Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was a gamble.

A large part of me thought he would shut me down, that he would grow angry since I knew it must be a painful subject.

But the expression that stole over his face was knowing. As if he’d been expecting it. His eyes flickered over my shoulder, looking towards the shadows. As if he thought talking about Devina would summon her. As if he wanted it to.

“I cannot promise—but I will try,” he finally said.

I blew out a small breath. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted him to confide in me about her until I felt my heart beating with anticipation. I wanted to hear about his sister from his own lips, not from his stolen memories.

“Last night,” I started, knowing that I would’ve told him regardless of whether he’d agreed or not, “I dreamed of when you and your sister—and your horde—were somewhere with these beautiful waterfalls deep in a valley.”

His chin dropped again. “The Trikki. The southlands.”

“You were older. You both were compared to the first memory I had of the ungira. You were leaving the…the Trikki soon, I think. You said you had to help your mother pack up chests. That’s what you and your sister spoke of. She said that she was tired of travelling all the time, that she wanted to get married and settle in an outpost, or maybe in Dothik. She said she thought a male named Jarun was handsome and thought maybe she would marry him.”

Davik stiffened underneath me, tension coiling tight in his body. He’d been protective of his sister, hadn’t he? Was that the reason for his sudden unease?

“She said she hoped he wouldn’t want to be a darukkar because she didn’t want to live among the hordes any longer,” I said quietly, looking at him, leaning forward to touch his scarred cheek in an effort to comfort him. He was still sitting rigid underneath me. “Though you did. You never wanted to leave the wild lands. Even still, you said you’d follow her wherever she wanted to go but begged her to settle in an outpost, not in Dothik.”

Just the thought brought a lump to my throat. That he would sacrifice his desires for his sister’s happiness. Didn’t that speak to him as a male? One who’d had great ambitions of becoming a darukkar, just like his father?

And now…he was a Vorakkar. Leading his own horde across the wild lands of Dakkar.

“I remember that night,” he said gruffly. “One of the last nights before everything went wrong.”

Dread pooled in my belly. Devina had said she’d wanted me to see that particular memory. Was that why?

“She…” I trailed off, wanting to tell him what had happened after they’d disappeared from the memory, only to have Devina take their place. A different Devina. An older one with blood pooling from her abdomen and her lips. I was a coward, however, and instead said, “She said that she wanted you to find a good female, one who would watch over you when she was gone.”

His jaw flexed and tightened. His brow furrowed and even I could see the pain blooming in his eyes from my words. But then my breath hitched when I noticed something else in his gaze…longing.

I was rattled by the realization that he wanted a female. A wife. So why hadn’t he taken one already?

Though that thought sent a surprising sizzle of jealousy to the pit of my belly—though I had no right to feel it—I knew that any female would be lucky to have him, despite his temper. Lokkaru had been right…he was the best of them. Others just couldn’t see it.

“Why…why haven’t you taken a wife yet, Davik?” I whispered to him, his cheek cool underneath my palm. “She wanted you to have one. Someone who would care for you.”

Like I do, I thought, the realization making a bubble of sadness well up in my chest.

Was that what Devina had meant when she’d begged me to help him? She said she wanted him to let her go because she wanted to be freed. But how?

I couldn’t quite meet his eyes but I knew he was looking at me intently.

“The other Vorakkars…don’t they take wives? Isn’t it your duty to?”

“Lysi,” he murmured and I sighed when I felt his hand come to my hair, when he ran his long, steady fingers through it. “But I decided long ago that I would not.” He added softly, “That I could not.”

“Why?”

I gathered the courage to meet his gaze. I suspected there were many females among his horde—beautiful, strong, bold Dakkari females—who would be happy to fill the position.

His nostrils flared. That longing in his eyes had never faded and the longer he looked at me, the more that look made my heart pound.

“For many reasons,” he said. “Reasons that we will not speak about tonight, however. Reasons that are difficult to explain.”

Fair enough, I thought but I couldn’t stop the disappointment from filling me.

“Maybe you should reconsider those reasons,” I found myself saying. Devina had wanted it, after all, right? And I was trying to help, though the words felt like blades on my tongue.

“Was that the end of the memory?” he asked, steering the subject back on course.

There was more, of course. What had come afterwards.

