by Zoey Draven
“Lysi, now come here, kalles,” I murmured, holding out my hand for her. “I want to kiss you more.”
She frowned. “More? We haven’t negotiated for more.”
“Nik, no more bargains between us,” I said, my gaze burning into her. “No longer.”
Chapter Nineteen
The demon king wanted to kiss me again?
My heartbeat raced in my ears as I looked down at him, sprawled on my new bed, underneath my new furs. His massive erection tented the material and I swallowed as I watched it bob slightly.
Fear took root in my belly, but not of him. Of me. Of this new thing that flushed my skin and made my stomach flutter.
He was watching me carefully, his golden hair spread like a halo around him, his markings flashing with the fire’s flames. He was beautiful, achingly so. I’d thought so the first moment I’d seen him, even when I’d believed he would kill me for breaking the laws of the Dakkari.
I cleared my throat and pointed out, “If there are no more bargains between us, then that means you have to answer my questions when I ask them.”
“Lysi,” he murmured in solemn agreement, rubbing at the deep scar on his side.
My brow ticked up in surprise.
“Then again, so do you,” he added. Something in his eyes changed and he continued, “I’ll begin. Did you like when I kissed you last night?”
My face heated, but I felt uncomfortable telling even him a lie, so I said, “Yes.” I didn’t wait for him to respond. “How many Dakkari have hair the color of yours?”
“That I know of? Myself and another.” I opened my mouth, but he beat me to it. “Do you want to kiss me again, rei thissie?”
I stared at him. When I swallowed, it was loud. It sounded more like a gulp.
I’d been thinking about that very question on and off throughout the day, trying to make sense of what it would mean.
But I didn’t think of myself as a coward. The possibility of kissing him again excited me—he excited me. He fascinated me more than anyone had before.
“Yes,” I whispered, shifting on my feet, still standing in the center of my new domed tent. A growl escaped him and my eyes flitted to the low table, where the remnants of my meal remained, remnants that I’d been planning to save. Still, I asked him, “Have you eaten yet?”
“Nik,” he rasped.
I frowned and brought the tray over to him. Those eyes pinned me when I knelt beside him on the bed and tucked my bare legs under me. I’d fashioned underwear that day to secure the fresh cloth between my legs but it still felt strange.
He sat up in my bed when I placed the tray on his lap. His eyes flicked from the food to me and he murmured, “You care for me, don’t you, thissie?”
“What do you mean?”
“You would not give me your food otherwise,” he pointed out. “Food is too precious. You know that.”
“You’re my friend, Seerin,” I told him, avoiding his question indirectly. “Aren’t you?”
His eyes flickered. He murmured something under his breath in Dakkari. Then he reached out a hand, cupped the back of my neck, and pulled me to him.
“Lysi, friends,” he murmured, though his voice sounded strained.
A long inhale whistled through my nostrils when he kissed me once, twice, three times.
The third time he lingered and seemed to be waiting for something. Hesitantly, I parted my lips for him. A shocked gasp escaped me when I felt the warmth of his tongue flick inside and he responded with a deep groan.
“Vok, Nelle,” he rasped, pulling back slightly, his breathing a little ragged. I felt a little dizzy when I saw him adjust his bobbing cock underneath the furs with the side of his palm. “You do not know how much I have denied myself with you.”
“You should eat,” I said hurriedly, swallowing—gulping—again. My nipples were tightened in hard points and despite my bleeding time, I felt my belly sizzle with arousal. It was a sensation I’d rarely felt before.
“Eat?” he repeated slowly then looked down at the tray of food I’d placed on him, as if he’d just remembered it was there. He blew out a sharp breath, catching my eyes again. “Very well.”
I watched him eat, trying not to think of his dizzying kiss. He ate methodically, efficiently, and I watched his jaw flex with fascination. A tiny part of me mourned the loss of the food, but a larger part of me liked that he was fed.
“You were hungry once, weren’t you?” I asked softly. He’d made comments here and there and my mind had catalogued them all. “You made the remark about breaking the habit of saving food. And now, you told me I cared for you because I was giving you mine.”
“You do care for me,” he corrected.
“I never thought a horde king of Dakkar would know hunger. The hordes always seemed so rich in resources.”
He polished off the food quickly and then took a swig of the fermented wine that came with my meal. I’d left it because it made my blood rush too fast, but he seemed to enjoy it well enough.
“Before you take me to your bed,” he murmured, “you wish to know this?”
“We’re not having sex, Seerin,” I informed him, the thought making me nervous.
“Yet,” he rasped, reminding me of when he’d arrogantly told me that when, not if, he took me, I would be more than willing. “Perhaps you should know who I was before this. It is only fair,” he murmured over the goblet’s rim before he drained the wine.
My brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
He set to tray aside.
“Vorakkar come from long, ancient lines. Strong blood lines that can be traced back for centuries,” he said, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I hadn’t known that. “However, they are selected during the Trials, a series of challenges set by the Dothikkar to test the strength, will, and determination of those that aspire to become Vorakkar. Only those that come from ancient families are allowed into the Trials.”
“So your line must be very old,” I guessed, wondering how far he could trace his ancestors.
“Nik, thissie,” he said with a bitter chuckle. “Not at all.”
I frowned.
“They called us duvna,” he said.
“Duvna?”
“Little creatures in Dothik, who scavenge and eat trash and hide in dark, warm corners to avoid being seen.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head.
“I grew up on the streets of Dothik,” he told me, his voice dropping and darkening, and I stilled. “So, lysi, I know hunger very well.”
