by Zoey Draven
Then again, was I truly normal? I’d always been called strange. Not only by Kier. By many.
Despite the early hour, word must’ve already traveled about the Dakkari’s arrival. Villagers had gathered, though they were a healthy distance away from the horde that spilled into our walls.
As if I could make them disappear if I didn’t acknowledge their presence, I didn’t look at the Dakkari, though I sensed them. Their silent, but heavy presence that seemed to suck all the sound from the village, except for Edmund’s footsteps behind me and the crunch of his boots over the village roads I’d walked countless times before.
And this is to be my last time, I thought.
Grigg approached, but I didn’t look at him either. Instead, I shifted my gaze to the crowd of villagers, searching for familiar faces. Berta was there, but Bard was not. Kier leaned back against a pillar near the kitchens, arms crossed over his wide chest, watching me, one of his friends, Sam, at his side. Marie, an old friend of Jana’s, pressed her lips into a grim line when I met her gaze. She’d always been tolerant of me but I didn’t like the fact that she was there.
“Nelle,” Grigg said quietly. “You know I had no choice.”
I looked at Grigg then, meeting his brown eyes that looked almost apologetic. Jana had been right. I couldn’t even be disappointed that he’d sold me out because I had broken the laws of the Dakkari.
“I know.”
He looked surprised that was all I said. There was a lot more I could say, but I simply didn’t want to waste the breath. I didn’t want to spend my final moments talking to Grigg of all people.
Then again, there was no one at all I would talk to. Except Jana, if she was still alive. If her hair hadn’t turned grey and if she hadn’t died in her bed of fever as I’d desperately tried to press cold cloths to her pale skin.
Maybe this is better, I thought quietly. Maybe this is a blessing. No more hunger, no more fear, no more worry, no more loneliness.
I stepped away, approaching the presence of the Dakkari horde, Edmund’s footsteps no longer behind me.
Clutching that numbness tight around me like a blanket, I finally looked up, giving into my morbid curiosity. My footsteps didn’t falter as I took in the scene before me, though a sliver of fear finally pierced my heart.
Over fifty Dakkari horde warriors lined the entrance to our village. Beyond the gate, I spied the creatures they rode across the plains of Dakkar, with their black scales and large talons, gold swirls painted over their wide flanks. The warriors looked like primitive beings from old legends, scarred and strong and unyielding.
Then I saw him. The one who I knew I would answer to. The one who I knew would order my execution.
A horde king of Dakkar.
He sat on the back of his black beast, the only one not outside the walls of the village. It stamped its clawed talons into the earth, restless in the silence, billowing up dust, though its master remained as still as the mountains in the distance.
Towering over his horde warriors, towering over me, there was no denying the unbridled power that rolled off his body in waves.
His chest was bare, his skin golden from the sun. Lines, swirls, and words in a language I could not understand decorated his flesh in deep golden ink, shimmering in the early light. I traced the line of one, which started at his shoulder blade, ran down the length of his sculpted chest, and disappeared into the loose tanned hide he wore, which covered his genitals.
A long, dark tail jutted behind him. When the black-scaled creature turned slightly, I saw the base of it was decorated in three gold clasps, similar to the cuffs he wore around his wide wrists.
Then, I finally met the horde king’s eyes.
They were grey. Unlike human eyes, Dakkari eyes were pitch black with only a ring of color for their irises. Most were gold or red. But his were grey.
That wasn’t all that was unusual about him. Dark blond hair spilled just past his shoulders. blond hair was rare, even among humans, at least in our village. On Dakkari…well, I’d never seen a Dakkari with hair that color.
He was handsome, I noted. It was a fact, like his blond hair or grey eyes. His jaw was sharply sculpted, the bridge of his nose flat, his proud cheekbones high. His eyes were unreadable as I looked into them, though he studied me as I studied him.
