by Zoey Draven
She thought me a monster. And I was. No better than the bloodthirsty Ghertun that roamed our lands, killing and pillaging for the sake of it.
“Nik, kalles,” I rasped out. No, female. “I was never going to kill you.”
I heard the truth of that in my own frayed voice, but I had always meant to punish her, though I had never harmed a female—Dakkari or vekkiri—before in my lifetime.
Her eyes slid shut and I felt like I could breathe again, without the weight of her eyes. Dread rolled in my belly. It was the same dread from last night, when I’d watched her in the darkness. Had I known then? Had I sensed Kakkari’s pull in this female even then?
She has the strength of a Vorakkar, I thought, restlessness rising in my chest. She was small, young yet somehow old, with bones as delicate as a thissie. She looked half-starved, unwashed, and her clothes were not suitable for the coming cold season. They hung off her in rags. Yet she’d withstood the lashes of the whip. She hadn’t looked at her fellow villagers, but rather, she’d looked beyond them. She hadn’t told me who was responsible for the kinnu herd thinning, though there was obviously a lack of loyalty on their side.
“Vorakkar,” my pujerak, my second-in-command, called out.
“Neffar?” I snarled, my nostrils flaring. I looked up at him and I realized that he was watching me carefully, as were my horde warriors beyond him. He had expected me to execute her. Swiftly, easily, as was my duty when vekkiri broke the laws of our Dothikkar, our king. Perhaps that would’ve been more merciful.
Vodan, my pujerak, looked stunned by my reaction. I’d never once lost my temper, I’d never once lost control of my tightly restrained emotions.
Bury them deep, my son, so you never know the pain of them. Only then will you be powerful.
My mother’s words came to me and I bit out a curse under my breath, realizing that I was being watched by all, even the vekkiri behind me.
The villagers all looked half-starved and exhausted themselves, save for a few.
It is true then, I realized. The rumors that the human settlements are failing.
The Uranian Federation were not providing for their refugees, as promised to the Dakkari when a deal had been settled on after the Old War. When had the last ration shipment dropped? It looked like it had been at least a year.
And I had just whipped a young female hunter who had only tried to feed herself and her village. Because it was just one thing among many that my Dothikkar required of me.
But he did not see what I saw right then. He did not feel what I felt rising within me, the horror of my actions. Seated in the capitol of Dothik, surrounded by his luxuries and his females and his feasts, how could he understand this?
But I understood it. I knew hunger. I knew desperation.
What I also knew was that if I left the female there, she would die of her wounds. Her body was weak, malnourished. If infection took root, it would kill her.
And that I could not allow. I would not allow her to die. Not her. Not this kalles who had torn me open with sad, old eyes, with thissie feathers clutched in her palm.
Not this kalles who Kakkari herself had marked for me…who’d just been whipped bloody on my orders.
“Vok,” I cursed, belly churning, crouching in front of her. Her breaths were shallow and her eyes were closed.
Shame filled my chest, though it was an emotion I was well-acquainted with, especially growing up on the streets in Dothik. I’d clawed my way from the darkness and filth to become a horde king, but I’d never felt more like a fraud than at that moment.
A growl left me and I turned to the villagers, calling out in the universal tongue, my voice booming in the clearing, “Who claims this female?”
No one stepped forward. Not a single soul moved.
Was that relief I felt? That she was unclaimed? Or something else? Something darker?
I made my decision then. Careful of her wounds, I lifted her with ease, cradling her against my chest. She hissed at the jostling movement, her wounds pulling. Then she loosened in my arms, the pain finally overcoming her body. A small mercy.
I ignored the ripple of low murmurs that went through the villagers behind me, ignored my pujerak’s furious, baffled expression, ignored all but Lokkas, my pyroki. I held out my hand for my loyal beast and he came to me, nudging his long, pointed snout into my outstretched, calloused hand.
