village like a frenzied hare, and even though she’d been employing my help whenever she could snag it, Azur had snuck me out of the keep and flown me across the Silver Sea to a small, forested island far from the coast.

“What is this?” I wondered, in awe.

The island had looked tiny when we’d been high overhead, but upon our descent, I’d seen that it was a forest by design. The trees had been planted in an arch at regular intervals before swirling out in a flourish toward the edges of the island. In the very center of the wall of trees, shielding the waves and the expansive view of Laras beyond, was a round, stone pavilion. Familiar starwood blooms were creeping up the white stone. Little white flowers dotted the moss-covered ground, which was bright blue, instead of green like in the Collis. The moss contrasted sharply with the white stone of the steps that led up to the structure.

There was something eerily beautiful about this place.

Haunting. Quiet. But peaceful.

So unlike the bustle and chaos of the Kaalium keep right now, as keepers under Zaale’s orders rushed to clean and prep for the influx of Kylorr that would be arriving in a little under a day.

Including Azur’s brothers, I thought.

The pavilion was open air with delicate columns that climbed skyward. There was no roof, nothing to protect from a storm. Overhead, the stars were beginning to peak out, and I thought it would be glorious to lie there and watch them glimmer and gleam.

As we ascended the steps, Azur explained, “My grandfather built this for his Kylaira. When they passed, my own mother planted the trees and the starwood blooms in honor of them.”

I tilted my head to look back at him, feeling his wing brush the back of my arm.

“With Kalia barking orders, I figured you might need the reprieve,” he added dryly.

I laughed. I’d been doing that a lot this last week, and I leaned forward to press a kiss to his bicep since his mouth was too high for me to reach.

“Thank you,” I breathed, though I would’ve been happy to have him fly me anywhere. The rush was exhilarating. My hair was wild around my shoulders, my cheeks raw from the wind, but I was grinning.

When I pulled away, Azur’s arm flashed out and he pulled me back, closing the distance himself to take my lips. I sighed into his mouth and then felt his hands settle on my hips, pulling me tight against his hard body.

I moaned and said against his lips, “Or maybe you just wanted to find somewhere we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“That too,” he said roughly. “It’s hard to properly fuck one’s wife when one’s sister is constantly barging into rooms unannounced.”

I cringed and pulled away. Kalia had walked in on us yesterday in his office, and I would never forget the bulging horror in her eyes when she’d seen that Azur had had me splayed out on his desk. I’d been holding his horns tight, using them to grind my cunt into his mouth.

Kalia hadn’t quite been able to meet my eyes that evening. But this morning, she’d interrupted my Halo orb call with my sisters to demand that I go into the village with her. Something about a food disaster in the keep that seemed to have resolved itself before we’d even reached Laras.

“I should have sent her to live with Lucen when I had the chance,” Azur rasped, trying to pull me back into the circle of his arms, trailing his mouth down my neck.

“You don’t mean that,” I told him. “You would miss her too much.”

He grunted but didn’t deny the words. I was discovering that my husband was truly one big pile of mush beneath his glaring, haughty, maddening exterior. At least when it came to his family.

And maybe even me, I added, feeling a flush burn on my cheeks.

The last week with him had been…

Wonderful.

Truly wonderful.

And no one was more surprised about it than I was. Perhaps even Azur too. I caught him looking at me with this perplexed expression on his face, in the aftermath of sex or in the quiet of night when he thought I was sleeping. Like he couldn’t understand how we’d come to be this.

We’d fallen into a small routine, even with the craziness of the harvest in Laras, whose celebrations I could hear linger on into the night. After the kyriv attack, I’d never returned to my rooms to sleep. I’d stayed in Azur’s bed, waking next to him, usually lying on one of his wings—which I’d found couldn’t be helped. We’d take our morning meal on the terrace together. We’d go into the village afterward to make our appearance for whatever festivities were being held that day. Just yesterday, there had been a blood cake–baking competition of all things with little cooking stations set outside for the contestants. The day before there had been a play—a retelling of an ancient battle, of Raazos, the god of battle and the afterlife, when he’d first clashed with Gaara, the goddess of fertility and healing.

After we returned to the keep, Azur’s attentions would be called away by whatever reports were coming in from the northern border patrol and the accounts he’d taken over for the lore harvest. The border had been quiet since the kyriv attack, as if the Kaazor had retreated for the time being. But Azur had admitted to me, in the quiet of his bed, that the retreat set his teeth on edge. His fangs had been out in full view the last week or so, a nagging worry that he didn’t seem to be able to shake.

He would find me late into the night. Or I would find him, still in his office. He’d take me flying, no matter the hour, which always ended with my dress pushed up to my waist wherever he found a private place to land, with me digging my nails into the back of his vest as he rutted ferociously between my thighs.

Then we’d go back to our rooms, where he’d take me all over again, long into the night. I’d fall asleep and not move until morning. Azur told me I slept like the dead, whereas he was the restless one, not that I’d noticed.

“What is this?” I asked, trying not to let him distract me with his roving hands as I danced away from his grip. There was what looked like a bird bath in the very center of the pavilion. When I looked within it, I saw that it was deep but empty, the bowl glimmering with what looked like a film of silver.

Azur followed after me, dragging his dull claws through the back of my hair, making goose bumps rise along my flesh. Just his touch could set me on fire.

“A zylarr,” he finally answered. “An opening into the other realms.”

I stilled, my heart pumping, but slowly lowered my hands away from the stone bowl. “It is?”

“We rarely use this one,” he informed me. “There is another. At our family’s shrine in Laras. When the moon winds are strong, we can make the bridge to Alara.”

The after realm, he’d told me.

“And Zyos?” I asked. “What about that one?”

“I have tried to reach Zyos more times than I can say,” he said, his expression closing briefly. Going cold. “I have failed every single time.”

“Who is in Zyos that you are trying to reach?” I asked, softly.

He blew out a sharp breath. “Someone lost. Someone lost for a long time.”

There was a gruff softness in his voice. A softness that nearly broke my heart.

Azur took my hand and guided me away from the zylarr, even though I had a flurry of questions flooding my brain.

I had a sick feeling in my gut as he led me back down the steps of the pavilion, heading toward the forest line.

“It’s not your mother, is it?” I asked, unsure if I should. Azur rarely spoke of his mother. Kalia mentioned her often enough. “Your mother isn’t the one who is lost, is she?”