Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Thirty-One

“What are thesper?”

My question was a whisper against his skin and I had the strangest sense that I could smile until I fell asleep.

It was later in the night but the fire in the basin was still burning hot. Davik had put more fuel onto it after another round of sex. And now, after our third, I was lying boneless and content against him, nestled in the crook of his arm, tracing his scars and the golden tattoos embedded into his skin.

Something was different about him. The horde king was almost…relaxed. As relaxed as I’d ever seen him, so different than the first time we’d had sex, when we’d fought and he’d stormed from the voliki after seeing whatever it was he’d seen in the shadows.

And he was touching me. Soft little caresses all over my back, up and down the bones of my spine. They were lazy touches but they made me tingle. A deep sadness had lodged in my chest briefly as he did, knowing that soon I would never experience this again. I would never lie next to a male like this again. It was only with him and it was only temporary.

He was gliding the backs of his claws across the upper cheeks of my bared backside but then he stilled at my question, only briefly before he thumbed the bones at my hips.

“They are creatures,” he told me, his voice roughened with his contentment. I wondered if he was tired, if he wanted to sleep, but then I remembered he’d been sleeping for three days. “Creatures that can fly over long distances.”

“Like birds,” I said, remembering my mother telling me about those. Creatures from the Old World, creatures that had thrived in the colonies as well.

He made a sound in his throat. “Perhaps. We use them sometimes to send messages.”

“Your pujerak said one came from Dothik,” I commented, shifting my chin so I could look up at him. His red eyes flickered down to mine and his other hand came to brush my lips. The look he was giving me made my heart pound…and I was certain he could feel it.

That look made me feel like I was melting. Melting away like the frigid frost after the cold season.

I wanted to melt away until there was nothing left of me. Until I was this little pool on the ground, this little mess.

“Lysi,” he said. “Two of the other Vorakkars were in the archives in the city, looking for whatever information they could about the lost heartstone.”

My heart thudded again but for an entirely different reason. Instead of excitement, I’d begun to feel dread whenever I thought of the heartstone. And because of that dread, I felt guilt because I thought of my family, still underneath the Dead Mountain, and I knew that the heartstone was our only hope…if Lozza kept his word.

“Did they find anything?” I whispered.

“Just what we already know,” he told me and I hated that I felt relief at that. I was a selfish woman, for wanting to lie here in his arms and not think about what would come next. “You spent a lot of time with Lokkaru while I was asleep. She didn’t mention anything?”

“No,” I said, swallowing. “She just mentioned more about love and how you nourish it and feed it. I asked her about her mother, about what she was like, and she said that was a ridiculous question because she thought I was her mother. And when I told her I wasn’t, she stopped talking entirely and went to sleep.”

His jaw set and his chin tilted down, those soft lips morphing into a deep frown. “She gets worse as the days pass. The cold season was difficult for her. Before it, she was healthy and…there. Her mind was stronger.”

“You care for her,” I guessed.

“I care for all those in my horde,” he told me. “But Lokkaru…”

He went quiet for a brief moment.

“A few years ago, I was having a difficult time,” he told me. “The Ghertun had attacked a Nrunteng colony and when I journeyed there with a few darukkar, there were so many dead. We helped bury them, gave them back to the earth, back to Kakkari, but even still…that night I swore I saw them again. Rising up. Shadows in the night all around me.”

I tensed, which he could feel. Air whistled from his nostrils and he stroked me, as if to calm me and to calm himself.

“When I came back to the horde, Lokkaru saw me, saw something in my eyes, and she told me that sometimes the dead have a way of returning. After that, there were a couple days I don’t remember. Lost time,” he said gruffly. “But when I woke, she was tending to me.”

My heart ached for him, heavy and full in my chest.

“No one really knows what I see,” he admitted to me. “Very few in my horde do but she was the first being that I felt truly understood what haunts me.”

“Davik,” I whispered. “You’re not mad, you know that, right?”

His brow furrowed.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

He breathed in my words but I knew that he didn’t believe me.

“I have always been this way,” he said, dismissing my words. “My sister called them my demons. My demons in the dark. She was always afraid they would get her too.”

I wasn’t surprised by what he was implying. “You’ve seen them your whole life?”

I knew his answer though he didn’t speak it.

For some reason, though I tried, the words wouldn’t come out. That he wasn’t plagued by madness but that he had a gift. Like me. Perhaps an unwelcome one.

His hand trailed beneath the fur, his fingers brushing me between my legs. A distraction? A diversion?

“Will you tell me something?” I whispered, my breasts growing heavy as familiar heat began to bloom from his expert touch.

“Neffar?” he grunted, stroking the seam of my sex, finding his seed still coating me when he dipped his finger inside.

“What happened?”

My question made him still. His eyes flashed up to mine.

“Nik,” he rasped, shifting.

For a brief, agonizing moment, I thought he would pull away from me again but he only moved so that he was hovering over me, pulling the furs away to reveal my nude body underneath. His hands went to my legs and spread them wide as he played with me. My lips parted, the familiar coils of desire and lust beginning to spiral.

