Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

My voliki was empty and quiet when I woke.

There was no sign of Vienne. For a brief, startling moment, I wondered if I had dreamed her up entirely. If she was just the next phase of my fragmenting mind after hallucinations of those I’d killed.

Then I scented kuveri. In the furs on my bed. The place where she’d lain beside me was disheveled. Someone had placed more fuel onto the fire and the food on the low table was half-eaten.

When I looked down at my body, I found I was dressed in my trews, still in my boots. Confusion descended before I remembered that I’d gone out to the plains, half-hoping I’d find an ungira, before I’d returned the voliki, returned to her, and slept.

Vok.

I felt rested. Recharged. Yet my head was pounding and I needed food. How long had I been asleep?

And where was Vienne?

I didn’t need to wonder for long because just as I pushed up from the bed, someone entered without announcement…and only one being would dare, only because she didn’t know any better.

The white-haired kalles ducked inside, struggling to carry a food tray that was almost twice as large as she was. Her arms shook with the effort but she stopped in her tracks when she saw me sitting up in my bed.

“You’re awake,” she breathed.

My brow furrowed. Just how long had I been asleep?

“Three days,” she answered, as if I’d asked the question out loud. Perhaps I had. She struggled towards the table with the tray before setting it down loudly. Some broth from a bowl spilled out but she paid it no mind. Instead, she straightened and looked at me with an assessing gaze.

My body tightened in response to her almost immediately, my nostrils flaring, my cock beginning to stir in my trews. She looked disheveled. Her hair was tied back but tendrils had come loose to frame her face. Something dark stained her cheek, which smeared when she wiped the back of her hand across it. But she was flushed, her eyes bright. She was wearing another tunic of mine—telling me she’d gone searching through my chests—but the same pants.

I drank in the sight of her like she was sweetened wine.

“It’s night now,” she told me, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Where have you been?” I asked, my voice hoarse and husky. Unused.

“Today? With Lokkaru again. I spend my days with her.”

I stilled, wondering if the elderly female had remembered anything about the heartstone as I slept. I didn’t think it would happen but Lokkaru’s mind was unpredictable at best.

I stood, rolling out my neck. That was when I noticed a washing tub in the corner, though the water was probably cold. I desperately wanted to bathe and then I would eat.

Vienne eyed me as I approached her. She nibbled on her bottom lip and a flash of heat raced down my spine. I’d bitten at that bottom lip myself.

“I…I was worried about you,” she admitted softly, darting her gaze down to the food tray. “You were asleep for so long but your pujerak told me it was normal.”

I grunted. So she’d spoken with Hedna?

I stopped in front of her. Reaching out my hand, I grasped her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes. Her grey gaze was wide, knowing. Much had transpired between us before I’d gone to sleep. Much that we hadn’t discussed.

“You were worried for me?” I rasped.

She blinked. “Yes.”

She wouldn’t be worried for me unless she’d begun to care for me. Had she begun to trust me too?

I didn’t dwell on how that realization made me feel.

The pads of my fingertips trailed to her cheek, to the smudge there. I wiped at it. It was boiled kuveri mash. She and Lokkaru had been making more candles, evidently.

“Did Lokkaru say anything about the heartstone?” I asked next.

Disappointment spread across her features and I felt relief. Her lips pressed together and she shook her head, stepping away from my touch and kneeling by the low table. She began to organize the food in a manner which made me frown. She cleared away the half-eaten food—her meals—piling it onto the tray and replacing it with the fresh dishes, from Arinu, no doubt. Her motions were efficient and quick.

“Leave it, leikavi,” I told her when she rose with the dirtied tray.

“I’ll just go take this back,” she said quietly, her eyes still cast towards the tray. A slave’s gaze. “I will leave you to eat.”

I wondered if serving food to the Ghertun sibi—what they called their household, I’d learned—that owned her was one of her responsibilities under the Dead Mountain. The thought made hot anger rise. Not at her, however.

I snagged her wrist and she gasped when the tray crashed to the floor of the tent, spewing the leftover food over the rugs and breaking the dishes it had come in.

“I said leave it,” I rasped. “I will return it later.”

Her eyes darted to the floor between us. She had the instincts of a slave but why had they returned now? Because she was uncomfortable? Because I’d hurt her with my cruel words three nights ago? Because she’d witnessed me speaking with the shadows? Or because I’d been too rough with her during our first fucking?

You’re hurting me, she’d told me. Her voice had been quiet, patient, yet firm.

Just remembering those words made self-hatred burn down my chest.