His beauty meant nothing. Kier was handsome as well, but he was cruel. This horde king was beautiful, yet he would kill me. I was strange and ugly and I was about to die. It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
For the first time, I thought that perhaps I should fear the Dakkari more than I feared humans.
A Dakkari male stepped between us, breaking my gaze from the horde king, though he hovered just on the edge of my periphery.
“Drop your weapon, vekkiri,” the male said, his voice raspy and cold. His eyes were ringed in red, not grey. “Unless you intend to use it.”
I blinked, not sure if I was more surprised that he spoke the universal tongue or that I was clutching my last arrow in my palm, unable to remember when I’d grabbed it.
Staring down at it, I looked at the pitiful thing. Grounder blood still decorated the tip and I remembered the second grounder that had looked up at me last night from its burrow. Those three eyes…dark and silent and frozen.
As for the shimmering feathers at the end of the shaft…I ran my fingers over them, feeling their tickling softness, remembering the creature they’d come from. I’d called her Blue. I’d found her with a broken wing in the Dark Forest one summer, long ago. I’d brought her home, fed her pieces of my meals, and she lived with me for many years until I found her dead one morning without warning.
I’d cried for hours. It had been after Jana had died and Blue had made me feel a little less alone. I hadn’t cried since.
Before I dropped the arrow at his feet, I plucked Blue’s feathers from the end of the shaft and kept them tightly squeezed in my palm.
Then I looked up, tilting my head back to the sky. It would be a beautiful day, just on the cusp of the cold season before everything would turn grey and white and blue. Any day now the winds would come and they would change everything.
“We saw you hunting last night, vekkiri. Do you deny this?” the Dakkari male said.
“No,” I said, still looking up at the sky. I saw the faded outline of the crescent moon and I traced it with my eyes. “I killed a grounder last night.”
The Dakkari male paused, his lips downturned into a scowl when I looked back to him. Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to admit it, but it was the truth, wasn’t it?
“Do you know why we have come, vekkiri?”
I didn’t say anything.
“There have been reports that kinnu herds have grown low,” he continued. “We suspect that your village has been hunting them, though you know our laws.”
My brow furrowed. The kinnu had moved on.
“You hunt them too,” I said to him, which was probably not the wisest thing to say before his horde king ordered my execution. But that was the beauty of it. I had nothing to lose.
But he could make your death slow and painful, I realized belatedly.
“There is a balance to giving and taking,” he growled, “but your village has only taken. Now, once the cold season ends, the horde that relied on those kinnu will go hungry due to your overhunting.”
Lips parting, my breath whistled from my lungs. “Go hungry?” I whispered, a flicker of disbelief and rage igniting in my chest. “What do you know of hunger?” My gaze locked on the horde king, sitting atop his black beast. “What do you know of it?”
Those grey eyes narrowed on me and warning bells went off in my head, but I didn’t care. Maybe I was mad, as mad as the villagers whispered.
I froze when the horde king swung his leg off his creature, dismounting with a surprising grace, though the impact of his weight seemed to shake the ground.
Sucking in a breath, I held it as he approached.
Show no fear, or he will know how weak you
really are, my mind whispered.
Does it even matter? I wondered next. I was about to die. I could piss my pants in fear and I would be dead before it cooled. It didn’t matter.
The horde king came to a halt next to his messenger and my hands shook with that fear.
He was a wall, I realized. A wall of muscle and strength and power. I couldn’t see anything beyond his broad shoulders and the ridged lines of his chest and abdomen. He was a block in my vision. He was all I saw.
“I know hunger well, vekkiri,” the horde king said, his voice dark and rich and cold.
Purposefully, I avoided his eyes, keeping my gaze on the ground. Jana had told me a story once, of demons that could take your soul if you looked too closely and for too long.
And this horde king…he was a demon made flesh.
“Identify the other hunters,” he rasped, “so you will not be alone in your punishment.”
I’d never hunted kinnu, for their flesh was too hard to pierce with simple arrows and my level of strength. Kier, Tyon, Sam, and Ronal had hunted the kinnu.
