Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Sixteen

When I woke, I was cradled against the horde king’s chest, draped across his lap. The familiar rocking motion told me we were once again on his pyroki…and it was nearing nightfall.

How long have I been asleep?I wondered.

My vision was back to normal but I still had the remnants of a headache, lingering behind my eyes.

“You finally wake,” came his voice, ragged and deep.

My cheek was pressed to the fur cloak he’d draped around himself and I kept my head there, not wanting to move too much. Instead, I flexed my feet, wiggling my toes in the boots he’d given me.

“What…what happened?” I asked softly.

“You collapsed,” he informed me, as if I didn’t realize that already. “You have been asleep.”

“How long?” I whispered, fearing his answer.

He hesitated. “Two days.”

I closed my eyes briefly. More lost time.

Two days?

“What happened with the Killup?”

His arm tightened at my back.

“You...you didn’t hurt them, right?”

“Nik, I did not,” was all he said. Relief whistled through me and I huffed out a soft breath. “You care deeply for beings beyond yourself. Why is that?”

His words surprised me. I swallowed, reaching out to trail my fingers over the pyroki’s neck, though she tossed her head at my touch. My lips almost quirked. She still didn’t like me but she obviously felt better after her injury.

“They didn’t want to hurt us.”

“How could you be so certain?” he asked, his tone deceptively…casual. “Would you have bet your life on it?”

Those black threads through his red eyes seemed to waver when I looked back at him. “Yes,” I said easily, ignoring his first question.

“What injured you so that you needed to sleep for two days?” he asked next, his tone gruffer.

He was pushing for information. No one outside of my family knew for certain what I could do. And they would never tell a soul. Even I recognized that what I could do was powerful, though it came at a cost.

Did he suspect something?

“I…” I licked my dry lips but I didn’t feel thirsty. Had he been giving me water? “I get bad headaches sometimes. I’ve had them since I was born,” I told him. Not a complete lie but certainly not the complete truth.

His eyes flickered over my face. I was all at once very aware how close we were and in the next moment, I remembered something else. That night in the forest…watching him in the darkness, feeling his heat against me, before the Killup had come.

My cheeks burned and I looked away.

All he said in reply was, “I will find out all your secrets soon enough.”

His tone was like a caress, his voice soft and husky. His words were a threat and yet, he’d made them sound like a sensual promise.

I shivered in his arms, much to my embarrassment.

“What happened to the Killup?” I asked again.

“They fled when you fell,” he told me.

At least no one died. That much I could be thankful for.

“There are Killup under the Dead Mountain,” I murmured. “Also slaves.”

“Do you speak to them?” he asked. “Know them?”

“No,” I said, watching the rise and fall of his chest. His warmth seeped into me and though I’d just slept for two days, I felt like I could close my eyes again. “We aren’t allowed. But I fell once while I was delivering something to another sibi. I’d been awake all night and was weak. Their Killup helped me up, though she was punished for it. She didn’t have to but she helped me.”

My voice sounded far away as anguish made my chest burn. They’d beat her for touching me and I’d stood there trying not to cry. My sibi had very rarely punished me but that Killup had had dark bruises running all along her grey flesh. It made me sick to think about. I never saw her again. Afterwards, it had always shamed me that I hadn’t tried to help her, even if I would’ve been punished too. It haunted me that I’d only stood there, silently. Like a coward.

“Sibi?” he asked quietly.

“A household,” I murmured, still thinking of the Killup. “Higher class sibi have slaves.”

He made a huffing sound deep in his throat but before I could curse myself for telling him something like that, he asked, “Are you hungry?”

I angled my gaze up at him, frowning. “You aren’t going to interrogate me on sibi?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. I didn’t look away from his lips when he said, “I have already learned that you will tell me whatever you wish to…and nothing that I want to know.”

My lips parted.

“I do know that you have not eaten in almost two days and that you must be hungry.”

He was…surprising.

Three times now, I’d delved into his mind but only twice had I gone deep into those emotions that burned through him like fire. I realized that I’d never had the need to alter anyone’s emotions twice. Once was enough and those that I did it to I usually never saw again.

However, I’d pushed into this horde king’s mind to experience his emotions multiple times now and I wondered what the consequences of that would be.

Because everything always had a price.

Turning my gaze from him, I looked at the landscape, tensing a little in his arms. To the east, I saw the unmistakable shadow of the Dead Mountain. We had entered the mountainous region of Dakkar. Sharp pillars of stone rose around us, like large daggers that had been thrust into the earth. Some were wider than others, some were so thin that I thought they would crumble with a stiff breeze.