But I knew he would be angry and upset if I told him. Perhaps even disturbed. His dead twin sister, two halves of the same whole, had come to me in a dream—just like Lokkaru experienced with her father and perhaps even her mother, though she could not remember.

How could I tell him what I’d experienced when I didn’t even understand it yet myself?

Feeling a lump lodge in my throat, I said, “Yes.”

He looked at me carefully. “Why did it upset you so much? That memory? When you woke, I feared you had seen…” he trailed off.

“I—I don’t know,” I stumbled. “I just…sometimes I can feel the emotions from a memory. That memory…it felt sad.”

At least I could tell him that truth.

“I remember being irritated in that particular memory. Not sad.”

“Because of Jeva?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. The female he’d apparently been ‘tupping in the forest.’ A female even his mother knew about.

A small scowl crossed his features. I gave him a small smile before I felt it even out.

“I…” I licked my lips, shaking my head. “I don’t understand it. This part of my gift, it’s all so new.”

A long breath escaped his nostrils and his chin tilted down again. I felt terrible lying to him, keeping the truth from him. But until I worked through this new manifestation of my gift, I wanted to keep it to myself, or at least ease him into the knowledge that his sister was still…alive in spirit. And lingering.

“Will you,” I began, “tell me about her now?”

“Not here,” he said.

His eyes slid over my shoulder again and I nodded, smoothing my thumb over his cheek one last time before I rose from his lap.

“You will not ask me why?” he asked, staring up at me, his tail curling around my ankle to keep me steady.

I already knew why but I told him, “Your reasons are your own. This is your story, after all. And hers.”

Slowly, his tail released me and then he stood. We dressed quickly, pulling on trews and furs in silence, though he watched me the entire time. His gaze made me feel shivery and strange…but protected. I realized that I felt protected with him and that knowledge made me freeze as I tied the laces on my trews tighter. I racked my brain and realized the last time I’d felt true fear for my life, fear I’d felt almost every day under the Dead Mountain, had been when the jrikkia had attacked us in the forest.

“What is wrong, leikavi?” he murmured, coming to me after sheathing his daggers to the x-shaped holster across his chest, daggers I’d rarely ever seen him without.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I told him. I shifted on my feet, craning my neck to meet his eyes. Davik was so tall, so broad. I’d noticed that the darukkars didn’t even have his level of strength, as if a Vorakkar had to be stronger than all of them.

My first instinct was to shield my thought from him. Then I realized I wanted him to know, to have it.

“You make me feel safe,” I said quietly. “That’s all. I realized it just now.”

A gruff sound bubbled up from his throat. His hand slid into my hair and tingles erupted over my scalp and journeyed down my spine, the sensation pleasurable and warm.

“It’s a nice feeling,” I whispered when he drew close.

Then he was kissing me…but it was different than how we’d kissed before. This kiss was untamed and raw, bordering on desperation and anguish. Before I knew it, tears had welled up behind my closed eyes and I clutched at his shoulders, fearing that if I didn’t use them to anchor myself, I’d fall away completely and disappear in a single moment.

He was consuming me. But I had the strangest sense that I was consuming him as well, taking him into my body in an entirely new way that had nothing to do with sex.

His scent was warm and heady and musky and it made my head spin as we kissed even harder. His body was thick and solid against me, tethering me to this place, this moment. And it didn’t frighten me—the intensity of this kiss—because like I’d admitted to him…he made me feel safe.

It felt…freeing.

All at once, my mind flashed to Devina. To her sad eyes as she pleaded with me to help him so she could be freed, so they both could.

I broke the kiss, drawing in ragged breaths as his lips landed across my cheek, my jaw. He stooped low, dragging that hot mouth down to the column of my neck where he nipped and laved and marked. His tongue soothed his bites and I shivered, though heat was building between us fast.

“Don’t distract me,” I whispered, stepping away on shaky legs, giving him an equally shaky smile.

“I changed my mind,” he rasped to me, his fingers loosening the tie over my furs. “Let’s go to our bed instead this night.”

Our bed.

How good those words sounded…as if I owned something. As if I owned something with him. As if I had a right to be in that bed at all.

“No,” I told him, stepping away from those dangerous, dangerous hands. “Let’s go before you actually change my mind, horde king.”

He let out a deep chuckle, though it sounded slightly strained. He let out a small breath and the sound filled me with relief. At least I knew these emotions weren’t one-sided. At least I knew he was as affected by that kiss as I’d been.