Though I owed them nothing—though I certainly owed Kier nothing—I kept my mouth shut. Ronal had a young daughter and Tyon had just taken a bride in summer. I liked his bride, Piper, and I didn’t want to make a widow out of her.
“Nik?” the horde king rasped. “You will not say? I know you did not hunt them alone.”
Still, I said nothing.
“Very well, vekkiri,” he said. My hands began to tremble at my sides, the blanket of numbness beginning to slip. “This is what I must do. These are the laws of the Dothikkar and Kakkari demands blood as payment.”
He said the words quietly, as though to himself, as though in reminder.
Kakkari? What did their goddess have to do with my execution?
When I looked up, I saw his jaw was hardened, his face cold and unyielding. But he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were unseeing, far away.
“Bnuru kissari, darukkar,” he called out suddenly, making me flinch. It echoed around the clearing and I heard movement behind him.
“Kissari, Vorakkar?” the messenger said beside him, seemingly surprised by whatever the horde king had ordered.
“Lysi,” the horde king growled, his tone welcoming no more questions.
Another Dakkari male appeared in my vision and the horde king stepped away. A hulking, massive horde warrior, with dark hair and gold eyes, with gold clasps in his hair and a deep scar running down his side, came forward.
In his left hand was a coiled whip.
Realization hit me, along with sickening dread. He would have me whipped before he killed me?
“Face your village and kneel, vekkiri,” the horde king ordered.
This was it.
Clutching Blue’s feathers in my damp palm, I turned. I faced my village and I kneeled, though I felt like I wasn’t in my own body at all. I wondered who the grounder I’d killed last night would feed.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment.
One, my heartbeat in my ears. Two, the ringing sound of a sword being unsheathed. Three, silence from the village.
Because the silence was as loud as a scream.
Footsteps approached and I opened my eyes. They were the horde king’s, but he stopped in front of me, a few paces away, his back to the villagers.
Then the warrior approached, his footfalls vibrating the ground around me, little pebbles digging into my knees. My eyes opened, but I saw nothing as I felt his sword touch the back of my neck.
My numbness left me when I needed it most and I began to tremble.
I don’t want to die.
The thought came suddenly, fiercely. Tears pricked my eyes but I looked up at the sky and saw another merchant vessel, as faded as the crescent moon, pass Dakkar. I wondered where it was going, who and what it carried.
If I had another life, I would not be here, I thought.
But I didn’t. This was the only life I had, the only one I’d known. I mourned that now. I’d dreamed of other things, things I knew I would never have…like family, a safe home, companionship, love.
I wanted to laugh at that foolish dream. Love didn’t exist in a place like this. It never could.
With one swift motion, the warrior sliced his sword down my back, but it didn’t puncture my skin. Cool air floated over my flesh and I clutched my thick tunic to my chest so it wouldn’t fall down my arms and bare my breasts.
With my back exposed, I craned my neck down from the sky and met the horde king’s eyes. Demon or not, he would still own my soul.
“Five lashes for your crime, vekkiri,” he said, his voice hard and guttural, his eyes like flint. “I will only give you one if you name the others.”
A weak part of me almost told him. I was only kneeling there now because the Dakkari had seen me in the Dark Forest, but they could have easily seen Kier or Tyon.
But I met the horde king’s eyes and said nothing. Instead, I hunched down, breathing deeply through my nostrils, looking down at Blue’s frayed feathers peeking through my fist. They had once been so beautiful and I’d ruined them with time.
The end of the whip slapped on the ground when it unraveled behind me.
The horde king waited another moment, as if waiting for me to change my mind.
Then his voice came quietly, piercing the air around me, “Bak.”
The whistle of the whip through the air—
My body jerked when the first lash landed across my exposed back. The pain didn’t register, not at first. But when it did, it was scalding hot and icy cold. I felt it in my fingertips, in my chest, in my legs, in my lips, in the roots of my hair. It was everywhere, all around me.
