Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Forty-One

“Davik!”

I jerked from sleep, hearing my name echo from my sister’s lips, my breath heaving and a cold sweat pouring from me as I sat up in the furs.

But my mind was playing tricks on me. Again. Because it hadn’t been my sister’s voice, it had been Hedna’s, my pujerak, who had ducked his head inside my voliki and was regarding me from the entrance.

“Drokka,” he was saying. “Another thesper arrived.”

My heart slowed in my chest and immediately, I looked over to my left. I stilled, seeing Vienne was not in the furs with me, a frown pulling at my scar.

“Lysi, I will come now,” I told him, wondering what I had dreamed and why I felt such dread inside me. “Have you seen my kalles?”

Hedna’s shook his head. “Nik. Is she your kalles now?”

I knew what he asked. “Lysi,” I murmured, rising from my furs, pulling up my trews.

“So you will finally take a Morakkari?” Hedna asked quietly. “Another vekkiriMorakkari, at that,” he commented, knowing two other Vorakkars had also taken them as their queens. “Perhaps I should find a vekkiri for myself.”

“The thesper just arrived?” I asked, not wanting to speak of this now. It would be announced to the horde soon regardless. I kept my gaze on his as I strapped the holster, which contained my daggers, across my chest before shrugging on a fur cloak. The mornings were still crisp, though the cold season was long behind us. “From Dothik or one of the hordes?”

Looking back at the empty bed, I couldn’t help the frown that pulled at my lips but I stepped outside with my pujerak, my gaze scanning the encampment, looking for signs of a small, white-haired female.

I realized…I didn’t like waking up without her beside me. It made me restless, like my blood was buzzing under my skin again. She was like a drug, one I needed every morning, every afternoon, every night…and possibly all the other moments in between.

“The thesper is from the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala,” Hedna told me.

Thatmade me glance sharply over at him. “Rath Kitala?”

“Lysi. I have not read it yet.”

That could not be good. The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala had made it no secret that he disliked me.

Quickly, we made our way to the council’s voliki, though only Hedna and I were present as I unwrapped the thin parchment the thesper had brought.

My lips thinned, anger rising when I read the words.

“Well?”

“He will be here by tonight. He sent the thesper as a courtesy,” I said, balling up the parchment and throwing it across the table. “He fears for my kalles’ wellbeing under my protection.”

That insult burned, stoking my temper, but I knew he had reason to be wary. He’d walked in on us in my private rooms in Dothik, after all, with her straddling my lap as I bit at her neck. She’d been afraid of me then.

My cock thickened with the memory—as I knew it would, considering I was so fucked in the head. But Vienne made me burn in an entirely different way. Back in Dothik, she’d been fearful of me, lysi. I’d ensured that.

But she’d also been curious about me. Now I knew how deep that curiosity ran and all the things she did to me with that curiosity and that was what aroused me.

My claws scraped into the wood of the council’s table as Hedna regarded me.

“Shall I have volikis prepared?”

“Nik,” I said. “Rath Kitala can sleep on his pyroki for all I care.”

Hedna shook his head but he was all too used to the feuds of Vorakkars. Very few of us actually liked one another. All of us were too busy pissing over our respective territories for the season. All of us were so accustomed to being in charge of our own hordes, to leading in our own ways, that it was a wonder there hadn’t been more bloody battles between us all over the years.

“And what would your intended queen say about that?” Hedna asked, hitching a brow, smirking.

I stiffened, though the thought sent a strange, foreign thrill through me. Something that felt strangely like anticipation.

Vienne would frown at me if she knew I’d made the Vorakkar sleep outside my horde, especially Rath Kitala, who had come to her aid in Dothik. She wouldn’t have to say a word to show her disapproval. I would feel it, just as I would feel her soft heart, whereas mine was made of unyielding Dakkari steel.

I growled. “Prepare five volikis for the Vorakkar and the darukkars who travel with him but no more.”

My heart felt warm again and I scratched at my chest, not sure I liked the feeling, though I knew Vienne had given it to me. She’d placed it there like a gift but sometimes it felt more like a curse. It felt like my heart had been locked away and only she would be able to access it.

“They will not be here long anyways,” I found myself needing to add.

Hedna held his hands up, though his smirk never left. “I did not say a word, Vorakkar.”

I growled again, already turning towards the entrance, intent on finding my kalles. I thought she must be walking around the horde. She’d liked to do that with Lokkaru. I’d seen them multiple times together in the past week.

Just thinking about Lokkaru and my leikavi sent a pang shooting through my chest. I thumped it with my fist to make it disappear faster.

“Should I send a reply?” Hedna asked before I left. “Or will you?”

I paused, knowing I should. “Vok,” I murmured under my breath, my hand already reaching behind me for my dagger so I could cut a strip of parchment to return with the thesper.

When my hand grasped at air, where I knew with certainty that one of my daggers should be, I froze.

Nik, impossible. I would not have misplaced it. Every day, I wore them. Every night, I carefully ensured they were sheathed when I removed them. They’d been a gift from my sister, after all. I remembered her giving them to me. She thought they would make me feel better after our horde had fallen, after we’d been forced to return to Dothik. Her eyes had been sad but hopeful as she’d watched me unsheath them.