Vodan approached me then, the tension between us palpable, the tension in the village thick.
“Vorakkar,” he hissed. “This is…you cannot take her. As your pujerak, I must advise against this. The horde will not—”
“I am not the first to take a vekkiri female,” I told him. “I will not be the last.”
He sucked in a breath. “Surely you do not mean—”
“Enough,” I growled, my patience threadbare. “You have questioned me too much as of late.”
“You chose me as your pujerak because I question you, Vorakkar,” he replied softly, his eyes straying to the female in my arms.
“She will die if I leave her.”
“She was always supposed to die,” Vodan argued. “From the moment her arrow sunk into the rikcrun, even before then, she was always meant to.”
I stilled, drawing in deep lungfuls of air to calm the maelstrom swirling inside me.
“Ready the pyroki and the warriors,” I bit out at last, holding his gaze, daring him to challenge me.
His jaw ticked. Finally, he inclined his head. “Lysi, Vorakkar.”
Then he turned from me, biting out orders to the darukkar and they began to clear from the village.
I hefted the kalles onto the back of Lokkas before swinging up behind her, tucking her close. Taking my pyroki’s reins in one fist and using my other to steady her, my gaze connected with the village’s leader, a male who offered his given name much too freely, though I did not care to remember it.
He only held my eyes for a moment before he looked away, a muscle in his cheek twitching.
Circling Lokkas, I urged my pyroki into a run through the village’s open gate, kicking up dust in my wake.
“Vir drak!” I bellowed.
Answering cries from my horde pierced the air and I pushed Lokkas faster and faster, gaining distance from the village until it turned into a speck on the horizon.
The female in my arms didn’t wake once on the journey, though her blood soaked my chest. It soaked into my skin, marking me as certainly as the golden tattoos across my flesh.
When we reached the edges of our temporary encampment, I swung off Lokkas and brought the kalles down gently, grim determination coursing through me as I carried her to where I slept.
Mercy. It was what Arokan of Rath Kitala’s vekkiri queen had asked of me, with her rounded belly and shining eyes, pregnant with his child, with his heir. Had that just been yesterday, when I had visited the other Vorakkar’s encampment? When I had told them I was journeying to an eastern human settlement to punish the hunters responsible for the kinnu?
We only ever needed mercy, she’d told me in her soft, human way. Arokan had given her mercy, had spared her brother’s life, and her life had been forever changed.
As I laid the kalles down on her stomach over my bare pallet, as I looked down at her wounds, I knew this was not mercy.
Vodan appeared at my side as I peeled away the female’s cut tunic, exposing the entirety of her back, the evidence of my brutality.
Monster? Lysi, I’d been becoming one for years. Or perhaps I’d always been one, shaped and crafted, like a blade, since my youth.
“I will bring clean water,” was all Vodan said, knowing that my mind was made up, knowing that it was already done. And that was why I’d chosen him as my pujerak. For all his faults, for all mine, he was loyal to me, to the horde.
I stared down at the female with her cheek pressed against the hard pallet, taking in her strange features. She had dark hair, the palest skin I’d ever seen, a pointed nose, a small mouth. I hadn’t encountered many vekkiri in my time as
Vorakkar, though I was certain my horde warriors had when I’d sent them on patrols.
When I turned to look for Vodan, I saw my horde warriors dismounting their pyroki, casting speculative glances my way, though none met my eyes out of respect.
Perhaps they thought I’d gone mad, like the horde king to the north.
Perhaps I have, my mind whispered.
Still, the weight of their stares prickled my neck.
“Ovilli, vir drak drukkia!” I called out, my voice echoing around the encampment.
Prepare, we ride at midday.
For home.
The warriors were eager to return, as was I. In a flurry of activity, they began the process of breaking down the camp, leaving me to tend to the kalles without the weight of their eyes on my back.
Vodan returned with a pot of water and clean cloths. I took both from him and went to work. I was no healer, but I wore enough scars across my flesh to have ample knowledge of wound care.