Through my heaving breaths, I looked past the horde king, at the crowd of my fellow villagers, people I’d grown up knowing yet hardly knew at all. A mixture of faces that blurred with the pain. I didn’t recognize anyone.
“Teffar,” the horde king commanded, his tone hard and merciless.
The second lash hurt more than the first. I went dizzy with it and felt my fingernails pierce into my palms when I squeezed them too tightly. I swayed, on the verge of toppling over onto my side, but kept my knees planted firmly. I thought of the grounder looking up at me from the burrow and I wondered if I’d killed its friend last night, its companion. Did grounders have companions, mates? Why did my life matter more than theirs?
It doesn’t, I thought. I took a life and so I was being punished.
He was stripping my numbness away, making me feel too much. I’d never felt closer to death than right then. I’d never felt closer to life either. It was strange. A strange combination that swirled in my brain along with the pain and the realization that if I had a choice, this wasn’t the life I wanted.
Through the cloud of pain, I perceived the horde king stepping closer to me. Tears leaked down my cheeks, though it didn’t even register that I was crying.
“Vorakkar?” the horde warrior behind me called out.
The horde king was so close that I heard his sharp exhale whistle through his slitted nostrils. Was he hesitating? No, surely not.
“Teffar,” he growled.
I couldn’t help the muffled cry of pain that escaped my lips when the warrior landed the third lash. It tore from me, a strangled, desperate sound.
A shadow cast itself over me. When I looked up, through my watery vision, I saw him. A wall that blocked out all light, steeping me in darkness. My back felt cold, but hot with my blood.
Glaring up at him with all the strength I could muster, I showed him my fear, my sadness, my pain, my grief, my rage.
Then a veil of realization, of crystal clarity spread over me, pure and untarnished. I had carried all those dark emotions with me through life, but I did not have to take them with me when I died.
I didn’t want to.
That was what Jana had done. She’d left her sins with me and died free.
Letting peace take their place, I made the effort to let them go, one by on
e, imagining that they were arrows from my bow. I shot them far away, their poison disappearing, as tears dripped down my face.
The horde king’s icy expression morphed and changed. His brows drew together, his lips pulling into a grim line. He peered down at me, stilling, and I wondered what he was looking for.
Then the grey rings of his irises widened, his jaw clenching.
Perhaps he was a demon who would steal my soul away, but I looked back at him and I looked close. I wasn’t afraid anymore. And as I looked, as his light grey eyes bore into mine, I felt like he was consuming my soul. Jana had been right.
“Nik,” he breathed. “Nik.”
Hovering in that place between death and life, perhaps a little crazed with pain and loneliness and the sound of silence from my fellow villagers, I whispered through dry lips, “One, two, three. You said five, horde king.”
Chapter Three
Reeling, as disbelief faded into horror, I stared into the dark eyes of this female…and I saw it.
Kakkari’s light, her guiding force. It manifested in different ways for different Dakkari, but it was unmistakable and undeniable. I’d experienced it twice before in my lifetime, though not through another, and it had led me to this.
To her?
For a moment, I was suspended, frozen in place, speared by her dark eyes and the knowing within them.
As a horde king of Dakkar, I’d endured much. I’d killed many. I’d saved more. I’d protected my horde and punished those that threatened it.
And as I stared down at this human female looking back at me, shivering against the pain of the whip—pain I knew well—I felt exposed. I felt as if she’d peeled back my flesh and exposed the monster underneath, when I’d never wanted to be one, when I had sworn in whispers during the night that I would never become one.
“Vorakkar?” the horde warrior called out, his bloodied whip poised, waiting for my order.
“Nik,” I choked out, holding up my hand. “Pevkell!”
Enough.
“Will you kill me now?” she whispered, tears tracking down her cheeks. Her face was so dirty that the tears streaked her skin.