I’d hated them on sight because they reminded me that we were not in the wild lands any longer. I’d remembered that she’d wanted to return to Dothik, that she was happy to be in the capital city, among the bustling and excitement and luxuries.

A part of me had hated her when she’d given them to me, had hated the hope in her eyes because she’d wanted me to like them, she’d wanted me to like Dothik, our new life.

I’d hated the daggers then. Now, they were what I cherished most.

I would not have been careless with them.

My mind stumbled on another possibility and my heart stopped with cold, cold dread.

“What is it?” Hedna asked.

“You have not seen her at all this morning?” I asked carefully. Something was wrong. I could feel it.

“Nik,” he replied instantly. My pujerak straightened, hearing something in my tone that only he would recognize. “What is wrong, Drokka? Where is she?”

But I was already storming from the voliki, tossing the flaps back with a violent shove.

“Look for her!” I commanded my pujerak, gesturing at him to take the south side of the encampment while I headed north.

Nik, she is here. She has to be, I told myself, even as I raced through my horde, my eyes scanning every inch of it that was visible.

Every moment I didn’t see her, didn’t sense her, I grew more and more panicked. Rage and fear were beginning to blacken my mind, those familiar emotions that had protected it from fracturing all these years.

My eyes alighted on Lokkaru’s voliki, which had not been broken down yet, which would stand for the rest of the season in memory of her. A tendril of hope passed through my chest and I reached it quickly, ducking my head inside.

“Vienne—”

It was empty. Dark. Cold. The columns of the blue-colored candles they’d made together sat discarded on Lokkaru’s workbench. It smelled of kuveri but I scented the lingering of death and it made bile rise in my throat.

Hedna found me when I stumbled back from the empty voliki.

His brows were furrowed, his features concerned. “I did not see her anywhere.”

“Vok,” I said, trying to think. I stood still, closing my eyes, trying to regulate my breath and the frantic beating of my heart.

Then her words came to me. Words she’d whispered last night as she emerged from sleep.

You’ve known. You’ve known this entire time.

Unease slid down my chest, settling in my belly.

“The mrikro,” I rasped, already turning to the pyroki enclosure. Hedna was fast on my heels and we found the mrikro mucking out the enclosure. He straightened when he saw me, alarm entering his gaze. I wondered what I looked like to cause him such immediate wariness. “Are there any pyroki missing?”

The mrikro immediately swung his gaze to the enclosure.

Surely, she wouldn’t try to venture into the wild lands on foot. Surely, she knew she wouldn’t get far.

I waited impatiently, pacing alongside the fence like a beast. Even the pyrokis closest to me began to back away, as if they sensed something dangerous and feral in me as I waited for the mrikro to do his counts.

“One is gone, Vorakkar,” the mrikro said, his voice soft. Shocked. His eyes were wide as he turned to me. “A young, unbonded pyroki. A female. They were all here when we returned from the burial. On Kakkari, I swear it.”

Hedna clasped the mrikro’s shoulder, smoothing over the older Dakkari’s distress because I was in no state to do it.

“Why would she leave?” Hedna asked, still hovering beside the mrikro, who wouldn’t quite meet my gaze.

Because she felt like she had no choice, I knew. Because I’d given her none.

Vok!

My mind was on the verge of splitting and I needed to be present. I couldn’t dwell on the fact that she’d somehow figured out my betrayal, or that she was alone in the wild lands with only my dagger for protection, or that she’d knowingly left me, perhaps with the knowledge that I would never see her again.

She was unprotected. In danger. I knew that Ghertun still lurked. I knew that she would not abandon her family to the Dead Mountain and yet, I had done nothing to help her, to assuage her fears that all would be well.

Vienne was seeking the heartstone blindly on the back of an untrained pyroki, in the dangerous wild lands of the east.

She couldn’t know the direction of the ancient groves. Or could she? Had Lokkaru said something to her in her last days, something that Vienne had pieced together?

Or…had she dreamed the memory of when Lokkaru had told me the heartstone’s location?

“Send darukkars in all directions,” I told Hedna, already striding into the pyroki enclosure. “Have them ride out for a full day looking for her.”

“I will. And you?” Hedna asked, his jaw tight.

Nillima came to me and I swung up on her back. I didn’t even have my sword with me but there was no time to spare and I couldn’t waste another moment. Every second she was in the wild lands alone risked her life and that knowledge filled me with cold, icy fear. Fear I hadn’t felt since I’d watched my sister die.

“I will find her,” I said quietly but my words were meant as a reassurance for myself.

Nillima bolted forward on my command and she sprinted through the gates until we were out on the plains.

I set my gaze west, towards where Lokkaru was buried, the direction we’d just come from in the early hours of morning. Vienne couldn’t be that far ahead of me and Nillima was one of the fastest pyrokis in the horde.

“I will find her,” I said again.

Then I couldn’t help but think: What if she doesn’t want to be found?