“No uudun salve?” I asked Vodan.
“Nik,” he replied. “We did not expect…this.”
Vok, I thought but pressed my lips together. I soaked the clean cloth in water and pressed it to the kalles’ back. She was dirty and the cloth came away a muddied red, grey with filth.
“Hold her down.”
Once her arms were secured, I tipped the clean water over her back, washing the dirt and blood away. She came awake in an instant, her body tensing, a muffled cry falling from her lips.
“Be still, kalles,” I told her in the universal tongue. “I need to dress your wounds.”
“You,” she whispered, her face turned to me. Her dark eyes were unfocused, dilated, but they were on me. “Why?”
It was unnerving, I realized. Once I became a Vorakkar, no one met my eyes, except for other horde kings, my pujerak, and my Dothikkar. To have this kalles look upon me so freely, I was reminded that once, I had been nothing more than a duvna, a scurrying, poor gutter rat in the streets of Dothik. Everyone met my gaze then.
What was most strange was that, looking into her eyes, I realized how much I’d missed it. That simple connection of looking at another being.
Yet, with her, it was something more. Something that called to me, something I recognized, pulling me in, threatening to consume me as surely as it promised to free me.
“Because I must,” was all I told her.
She hissed in pain when I poured more water over her back and I gritted my teeth, an uncomfortable sensation swelling in my chest with her cries.
From experience, I knew it hurt like Drukkar’s fire.
“I don’t think I want to die,” she said, teeth clenched, looking straight at me. “I don’t t-think I…”
She trailed off, the pain pulling her under again. Released of her gaze, with a grim expression, I washed as much of the wounds as possible, but without the uudun, I knew the risk for infection was high. We needed to reach the rest of the horde soon.
“Why are you doing this?” Vodan asked me quietly, releasing her limp arms, watching as I bound her back in clean cloth. “You are a Vorakkar. She is a vekkiri. You punished her for her crime, yet now you seem driven to save her.”
I didn’t answer him.
“What did she say to you?” he asked quietly. “When you ended her punishment, she spoke to you.”
It wasn’t about what she said. It was about what I saw, what I felt.
Again, I didn’t answer him.
Instead, I told him, “Vir drak drukkia.”
We ride at midday.
Chapter Four
Time blurred and I was in and out of consciousness in flashes and waves. Every time, I woke to pain. The searing pain of my back and then the new pain between my thighs. That pain frightened me at first, until I realized it was due to riding the Dakkari’s black-scaled creatures, the hard flesh chafing my own, a new soreness taking root.
My eyes stung and my lids felt heavy as I looked over land I didn’t recognize. It was dark. Endless black plains that would be frozen over soon met my gaze, though I spied the shadows of mountains and heavily shrouded forests in the distance.
Every thump from the creature’s gait jostled my fresh wounds but I bit the sides of my cheeks to keep from wincing.
“You wake,” came his voice behind me. I felt his hand tighten at my hip, where he kept me steady, and when I glanced down, the golden cuff around his wrist flashed in the low moonlight.
There was something thick on my back, covering the wounds. When I tried to reach around to investigate, he squeezed my hip in warning and I stiffened.
“Nik,” he said. “Leave them, kalles.”
I couldn’t look over my shoulder to meet his eyes. It twisted my back when I tried, but I did crane my neck as far as I dared and in my peripheral vision, saw his golden hair in the darkness.
A wave of dizziness hit me and I clutched at the creature’s neck as I steadied myself. I kept my head forward from that moment, feeling nausea rise, thick saliva coating my mouth. To distract myself from it, I stroked the creature’s scales, tracing the edge of one. It was as hard as metal, yet warm like flesh. I felt its power, its unbridled strength, as palpable as its master’s behind me.
My breath hitched, eyes widening, realizing what was missing.