“Not tonight, leikavi,” he rasped, looking down at me. His expression wasn’t angry—I’d dared to ask such a private question—and I knew he knew the one I’d asked. “You owe me a story first since I told you one this night.”

He leaned down to kiss me and when I gasped, he delved his tongue inside and stroked my own, making the world go hazy.

Against my lips, he murmured, “Besides, maybe you will dream it.”

My eyes shot open.

As he slowly began to press into my body, as my walls stretched tight around him and his chest filled and expanded with the pleasure, he rasped, “Though I pray to Kakkari that you do not.”

* * *

I did dream that night.But not what Davik feared. And it was a strange dream.

A very strange dream.

Davik and Devina were sitting together on a grassy hill, looking over a breathtaking view of valleys and waterfalls. I knew that I was dreaming a memory—his memory—but I was myself. I wasn’t seeing it through his eyes—I was an outsider looking in. Though I stood right beside them, they didn’t see me.

I knew they weren’t in the eastlands, for this place was far too lush and beautiful to be in the east, and as I drank in the view before me—all loveliness in the silvery moonlight—a breeze brushed over my cheek and beside me, I saw Devina shiver.

“Here,” Davik said, removing the furs from his shoulders to place around his sister. “I told you to bring your shawl.”

Devina shot her brother a sheepish smile. They were young, though not quite as young as they’d been in the ungira memory I’d stolen. This was, perhaps, four or five years later. Davik had grown big, coming into his strength. And Devina’s impish features had turned lovely and beautiful.

It was strange seeing Davik without his scar on his cheek.

“I wish we wouldn’t leave,” Devina said. “I love this place. Do you think Lomma can convince Father to leave the horde so we can settle in Rath Rowin’s outpost? I think it’s near, isn’t it?”

They spoke in Dakkari, but I could understand every word.

“Don’t speak such things,” Davik replied. “Father would be upset if he heard you say that.”

“I’m tired of travelling so much,” she said. The look Davik shot his sister told me that he didn’t feel the same and this was perhaps where the siblings differed. “I wish we could stay in one place. For the rest of our lives.”

“I want to be in a horde forever,” Davik replied. “It is in our blood to roam.”

Devina sighed and looked down at the valley of waterfalls. “We are coming of age. Perhaps I will marry soon. And hopefully he won’t be a darukkar. Perhaps a merchant. And we can live in Rath Rowin’s outpost together and have many children. Or maybe in Dothik.”

Davik grunted. “Why would you want to live in that city? It’s too loud. Too…crowded.”

“I like it,” she said. “It’s exciting, don’t you think?”

Davik clearly didn’t and I almost smiled at the bewildered expression on his face. There was something about him…something light and unburdened. The Davik I knew now was severe, sometimes cold, and very often angry. And still, I was drawn to him.

“Do you think you’ll find a bride soon?” Devina asked her brother, cocking her head to the side. “Maybe Jeva?”

Davik leveled her a warning look. “Why Jeva?”

“Everyone knows you’ve been tupping her in the forest. Even Lomma knows.”

Davik groaned, biting out a low curse under his breath.

“I’ve been noticing Jarun lately myself,” Devina told Davik. “He is so handsome and I think he might like me. Maybe he has ambitions of being a merchant. Maybe he likes Dothik.”

Davik was annoyed. Even I could see he was protective of his sister and he growled, “Jarun is a damned fool and I forbid you from even looking at him.”

His tone reminded me so much of the Davik I knew now that I almost smiled. I drew closer, looking down at the two young Dakkari.

Devina snorted. “You’re not Father, you know.”

“I’m older than you are,” Davik countered. “And Father is away.”

“I like Jarun,” Devina said, doubling down. “And he’s terrible with a sword, so I don’t think he’s destined to be a darukkar, which bodes well for our future.”

Davik growled, annoyed again.

“And I like Jeva for you.”

“I don’t care if you like Jeva for me,” Davik said. “We are done talking about this.”

There was a long stretch of silence between the two siblings and the breeze rustled through the valley below, billowing silver mist from the waterfalls.

“I worry about you, Davik,” Devina said softly, reaching out to take her brother’s hand. “I worry that we will be separated soon. Because you know that you want to remain in the horde and I know that I do not. And so I worry about who will take care of you when I am not there.”

“And who will take care of you,” Davik started quietly, “when I am not there?”

“We have been together our entire lives,” Devina said, turning her gaze back out to the valley. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe as I watched her sad expression. She looked so lost for a brief second. “I do not know how to live without you. But I think we always knew that one day, we would be separated. I’ve always had this feeling that it would happen and it scares me. I just want to make certain that someone will be there to take care of you.”

Davik was frowning. His tone was gruff when he said, “We will not be separated, Devina. You know that if the outpost is what you truly want…then I would live there too. But I beg you, do not choose Dothik. I…I do not think I could bear living there. At least in the outposts, we are still in the wild lands.”

