Captive of the Horde King by Zoey Draven
Prologue
It all began with a burning field.
Black plumes of thick smoke rose high above our village, cries of horror lifting with it. Higher and higher, black against the backdrop of the grey sky. A dreaded beacon. A mistake. Because no one in their right mind would ever willingly signal the Dakkari, to bring their wrath on us all.
Bile filled my throat and I dropped my basket and ran to the fields, as others did. Because somehow I knew. I knew who was responsible.
When I reached the fields, a group had formed. Water was rushed out in steel buckets to suffocate the blaze that had spread wildly. It was hot. So hot, but it didn’t stop me from running towards it, from forming into the line as water passed from villager to villager.
I watched my younger brother at the end of the line, watched him desperately throw the much-needed resource onto the flames. A waste, but a necessary one. In between bucket passes, I saw the way his face was drawn tight. And I knew.
Fury and fear filled me.
It squeezed my chest, making it hard to breathe. My hands trembled as I passed more buckets down the line.
When the fire had finally been extinguished, silence filled the air, thick and heavy, like smoke that still lingered. There were at least twenty villagers in the line, with at least twenty more watching in horror from the edge of the dead, now burned, field. The intelligent ones were probably already preparing to hide because they knew what would happen next.
They’d all heard the stories, the rumors. It was only a matter of time, only a matter of which Dakkari horde was closest to them.
I broke the silence with that fury and I rounded on my younger brother, stalking towards him.
“You fool!” I hissed, useless tears filling my eyes before I blinked them away. I was five years older than Kivan, but he still towered over me. I pushed at his broad shoulders. His cheeks were blackened with ash, from his latest ‘experiment.’ “What have you done?”
“I—I,” he stuttered, his gaze darting from me, to the villagers watching, to the blackened field, a field which hadn’t produced crops in at least five moon cycles. “I was just trying to…to…”
He was always just trying to.
My gaze flashed to the sky, seeing the smoke. It could probably be seen from the Dakkari capital. I looked at the field, at the darkened, destroyed earth, my throat tightening.
“They’ll kill you for this,” I whispered to him, to myself, filled with fear so potent it made saliva pool in my mouth, made nausea churn in my belly. I had heard they’d killed humans for less.
Because they would come.
The Dakkari would come…
They would demand retribution.
