Page 38 of Blood Singer

"It wasn't a fluke," I said, more to myself than to her. "He was really scenting her in me."

Every interaction reshuffled itself in my mind, each one a small knife twist of doubt.

The landing platform. The way he'd looked at me when I descended from the shuttle, like he'd seen a ghost. His nostrils had flared, and for a moment, something ancient and possessive had flickered across his face. Then his expression had shuttered, and he'd said it almost to himself, like he was working through a problem. Nothing like her. The words had stung because I'd understood immediately that he was comparing me to someone. Someone important.

The mountain. He'd been so careful with me up there, so tender as he traced my face and asked me questions about places I'd never been. The cliffs of Étretat. He asked about those cliffs with such intensity, like the answer mattered more than breathing? And when I'd told him I didn't know what he meant, something had shifted in his eyes. Disappointment? Relief? I still couldn't decide.

The alcove. His hands on me had been desperate and real, his need undeniable. I'd felt it in every touch, every ragged breath against my skin. But afterward, when guilt had crashed through him like a wave, I'd understood the truth he couldn't say out loud. He'd been thinking of someone else. Someone whose memory he couldn't quite let go of, even as his body responded to mine.

Had any of it been real? Or had he been chasing a ghost the entire time, and I'd just been convenient enough to fill the space she'd left behind because of familial notes in my DNA?

"Leila?" Chloe said.

"This is good information," I said, and was proud of how steady it came out. "It explains his initial reaction. Thank you for finding it."

"Leila—"

"I need to think," I said. "We can do app logistics tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Chloe said slowly. "But Leila, seriously. If you need to talk—"

"I promise I'm okay."

I ended the call before she could ask the follow-up questions I could already see forming, and the silence that came back into the room felt heavier than it had before.

Marion's descendant. I carried her bloodline, apparently an echo of whatever had registered in Kavan's memory as the most significant thing he'd ever lost. And every time he'd touched me, he'd had to decide—consciously or not—who exactly he was touching.

I didn't know the answer. That was what sat in my chest like a stone.

I pressed my hands against my sternum and stared at the ceiling for a while. Then I got up, because sitting still was making it worse, and moved back to the window.

The sun was setting. The sky had gone orange and pink and deep purple over the mountains, and it was objectively one of the more beautiful things I'd seen in my life, I noted without being particularly consoled by it.

I thought about my brother, somewhere in Tokyo with his wife, living a life entirely separate from mine. I thought about my parents, both gone before I was thirty. About my students back in Charleston, who'd had a substitute teacher since last June and probably stopped wondering where I was months ago.

I'd been alone for a long time, in one way or another. I'd gotten used to it, mostly. Made peace with it, mostly.

But standing here in this castle with the dragons and humans who'd somehow taken me in, who laughed with me over dinner and called me by name and meant it—and falling hard for the one person in all of it who might not be able to fall back—felt like a particular and very specific kind of loneliness I hadn't experienced before.

I watched the last light go out behind the mountains and thought about what I was going to say to Kavan tomorrow.

Then I thought about what I actually wanted to say to him.

The two lists were not the same.

Chapter 12

Kavan

I'd taken dinner in my office again. Eating alone at my desk while reviewing reports I'd already read twice, pretending the work couldn't wait. Pretending I wasn't hiding.

The food had been excellent. Murdette had sent up roasted pheasant, fresh bread still warm from the oven, a wine from the cellars that had survived the hibernation better than most. I'd barely tasted what little I consumed.

I pushed the plate aside and moved to the window, opening the pane and letting in the night air. The gardens below were quiet, lit only by the bioluminescent flowers that opened after dark and scattered blue-green light across the paths. Silver moonlight lay across the purple-leaf trees in patterns that shifted when the breeze moved through them.

The door opened without a knock, which meant it could only be one person on all of Drakhone.

"You've sent dinner back basically untouched three nights running," Murdette said, already crossing to the tray to inspect the evidence for herself. She lifted the lid, frowned at the pheasant congealing beneath it, and set it down again with the particular disapproval she'd perfected over the centuries. "Why have you been hiding in here like a hermit. You have guests in the castle you should take dinner with them like a civilized male."