At his words, I finally took note of what was before us. Eating utensils and silver-edged dishes. Set for a meal. For both of us.
And there was indeed a teapot, set on a warmer, in the very center of the table. Faceted and black like obsidian, I saw my reflection in it.
The appearance of Zaale saved me from answering. A hovering tray trailed behind him, laden with platters of food.
“Kylaira,” Zaale greeted, inclining his head in a nod, his voice measured. “I trust you slept well.”
The words were so normal and polite that they momentarily knotted my tongue. Ludayn had called me Kylaira too. I assumed it was a title.
“I did, thank you,” I replied, briefly meeting Azur’s eyes, seeing them tighten on Zaale. “Good morning,” I added.
“Where’s Inasa?” Azur cut in. “You shouldn’t be serving us.”
Zaale placed the platters down gently. Beautiful dishes, bright in color and variety. My mouth watered as I looked at the strange things perched almost artfully among the platters, decorated with small blooms and thick sauces. One platter was stacked high with rounded cakes, though the texture looked…gritty. The color was dark, nearly black, but bright blue oval-shaped flowers decorated the rim of the serving platter.
“Kalia intercepted him,” Zaale told Azur. “She dragged him into the village. Likely for help with the festival and the ball. She told me she was meeting with Yeeda.”
The…festival? The ball? Yeeda?
Kalia was the female we’d encountered yesterday, if I wasn’t mistaken. The beautiful one. Who’d cried mercury-colored tears and glared daggers at me.
I wondered if she was…
I wondered if she was another of Azur’s wives. I’d thought before that he might have multiple, that there hadn’t been a stipulation of monogamy in our marriage contract, not that I would have asked for one regardless. I knew nothing about the Kylorr’s customs, but it would certainly make Kalia’s anger and disgust yesterday justified.
Azur grunted. “Make sure she’s back in the keep by nightfall.”
“I will,” Zaale promised, reaching forward to take the teapot from the center of the table. He centered it over my own glossy cup and poured…only it wasn’t tea. It looked thick and dark, whatever it was. Like gray sludge. Then he took a small pot made of gleaming crystal and poured its contents over the sludge, a milky cream that pooled in the divots and cracks of the “tea.”
Seemingly pleased with the presentation, Zaale left us after straightening a spare platter.
“Eat,” Azur grunted, spearing two of the dark, gritty cakes from the stack and placing them on his plate.
My heart pounded in my chest as I watched him eat a large bite, half in disbelief.
“You…you eat food?”
His hand stilled, his single-pronged utensil—sharp and shining—poised on the path to his mouth.
“The Kylorr eat food?” I couldn’t help but stammer out in my shock. The relief I felt as I watched him chew!
“Of course we eat food,” he snapped, a glare gliding into place.
“But…” I trailed off, not quite knowing what to say. I licked my lips, processing this new information as swiftly as I could.
He put his silverware down. A knowing, mocking smile appeared. “Ah, you wish to know why we choose to drink blood if we can get our nourishment elsewhere,” he murmured.
“Well…yes.”
“You drink wine, do you not?” he wanted to know, tilting his head. Was it me or had his fangs elongated with the question? They were pressing into his bottom lip, longer than they’d been before. “Now imagine that the wine you drink gives you unfathomable energy and strength. Imagine that it tastes like the best meal you ever had. Imagine that it fuels you in a way that mere food cannot.”
Realization hit.
“Food is merely a supplement,” Azur told me. “But blood…” My stomach tightened. “Blood is life. No Kylorr would ever give it up.”
His words were tinged in warning, and he gave me a maddening dark smirk that straightened my spine like a rod of steel.
“And maybe I’ll wash down this morning’s meal with another drink of it.”
My jaw set. My chin lifted.
“You never answered my question,” I informed him. My superpower was working for me today. My voice sounded as cold and strong as a glacier.
A huff of amusement left his throat. His laugh even sounded cutting. “Remind me what it was, wife.”
“Why am I here?”
He resumed eating, throwing me an icy look. “I told you. Eat.”
I was starving for food, but I didn’t make a move toward any of it. My mother used to read me ancient faerie stories, ones that had traveled all the way from Old Earth—the original planet my race had once inhabited. And in those faerie stories, a human girl knew better than to eat faerie food. For once she did, she would be trapped forever, bound forever to that strange world.
Which is ridiculous, I couldn’t help but think.
I needed to eat. I would need to eat soon. I was already trapped here forever.
I didn’t know why that old story suddenly popped into my head, but it made my appetite nearly vanish.
“Why did you single out my House?” I demanded softly, keeping his eyes. “Why did you demand a daughter of House Hara?”
Azur studied me from across the table.
For such an arrogant, cruel monster, I hated that I found him handsome.
The warm wind that blew across the private terrace tangled a strand of thick, dark hair around one of his frightening, spiraled horns. He was dressed finely this morning, in a blue leather vest, molded to his chest with a series of intricate silver clasps. He wasn’t wearing his gauntlets, exposing strongly corded gray forearms and black nails that just formed the tip of what could be considered claws.
His shoulders were impossibly broad. It was only fitting that his wings needed to be just as expansive to carry such bulk and heavy muscle. I wasn’t under the false impression that he couldn’t snap me in two if he so wished.
Yet I didn’t cower from his cool and assessing gaze.
“Instead of questioning why, wife, perhaps you should be kneeling at my feet and bestowing your gratitude however you see fit, considering what I did for you and your family.”
That casual, flippant arrogance burned me up inside.
“You think I won’t?” I asked quietly.
He actually snorted, a sound of amusement just as it was one of derision. He took a casual sip of the sludge in his cup before replacing it with a bright clink on the table.
“You have too much pride for that, Gemma Hara,” he said.
His tone was matter-of-fact. It grated my insides. It cut me to think that he had gleaned anything about me at all. I didn’t want him to know me. I didn’t want him to think he did.
That was more important to me than my damn pride.
I rose from my chair.
Azur stilled, his hand poised between us, reaching for the platter of what looked like a type of fruit—the rind a dusky purple and the inside flesh a midnight blue with plump black seeds as big as marbles.
Holding his eyes, I rounded the table slowly, every step bringing me closer to his side. Resignation and triumph both warred inside me when I saw his brief surprise until he smoothed it away. His hand retracted, watching me, waiting.