We walked from the voliki and I was surprised when Davik led us towards the pyroki enclosure. The pyroki master, the mrikro I believed he was called in Dakkari, was absent, gone home to his own bed for the night.

Davik let out a shrill, sharp whistle at the fence and I heard movement from the shadowy figures in the darkness. The sound of taloned claws running in the earth, and then his pyroki was before us, tossing her long neck when she saw her master.

“Her name is Nillima,” he told me quietly. The encampment behind us was dark and silent, though I saw smoke rising from some of the voliki, some still glowing with the warmth of the fires burning within. “She is one of my oldest friends.”

I smiled, knowing what he told me was a gift, an offering. Masters were almost as secretive about their pyrokis’ names as their own among the Dakkari, or at least that was what Lokkaru had mentioned to me a couple days ago when we’d passed the enclosure and watched the pyrokis for a few hours. Lokkaru had enjoyed watching them.

“Nillima,” I whispered. It sounded familiar. “I think you said her name when the jrikkia had come. I remember it.”

After Davik brought her out from the enclosure, I reached out to touch the pyroki’s neck. However, she made a sharp sound and trotted away from my touch, huffing out a puff of air that was like smoke from her nostrils.

I shook my head. “She still hates me, I see.”

“She has always been jealous,” Davik told me. “She is a selfish, possessive creature.”

His hands came to my waist and he lifted me onto Nillima’s back before climbing up behind me. The position was so familiar that I swore I felt my inner thighs give a throb of protest, remembering the pyroki burn that had come from riding on Nillima’s back for too long, all the way from Dothik to the horde of Rath Drokka.

“You should get used to riding on a pyroki, leikavi,” he rasped quietly in my ear. “Though I promise, we will not go far.”

His words made me pause. Why would I need to get used to riding on a pyroki? I would not be here much longer, after all.

Unless—

No, I thought, firmly keeping my mind from going to that hopeful place. Because it could never happen, would never happen.

“Why did you choose her?” I asked, in an effort to distract myself from my dangerous thoughts.

“It is more like she chose me,” he rumbled, leading Nillima quietly through an entrance close to the enclosure, one separate from the front. I realized it was an easy exit for darukkars or hunters, perhaps, so they wouldn’t have to lead their pyrokis through the horde.

“What do you mean?”

“After I was appointed to my position of Vorakkar, after I passed the final Trial,” he began, “I was expected to choose my pyroki from the Dothikkar’s own…collection.”

He said that word as if it was distasteful.

“But I did not,” he murmured as we left the encampment, as the wild lands of the east rose to greet us. It wasn’t as richly beautiful as the place I’d seen in his memories—the Trikki, a place I desperately hoped to see one day, though I knew I would not, with its lush, vibrant valleys and silvery waterfalls—but the eastlands had their own quiet beauty. “It was my first moon cycle as Vorakkar. I had led my horde—small and new then—to the north and one night, I left to go out to the wild lands. I had no place in mind to go, but I just kept going.”

Wandered, I thought.

Lokkaru had said that Davik used to go wandering a lot at night.

“I came across an ice forest. It was the cold season then. The first frost had long fallen. And on that quiet night, I heard a sound from inside the ice forest. A sad sound. A calling.” Davik reached forward to stroke Nillima’s neck and she pressed up into his touch, the little lush that she was. “Inside, I found her. Still young. She was injured. Her mother and her siblings had abandoned her because of it.”

Something tugged at my chest, deep and achy. My touch settled over his wrist, on the golden cuffs that encircled him there, hot to the touch.

“I brought her back to the horde, though she fought me the whole way. It made her wound even worse. But somehow, I managed to get her back. In the days that followed, I watched over her. She was not…easy. More than a dozen of my scars are from her.”

“Will you show me which ones?” I asked, the question off my lips before I second-guessed it.

“Later,” he promised, nipping at my ear as he did. I shivered against him and his arm tightened around me.

“But you healed her,” I said, wanting him to continue with his story. “Eventually.”

“Lysi,” he rasped. “From that moment on, she’s been bonded to me.”

The Dakkari had a special bond with their pyrokis, one that I didn’t think humans, or Killup, or Nrunteng, or Ghertun could understand.