An inkling of foreboding ran through me. The pillars only grew more numerous. The Dead Lands were littered with them.

“Your horde is so close to the Ghertun. Why settle them out here?”

“Ungira,” he rasped.

I didn’t know what that meant.

“This is where they live after the frost. They mate through the cold season and their numbers need to be culled.”

So ungira were a type of game.

“I don’t understand the Dakkari sometimes,” I said softly, peering around a pillar as we passed.

He grunted.

“You don’t allow humans to hunt because you say it takes from Kakkari. But you are allowed to do it?”

His nostrils flared, his gaze cutting to me. “When the Nrunteng settled here, they hunted opiril. You will never see one though. They hunted them to extinction, wiped out an entire species over the course of four years, though the opiril had been around since our beginning.”

I bit my lip.

“When vekkiri arrived, one of the first villages wiped out a small herd of wrissan that were meant to grow through the warmer season to feed my horde,” he rasped.

“You were a Vorakkar even when the first humans arrived?” I asked, surprised. How old was he? And when had he become a Vorakkar?

He exhaled sharply. “Nik, I was born in a horde. My father was a darukkar.”

A warrior, I knew now.

“With the wrissan gone, the horde fell. We had to return to Dothik or else we would have starved in a single moon cycle. We used the last of our stores on the journey to the city.”

His fists clenched on the reins, his golden skin whitening. He squeezed so hard, I thought the chain would disintegrate in his hand.

Without thinking, I placed my fingers over his fist, not knowing why I wanted to soothe him. His sigh was gruff but his hand loosened nonetheless. I stared down at his hands, at the myriad of raised scars there. His hands were calloused and rough. The hands of a warrior.

“It was never about hunting, kalles. It was always about a careful system that the Dakkari hordes have had in place for centuries, one that honors the beasts that roam our land, one that honors Kakkari. Outsiders do not understand our ways. They never will. They take but do not give.”

Carefully, I said, “Perhaps because the Dakkari have never given them the chance to. I was born here. On Dakkar. On the same planet that you were. This is the only home that I’ve known…and yet, I’d never heard about the overhunting or why we weren’t allowed to hunt.”

He grunted.

“There has to be a better life,” I whispered. “For everyone.”

“Our Dothikkar does not give weight to the lives of vekkiri. Or Killup, Nrunteng. Or Ghertun.”

“And what about the Vorakkars?” I asked quietly. “Do the Vorakkars care?”

His jaw tightened.

He didn’t answer and I turned my gaze away. I didn’t know why his answer mattered to me. What I asked didn’t matter at all, actually. Even if I wished there was a better life ahead, I didn’t actually believe there was one. Not for me at least.

My fate was to return to the Dead Mountain, to work there until I died. The Ghertun controlled me. They always would. I couldn’t survive for more than a month away from them, even if I managed to escape. The poison, the vovic, coursing in my blood ensured that.

But you are free now, I thought.

I looked up at the darkening sky. At the bright stars that were beginning to shimmer overhead. Stars and constellations I’d missed under the mountain. A cool breeze threaded its way through my hair.

I was riding a pyroki, of all creatures, with a horde king of Dakkar, a male who was equally terrifying and fascinating to me.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was an adventure. A quest, like the old stories Maman had always recited to us. I was on an adventure all my own…

A part of me knew it was the only one I’d ever get. The three and a half weeks that remained until the black moon was the only hint of freedom, of life, of excitement I’d experience.

Kakkari had always meant for me to die under the Dead Mountain, hadn’t she? Whereas the Vorakkar behind me believed she’d written his death on the battlefield.

The ground began to vibrate.

The sound echoed off the pillars until the plains seemed to boom. Loud rallying cries and chants rose up from every direction.

My heartbeat roared in my ears and my hands clutched onto the horde king’s furs, pressing closer, seeking protection and comfort from a male I knew better than to trust.

The Vorakkar bellowed out a phrase in Dakkariand the cries grew louder. The vibrating became so loud that my teeth rattled.

“W-what’s happening?” I asked the Mad Horde King.

When I saw his dark grin, when I saw a quick mass approaching us from the front, when I spied Dakkari with blades strapped to their backs, riding on gold-painted pyroki, I feared I already knew the answer.

“We have arrived at my horde, kalles.”