Devina smiled, but it was sad. And I realized that Davik had misinterpreted her words entirely. She was trying to tell him something and what she was trying to tell him made a cold shiver race down my spine in icy realization.

Had she always known her fate?

“Jeva would be good for you, brother,” she repeated, nodding as if she’d decided something. “You need someone patient, someone kind, someone forgiving. Because you have a nasty temper. Lomma is always saying you need to be…well, more like me.”

Devina pealed into soft laughter at Davik’s disgruntled look. He stood, looking up at the sky.

“Come on,” he said. “We should be back by now. We leave soon and Lomma will need help packing the chests.”

Devina nodded and I watched as his sister stood…and then I watched them disappear, walking back towards the glow of golden light in the distance, where I assumed their horde lay.

When I tried to follow them, I found my feet were unmoving. I was stuck, frozen in place, and my breath hitched as panic began to swell in my breast.

That was when I realized I wasn’t alone.

Next to me, a figure appeared and I almost cried out with my surprise.

Shock raced through me, my breaths coming out fast when I realized it was Devina. But not the Devina that had just left the clearing with her brother. This Devina was slightly older, though just barely, and she stared after the two figures in the distance with a longing expression on her beautiful face before turning to me.

Wake up, I screamed silently to myself. Wake up!

“I’m dreaming,” I said, almost to myself. “The memory has changed into a dream.”

“Lysi,” Devina said before shaking her head, “and nik.”

Yes and no?

“I had to see you for myself,” she said. “I wanted you to see this. This moment.”

I shook my head but it felt like I was so deep underwater that the movement seemed slow and quiet. “What do you mean?”

“I can never be whole again,” she said, her eyes going back to the siblings in the distance. “Though I was never whole. We never were. We were a part of each other from the moment Kakkari planted us in our mother’s womb. Together. Always.”

My lips parted. With jarring realization, I knew what I had missed before. It was always there, but I’d never pieced it together.

“You were twins?” I whispered. “Born together?”

“Lysi. Always together,” Devina replied. “Two souls as one. When we are apart, we are broken. Never whole.”

Devina had long dark hair that brushed her waist. And her eyes were the same as Davik’s, red with black and golden threads weaving through the color. Sad eyes, luminous in their grief.

She was wearing a light-colored dress and the longer I looked at her, I gasped, cold dread going through me when I saw something spreading across the material.

“You’re bleeding!”

Devina looked down at her abdomen and then she looked back up at me. Blood trickled from her lips.

Horror rushed through me. When I blinked, the blood was gone.

“What…what’s happening?” I whispered.

This was a dream, wasn’t it?

Or was it not?

Emotion burst through me, just like a few nights ago. Golden and pure, filled with love and grief and hope.

“You saw me,” Devina said. “You felt me. And I know that you can help him.”

“How?”

“Help him,” Devina pleaded softly. “You are different like us and I know you can help him. Because we can never be whole unless he can let go of me. He has held on for so long. I want to be freed.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head, tears beginning to pool in my vision as the emotion I felt began to change. It became more desperate. “I want to help but I can’t even help myself!”

Determination crossed over Devina’s features, so similar to an expression her brother made that I gasped.

“I know you can help him,” she said, her voice soft and quiet and certain. “Help him and I will help you.”

* * *

I woke with a guttural cry,waking Davik immediately. When I felt his hand on my clammy forehead, he cursed and I found his glowing eyes in the dark.

I looked around, not certain if this was real or not. But I realized I was crying, tears streaming down my face, a sob lodged in my throat.

My emotions felt shredded, torn apart, and there was deep anguish within me, a coldness I wasn’t sure I could ever shake. Hers? I’d somehow carried Devina’s emotions inside me from the dream.

“I-I don’t know what’s happening to me!” I cried.

“Leikavi,” Davik murmured, tilting my face up, concern etched deeply into his expression. “I’m here. It’s all right.”

No, it’s not, I thought, breathing through my nostrils, desperately trying to get air into my starved lungs. I’d surfaced from something, but from what?

Slowly, my breathing began to calm. I stopped gasping for air though I couldn’t stop crying. Tears streamed down my cheeks in a solid, never-ending line no matter how many times Davik thumbed them away.

Finally, the emotions—the grief, the anguish, the loss—dissipated and I felt like I could breathe again.

I looked into Davik’s eyes and he slowly brought me back from the dream, whispering tender and gentle words in Dakkari that were meant to soothe me…and they did.

When I shuddered out a final breath and calmed down, he asked, “What did you dream?”

He was trying to keep his expression neutral so he didn’t alarm me. I knew that. But also, he feared what I’d dreamed, as if he was trying to keep something from me. Or shield me from something.

When I opened my lips to answer, I found the words were stuck in my throat. I couldn’t say anything. And so, instead, I leaned forward and kissed him, cupping his scarred cheek in my palm, tight.

He huffed out a long breath into me as he tasted my tears.

And when I reached underneath the furs for him—wanting to feel something else, to banish the emptiness I’d felt inside that dream—he moved over me, giving me what I wanted, what I needed.

When he was inside me, we didn’t have to speak at all.