“What about your parents?” I whispered. “Are they…are they still alive?”
Or was he an orphan, like me?
“I never knew my father. My mother told me he left with a horde before I was born,” he said. “My mother still lives in Dothik.”
“But you didn’t live with her when you were younger?”
“I saw her often,” he said, pressing his lips together, “but she lived in a brothel. She had to. The young were not allowed inside.”
I froze but held his eyes.
“I formed a small group, slowly, with other duvna I encountered. We watched out for one another, we stole for each other, we ate together or we did not eat at all. My mother gave us gold when she could.”
“Seerin,” I whispered.
I thought of the young Dakkari boy, my lirilla’s son, the one who’d made me laugh with his innocence, and I wondered if Seerin had been that young, living that way in Dothik.
It made my chest ache.
“So, you see, rei thissie, I am the bastard son of a Dothiki prostitute,” he rasped, his eyes straying to my lips when I swayed close, “who became a Vorakkar.”
“How?” I whispered.
“My mother.”
There was a strain in his eyes, a tightening around his mouth, that made me want to stop him. Yet, selfishly, I needed to know everything about him.
“My mother is very beautiful,” he informed me.
“I believe that,” I said, looking into the eyes of the son she produced.
“The Dothikkar heard of her. A beautiful prostitute with golden hair. You know why gold is important to the Dakkari? Why we ink it into our skin and use it for our weapons?” I shook my head. “Because gold is from Kakkari herself. She pushes it from the earth like she is giving life. So, when the Dothikkar heard of this female with golden hair, he had to have her. In his arrogance, he believed Kakkari had given her to him. A gift from our goddess, the highest of honors.”
I looked at his hair, soft and long and yellow. I’d just asked him how many Dakkari had hair his color and he’d told me two…himself and another. Now, I knew it was his mother he’d referred to.
“I was older when he took her from the brothel and made her one of his concubines. But my mother is intelligent,” he said. “She saw her opportunity, saw the lengths to which the Dothikkar would go to possess her, and so she struck a deal with him. She would forever bind herself to him if he overlooked her son’s ancestry and allowed him entry into the next Trials.”
Realization sparked in my mind.
“And so she became his madness, his obsession,” he murmured, tracing over my cheek before running his fingers down my throat. “He denied her at first.”
“But not for long,” I guessed, my heart thrumming at his touch, at his words.
“Nik, not for long, thissie.”
The fire in the small basin I’d built crackled and sparked loudly, making me jump.
“What happened next?”
“I entered the Trials with his permission. I am certain he believed I would fail in the beginning stages,” he said, his jaw clenching. “But I finished one challenge after another until the Dothikkar himself could find no reason to deny me.”
“I can almost picture that,” I told him.
“Lysi?” he murmured, one corner of his lip curling.
“I can imagine that you were very stubborn and determined.”
“I was,” he said. “And there are many who wish I hadn’t been so stubborn and determined.”
“The Dothikkar included?”
“Him most of all,” Seerin said, a dark grin appearing. “He faced a lot of backlash for allowing me into the Trials. Even now, he seeks any reason to strip me of my title.”
“Can he do that?” I asked, frowning.
“Nik,” he said. “Short of treason, there is nothing he can do. The hordes have their own laws, though we must adhere to the laws of the Dothikkar as well.”
“You are all kings in your own right,” I said.
His head inclined.
“What did the Trials consist of?” I questioned. Then a dark thought came to me and I asked, “The scars on your back…were they…?”
“It is the last challenge during the Trials,” he confirmed. Then he warned, “But I will tell you no more about them, thissie.”
Then they were barbaric, terrible challenges, I decided. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d gone through to get to where he was.
“Do you…”
“You have never been shy with your questions before, kalles. Why begin now?” he asked, his eyes holding a challenge.
“You said you had great plans for the horde.”
“I want it to be successful,” he told me, trailing his fingers over my exposed throat before running his hand back up to cup my cheek.
“Because you have something to prove? It already seems successful to me,” I told him honestly. “How would you measure your success?”
He exhaled sharply, his lips lifting. “Successful hordes last through the death of their Vorakkar. But I want my horde to never question that I did everything in my power to keep them safe. I never want them to know hunger, I never want them to know fear.”
I thought of Seerin as a young boy, leading his pack of wandering children. I pictured him sharing his mother’s gold. I pictured him going hungry so others could eat.
“And if you didn’t have the horde?” I asked. “What would you want for yourself, Seerin?”
His brow furrowed at my question, as if he’d never thought to ask himself that before.
“I hardly know, thissie,” he told me and I heard the truth in his voice. “What do you want?”
I swallowed. I said the first thing that came to mind. “It’s not that I want anything specifically, like riches or food. It’s just that I don’t want to go through life alone.” My mind flickered to Jana. “I don’t want my hair to turn grey and find that I’m still alone.”
It was my worst fear.
“Your hair will turn grey?” he rumbled, rubbing a few strands between his fingers.
“Yes. Eventually.” I gave him a small smile. “Maybe it will be grey like your eyes.”
His expression was unreadable. He was silent for a long moment. Then he was leaning into me again and his lips were on mine, nibbling at my mouth, wanting me to part for him again, to let him inside.
My head swirled and I reached forward to clutch his bare shoulders, my fingertips gripping his warm flesh. Why did this feel so good? How could this feel so good?
“Your hair is not yet grey, Nelle,” he rasped against my lips. “And right now? You are not alone.”
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 took me 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.