It was likely all of those reasons made her wary of me now that I was awake.

Just three nights ago, she’d grinned as she found her pleasure riding my cock. Now, she could barely meet my eyes. Before, it had been relief in her gaze to see me awake but now she seemed nervous.

And I…didn’t want that.

You know better, was what my sister had always said.

So, though I’d never asked for it in my entire life, I murmured, “Forgive me.”

Vienne’s breath hitched, her gaze connecting with mine in surprise.

“Hanniva, leikavi,” I murmured, brushing my fingers over cheek again.

Please.

I knew she knew that word.

My voice was gruff. I was unused to issuing apologies, had only ever done so to my sister and mother. A Vorakkar never apologized.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” I told her, my jaw clenched and tight. “And then I did not mean to lash out at you afterwards. I did not mean for you to see…”

I trailed off, my gaze lifting briefly, tracking to the shadowed space in my voliki. My chest gave a dull pang and I swallowed, remembering the black blood blooming across my sister’s abdomen.

When I looked back at her, her eyes were there as well, as if she too had seen what I’d seen. But I knew it was impossible. My mind had become so warped that sometimes, it was difficult to know what was real. When I went to battle, when I lost too much sleep, when I dwelled too much on my past life…those occurrences—as Hedna liked to call them—grew more and more frequent.

One day, I feared I would lose myself entirely to them. I feared I would lose myself to those shadows, that I would join them there and never return.

Swallowing, I waited for her to speak. Our eyes connected and held. I was relieved when she didn’t twitch her gaze away.

Slowly, she pressed a hand to my bare chest. Right where my heart was thudding away.

“Use it,” I rasped. “So you know I speak the truth.”

Her eyelids fluttered in surprise, her lips turning down into a frown. I’d meant her power—whatever it was she was capable of doing, though I had a relatively good guess of what that was—and she knew it.

There was something else there. Fear. In the lightness of her eyes, there was the flickering of fear.

Because I knew her secret?

Then that flickering shifted. Her lips flattened. She seemed to decide something…and a moment later I felt what it was.

That buzzing sensation crawled up my skin and I forced myself to keep from shuddering. It felt like tendrils of energy caressing my flesh, sinking into it, into me.

It felt good and before I knew it, I felt my cock thickening with her invisible touch. Then those tingles came across my scalp and I closed my eyes, filling my lungs with a deep breath of air.

I heard her gasp, felt her dull little claws curl into the flesh of my chest. When I opened my eyes, I saw her own were half-lidded. She looked dazed—like she wasn’t entirely present. Like she was somewhere else entirely.

Because she’s in me, I realized.

That energy pulsed and thrummed until the tension filling the air between us became too thick. It felt like warm air before a storm, crackling with something. Awaiting something powerful and dangerous and awe-inspiring.

I growled, dipping my head, my hand delving into her hair when I couldn’t take it anymore. She met my roughened kiss with enthusiasm that surprised even me and I groaned as I stroked her tongue with mine. Her other hand gripped my arm, just above my Vorakkar cuffs, and her nails sank deep.

Pulling away with a hiss, I rasped, “Do you still ache?”

Her brow furrowed. “W-what?”

“Did I hurt you?” I trailed my hand down to her trews, brushing my thumb along the seam that ran between her legs. “Here?”

“Oh,” she breathed, biting her lip. She was blinking, trying to surface from the haze of lust and need that we’d somehow found ourselves wrapped in again. “I feel fine, but…”

She blinked again and I jerked, feeling her abruptly pull out of my mind. Her shaking fingers brushed across her right temple and she stepped back from me, her booted foot crunching over a fragment of a broken dish from the spilled tray.

My body was throbbing with want and need. Hers was too, I knew. That tantalizing flush had begun to crawl up the column of her throat and when she looked at me, she couldn’t conceal her interest.

But something had stopped her.

“Your…” she trailed off, trying to get back her breath, which I might’ve stolen from her. “Your pujerak told me that a thesper arrived for you from Dothik. He told me to tell you once you woke. It—it sounded important.”

I stiffened and the blurry haze of desire slowly began to fade. Thoughts of duty, of responsibility took its place.

Vok.

“When?”

“The first afternoon,” she replied.

I cursed. Why hadn’t Hedna woken me?

But I knew why. He knew I needed to sleep.

I was already heading towards the entrance, regret and frustration filling my chest. Before I left, however, I looked back at her, saw her standing, frozen, at the end of my bed.

“We have much to talk about, leikavi,” I rasped. “Tonight. When I return.”