I went quiet, listening to the sound of Nillima’s claws curling into the earth as she propelled herself forward. Surprisingly soothing, one I’d heard a lot on our journey from Dothik.

“You’re…” I tilted my head to look back at him, as a breeze lifted a strand of my hair and blew it across my cheek. “You’re very caring, you know. It’s in your nature.”

Disbelief shot through his eyes and he snorted. “How do you figure?”

He didn’t believe me. That much was obvious.

“Lokkaru told me about the Killup child you found,” I told him softly. “You take in little helpless creatures that you find. You give them a home, give them stability. You make them feel…safe.”

He stilled when he realized what I was saying. “You count yourself among those little helpless creatures?”

I blew out a breath. “All I’m trying to say is that you’ve called yourself a monster. And I don’t see one at all. I don’t know why you can’t see it. You’re the opposite of one. You’re in the habit of helping others even when you don’t need to.”

“I am certain not many would share your view, leikavi.”

Lokkaru did.

“And if you knew all that I have done, all that I am capable of…” he trailed off, his words a warning. “You would think otherwise too.”

“Then let me be the judge of that,” I said. “Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done and let me decide for myself.”

He huffed out a breath. Then, with a tone I couldn’t recognize, he murmured, “Sometimes I wonder what happened to that frightened little creature I stumbled upon in Dothik.”

My lips twitched, though I didn’t feel much amusement in his words. “Maybe she realized there was nothing to be frightened of.”

“Perhaps there is.”

A long stretch of silence floated between us. The only sound was Nillima’s clawed hooves digging into the earth as she walked.

I don’t know why but I felt hurt, disappointed, though I thought I had no right to be. I didn’t own his stories, his memories. I had wanted him to confide in me, to trust me with them…but his silence was answer enough.

“Davik.”

His words were harsh and tight. “I am trying, leikavi. I truly am. I—I just…I cannot make the words come. I have never spoken about this. There are many things I have never spoken of.”

My shoulders sagged. “It’s all right,” I whispered. “You don’t need to—”

He lifted me, making me gasp, turning me around on Nillima’s back so I faced him as he brought her to a stop. I looked up at him in surprise, my hands coming to rest on his chest to keep my balance.

His arms wrapped tight, as if I would pull away.

“Davik?”

“I want to tell you about her, leikavi,” he rasped, dropping his forehead down to mine. “About what happened to her and my family.”

“But you need more time,” I guessed softly, hearing what went unspoken in his voice.

“Lysi. One day, I will tell you everything,” he promised.

My smile was sad because I knew that that day would never come. “I understand.”

When he pulled away to regard me, his expression was tight. His eyes flickered like he was trying to decide something, his lips pressed tight together.

His exhale was sharp and then he said, “But I will…I will tell you about what happened afterwards. After my sister and my parents died. I will tell you my story in reverse. And it is something I should have told you before I ever even touched you.”

My brows drew together. His voice was grim…as if whatever he was about to tell me was another one of those things he’d never spoken of.

“Sex is…sex can be difficult for me,” he murmured.

I stiffened, my lips parting, unsure where he was going with this…all the while remembering that night he’d taken me to his bed for the first time. Something had been strange about it and not only because he’d been too rough in the beginning. He’d kept saying he wanted to be right for me—as if he was already broken.

“After my family died, I was alone,” he said, his voice gruff. “I was alone in Dothik with little gold. The hordes…we have no concept of payment, not like in the capital. We work together to live. We exchange goods, not gold. But in Dothik, gold is life and without it, you are as good as dead.”

I sat still, my hands still pressed to his chest so I felt how quickly his heart was beating beneath my palm.

“There was a female that took me in from the streets,” he rasped. “Her…her name was Mala.”

Unease churned in my gut because I knew. I knew where this story was leading and I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for it. But I needed to hear this because it was Davik’s story. I wanted to know every part of him, every happy memory, every darkened corner.

“She housed me and fed me. Truthfully, I do not remember much from that time. I was still deep in my grief. The world did not seem real without my family. Nothing did. The only emotions I felt were rage and despair. And Mala…she fed on those things. She fed on me.”

“She…” I whispered, swallowing. “Did she rape you?”

Davik flinched, his hands tightening around me. He went silent and I sat, frozen in front of him. The world started to buzz in my ears, the blood underneath my skin rushing restlessly.

