Claimed By the Horde King by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty

There was a designated voliki for the weapons master near the training grounds. Truthfully, I was a little nervous, as I’d been the previous afternoon when I’d started work for the seamstress, my lirilla. But I was especially nervous, yet intrigued, to work for her father.

I ducked my head inside, too antsy to feel the cold weaving its way into my boots. The ground was frosted over throughout the encampment, my hands were numb, and my breath fogged in front of me, but I didn’t feel it.

“Hello?”

“Lysi, come, come,” the weapons master said, not looking up from the bench he was hunched over on the far wall. The first thing that hit me was the heat. It was sweltering inside the tent, which was arranged very, very differently than others I’d seen.

The heat came from three large barrel fires and two basins, the smoke funneling out through an opening towards the top of the dome. Then there was a forge, molten heat glowing from the inside, directly in the middle of the voliki. Even the walls of the tent were covered in a different material, perhaps a more heat-resistant one, or else I was certain that over time, the whole structure would simply melt away.

It helped explain why there was a solid ring around the voliki that was devoid of any ice whatsoever.

Immediately, I shrugged off my pelt and laid it carefully over a nearby stool, approaching the bench the older male was working on.

“Oh,” I said in surprise when I spotted a familiar little boy, whose head popped out from underneath the bench. He smiled at me, still missing a couple of his teeth. “Hello,” I greeted, crouching down to ruffle his hair. “How are you?”

He repeated the words slowly, “How are you?” but his accent made ‘how’ sound more like ‘who.’

I grinned and turned my attention to his grandfather, who still hadn’t looked up from what he was working on. It was a dagger, I realized, and he was carefully etching markings—no, words—into the solid, curving handle.

“It’s beautiful,” I commented softly.

The weapons master grunted and said, “The Vorakkar tells me you have made arrows before.”

The mention of Seerin made my belly flutter, but I tried to ignore it. I tried not to remember last night, of him kissing me until he tucked me into his side and told me to sleep. I wanted to make a good impression and not mess up on my first day after all.

I bit my lip. “Well, yes, but I made them from wood. And feathers.” Because I’d had nothing else.

“Feathers?” he asked, finally turning his head to blink at me. “You will work with Dakkari steel. It heats like glass, but is unbreakable once it hardens. You must work quickly.”

I sucked in a small breath, but told him, “I learn fast.”

“Good. You will need to.”

For the next couple hours, I learned my way around the voliki, trying to remember every word the weapons master said, committing it to memory. I didn’t think I spoke once during the process. Instead, I carefully observed and memorized, all while the Dakkari boy watched, perched on a stool next to his grandfather’s seat at the bench, nibbling on something that looked like a blue root.

“Keeping rolling,” the weapons master ordered. “Faster.”

On the metal slab in front of me, dusted with a white, shimmering powder, I rolled a small ball of heated, glowing Dakkari steel, my hands covered in protective, yet thin gauntlets. A bead of sweat dripped from my face and sizzled on the steel.

“Too slow,” he murmured after a moment, watching the steel lose the glow, cooling. The shaft of the arrow, instead of being cylindrical, was flattened and fat. “Try again.”

It took me seven more attempts until I finally got it right and I beamed up at the weapons master in triumph as he grinned. “Good. Now do the same thing, except roll the arrowhead, carve the nock, and pinch the fletching.”

I blew out a long breath and said, “Alright.”

* * *

“It tookme three days until I created a usable arrow,” the weapons master, or mitri as he was called, assured me. “You did well for today.”

“Thank you for teaching me,” I said, rolling the hardened steel between my fingertips. It was far from usable, but the shape was right, albeit slightly curved in the middle. The fletching was a mess and the nock had folded over at the end when I’d tried to clamp it, but the tip was sharp and pointed. “I’ll do better tomorrow.”

His smile was kind. I’d never seen a Dakkari—other than his grandson—who smiled as much as he did, but it made me feel comfortable around him, relaxed.

“Off you go. Take the boy to his mother, will you? I need to finish the dagger.”

I nodded and stood from the work bench, peeling off the gauntlets. My hands were red underneath and my fingertips were throbbing. I felt both accomplished and defeated, a strange mixture of emotion, but I was exhilarated nonetheless.

A thought occurred to me. “Can I keep this?” I asked the weapons master.

He slanted his gaze down to the pitiful arrow and inclined his head in a nod, biting back a laugh. “Lysi. Whatever you wish.”

At that, I tucked the arrow into the waistband of my pants.

“Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said before making my way to the entrance, wiping my arm over my forehead, and securing my pelt. The Dakkari boy handed me his own small pelt, no doubt crafted by his mother, and I felt something like longing lodge in my throat as I helped him secure it. “Ready?”

“Ready?” he repeated slowly. It sounded like ‘reedy.’

I smiled and nodded, and we both ducked from the tent.

“Oh,” I whispered, stunned. The first thing that hit me was the cold. How much colder it felt outside than it had that morning, on account of being inside the sweltering heat of the voliki for the majority of the morning. The cold began to seep into my clothes, beginning from my boots, threading its fingers underneath my pelt and tunic. My sweat did nothing to deter it—it only made the cold worse.

The second thing I noticed was that the warriors were training. I hadn’t heard the sounds of blades and grunts above the roaring forge and my own concentration, but now the sounds hit me square in the chest. And it answered one of my earlier questions…that they did train even during the cold season.

Seerin was among them. My gaze zeroed in on him, another shiver going down my spine that had nothing to do with the icy chill. He was taking on two opponents, his brow furrowed in intensity, his lips turned down with concentration and focus.

His head jerked when he spotted me with the Dakkari boy at my side. I probably looked like a wild mess, flushed and shivering, but I felt his hot gaze seep into me, banishing the tendrils of cold that crawled over my flesh.

He’d been gone that morning when I woke, but my new bed still smelled like him. Now, his scent would be all over my furs and, thus, all over my skin until I washed him away.

It only took that small moment of distraction on his part and I gasped when one of the warriors leveled his sword at his throat, nicking the strong column of his neck.

Seerin froze, a strange expression whipping across his features. His eyes left mine and went to the warrior, who lowered his sword. But even from a distance, I could see that the demon king was…disturbed.

He didn’t meet my eyes again. In fact, it seemed like he did everything in his power not to look my way again.

Throat tight, I said to the boy, “Let’s go find your mother.”