“Blue’s feathers,” I rasped, looking down at my lap, as if I’d find them there. “Where are they?”
His hand moved from my hip. I didn’t care about the pain from my back as I dove my fists into my pockets, searching, fearing that I’d lost them—her—forever.
Relief sagged my shoulders when the feathers appeared in my line of sight, held out by his clawed fingers. I snagged them quickly and clutched them to my chest, swallowing.
“You took me from my village,” I whispered, another wave of dizziness hitting me from my sudden physical effort. I looked down at the feathers before placing them safely in the pocket of my torn tunic.
“Lysi.”
I remembered that moment, before my whipping. I’d felt like I was out of my own body, floating feet above the ground. I felt that way now, like none of this was real. My mind was fuzzy, my head felt heavy. I felt warm and chilled.
Was this real? Was he real?
The throbbing in my wounds told me it was. The nausea, the dizziness, the tiredness told me it was. Surely if I was dead, I wouldn’t feel this much pain.
Reaching down with one hand, I curled my stinging palm around the black-scaled creature’s nape, right where its long neck met its back. Perhaps this was what shock felt like.
Cold wind slapped against my face, but tendrils of it slid over the heat radiating from my back. It felt nice, but also terrible.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“To my horde.”
“Isn’t this your horde?” I asked, remembering the Dakkari warriors spilling into the walls of my village. Just thinking about them made me tired, made me want to fall back into that dark place of sleep, where I felt nothing at all.
“A part of it, lysi.”
There were more?
My eyes slid shut, but my head swam when they did, spinning and spinning in circles. My stomach felt like it was filled with acid.
I was going to vomit. The pain made the nausea worse. Bile rose in my throat and I sucked in a lungful of air through my nostrils before my stomach heaved.
At the last moment, I turned my head and managed to miss vomiting all over the creature we rode. I heard the horde king curse and pull at the reins, slowing the beast to a halt.
I had nothing to throw up, not even water.
When I touched my forehead, I realized I was sweating, which explained the chill.
Something was wrong.
I felt him dismount and then he was standing next to his creature, looking up at me.
Fear struck me in that moment, a ridiculous reaction considering I’d just been speaking to him without it. In a flash, I remembered the bite of the whip and I flinched away when he reached for me.
“Vok,” he said under his breath. “You are burning.”
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered, turning my face away, fingers reaching for an arrow that wasn’t there. “Please.”
He growled, low in his throat, but his hand retreated. Instead, he jerked something away from the harness around the creature’s flank. It was a flask of animal hide. “Drink,” he ordered, thrusting it into my hands.
“What is it?” I asked, suspicion tinging my tone, even as another wave of nausea rose. Black spots appeared in my vision and I swayed.
“Water.”
I sniffed it before I took a sip. It was clean and fresh, possibly the cleanest water I’d ever had. I took a greedy mouthful, then another, feeling it soothe my scratchy throat.
When I realized that I had drained the whole skin, I gave it back to him and managed to meet his eyes.
Nik, nik, he’d murmured, right before the whipping had stopped. He’d looked at me like he’d seen an old spirit. I’d thought him cold and detached, but his expression then had been anything but, hungry demon that he was, bent on consuming my soul. He was still doing it, right then. I felt it. What would happen when there was nothing left of me?
My vision went black for a moment. I heard him curse, I felt my body slide.
Then everything went dark.
The next time I woke, I smelled something strange. Pungent. Earthy.
My back was on fire. Twisting, I cried out, bucking like a frightened animal, feeling a foreign weight on me. I sensed others, wherever I was, and heard the Dakkari language, rasped in roughened tones, just above me.
“Be still, kalles,” came his voice. The demon horde king.
I was lying on my front, on a bed of soft furs. My ripped tunic had been torn away, my bare breasts pressing into the bed.
When I lifted the heavy weight of my head up, I saw him kneeling by my right shoulder, grasping both my wrists in a firm hold, restraining me to the furs.