“Lysi,” he rasped and I knew how hard it was for him to say that word. “But at the time, I do not think I realized that. In my eyes, I was exchanging sex for food. For shelter. In that way, I felt more like a whore. But Mala…she liked to be fucked a certain way.”

My heartbeat was pounding in my temple.

I want to be right for you, leikavi, he’d said, while deep inside my body. I remembered thinking he’d been using his strength against me, not for me…that first time we’d had sex.

His breathing was ragged, his exhales filling the space between us. “She…she trained me to fuck her rough, to hurt her. She liked it. She craved it. Soon, that was all I knew too.”

Oh gods.

“Though it has been years and years since she last touched me…sometimes I still slip into the way I was with her. I was so used to fucking my rage and grief and fear into her that it is difficult to disassociate those emotions from sex.”

“Davik,” I breathed, my brows drawn, my throat tight.

“I did it with you,” he admitted. “You felt it. I felt fear with you and I slipped right back into that place. I fucking hate it. I hate that I hurt you.”

“Why did you fear me?” I whispered.

His jaw was tight and tense. Slowly, his hand reached up to brush my cheek, to smooth back my hair.

“Don’t you know why, leikavi?” he asked quietly.

The emotion that welled up in me was despair. Because I could never have him as my own. When I’d left the Dead Mountain, I had never expected to meet a male like…him. I had never expected for these feelings he stoked to come roaring to life like a fire, licking at me, consuming me, burning me up.

I felt rage all my own for him. For what he’d experienced when he was at his most vulnerable. I shook with it. I hated the female that had taken advantage of him, that had used him.

“I cannot promise you that I will be right with you. Not always, leikavi,” he murmured. “But I will always try to be. Though I will understand if you do not want this. If you do not want me anymore because—”

Leaning up, I kissed him to cut off his words, feeling my eyes prick with tears. How could he even think something like that?

Davik hesitated for only a moment and then his mouth was moving against mine, tugging me more firmly against him.

Against his lips, I murmured, “Rest assured that I will always want you, Davik.”

Those red eyes burned into me when I pulled back to look at him. His hand dove into my hair, gathering it into his palm, tugging on it gently until my neck was exposed to him.

My lips parted when his teeth bit at the column of my throat. I looked up at the night sky as he marked me—as if he needed to after what had just transpired between us—inhaling his warm scent that made my head spin.

Behind a dark mass of clouds, the moon peeked through, full and bright, and my lips thinned. Every night, more and more of it would disappear, melting into a single silver sliver. Then the black moon would blanket Dakkar. A black moon would blanket the Dead Mountain.

I wondered if I even had the amount of time allotted to me. I wondered if the poison would’ve already claimed me by then.

Even though he made me feel safe, Davik wouldn’t be able to protect me from the poison slowing the blood in my veins, thickening it to stone. Only another dose of it would save me, the dose I took every two weeks under the Dead Mountain. The dose all the Ghertun slaves took so we weren’t tempted to escape. Escape would’ve been easy. There were many paths, unguarded paths, that led away from the Dead Mountain.

But the Ghertun knew that they could control us with the threat of death. The poison was extracted from a plant that only grew in the dark, acidic soil, deep in the mountain. And the death was agonizing. Slow and agonizing. I’d come close to it once, after all.

Davik stiffened, his arm tightening around me so much that it almost stole the breath from my lungs.

For a moment, I feared I’d said something out loud, something I didn’t want him to hear.

When I glanced at him, his head had raised from my neck, his attention was forward, peering into the darkness, towards a grouping of rocky pillars, pillars that jutted high all over the eastlands. Worry flowed through me—thinking he was seeing another shadowed spirit, his twin perhaps—but when I looked in that direction, I froze too.

“No,” I breathed.

Something reflected in the moonlight. Eerie, watchful black eyes met our gazes, unflinching. Five pairs of eyes total, eyes that were nothing more than vertical slits. Their teeth were razor-sharp, like blades, and yellow, stained from the roots they so enjoyed gorging themselves on. Their legs, bent heavily at the knee joint, just like a pyroki’s, shifted as they tracked us and I swore I could hear their bones creaking in the quiet.

A pack of Ghertun were watching us from within the shadowed darkness.

Bile rose in my throat, that familiar, bitter fear returning to me in a rush, as if it had never left.