Broken by the Horde King (Horde Kings of Dakkar #4) - Zoey Draven Page 0,108

it, feeling the raised, hardened flesh.

“Are you ever going to tell me how you got this?” I murmured.

She wouldn’t before. I’d first seen it on the journey from the saruk to my horde. And seeing it had…disturbed me. Because it was then that I realized I didn’t know everything about her anymore. That she kept things hidden and secret from me when she had always been so open before. That something had hurt her and I hadn’t been there to help her, to ease her pain, to protect her.

“You’ll be angry if I tell you,” she said. Though her words made me frown, made my fingers still over the scar, my mind reeling with possibilities, her lips quirked at the corners.

That wasn’t what I’d expected her to say.

“It was foolish,” she finally said, her smile dying, looking down into the bath water, her toe poking at one of the stones from the fire basin, though it wasn’t glowing red-hot anymore.

I scowled, a rough sound emerging from my throat, as realization punched me right in the gut.

What else would I be angry about?

“You got it from the cliffs, didn’t you?” I growled.

She didn’t seem surprised that I’d guessed it. She watched me process it, her head tilted slightly.

“Vok, Maeva,” I rasped, my fists clenching across her back, trying to keep my temper in check. “You promised me you’d never do it again.”

And Maeva had never broken a promise in her life.

So why this one?

Why break her promise to me when I’d asked it of her only to keep her safe? Because she’d almost hit that rock diving off the cliff the first time. And I’d nearly lost my mind with worry when I saw her leap. To this day, I still remember that dread, dread so potent I wanted to vomit when I realized I couldn’t keep her safe.

“Like I said, it was foolish,” she said quietly. “And I wanted to make you hurt.”

I paused, my nostrils flaring.

“I wanted to hurt you,” she admitted quietly. “Even though you’d probably never find out. But I thought that if I did it, maybe you’d come back. And you being angry with me was better than you not coming back at all.”

Her words were soft but achingly vulnerable. Sad.

They made the air in my lungs freeze, made an invisible blade plunge into my chest, over and over again.

“Seffi,” I whispered, anguished.

A tired laugh huffed from her throat and she shook her head, leaning against me. And though I was angry and raw from her confession, I still wrapped my arm around her and held her tight.

“And then when that didn’t work, I stopped doing all the things that reminded me of you. I stopped running in the mornings. I stopped going to our place on the cliffside. And though I was untried, I attempted to forget our kiss by kissing any male I could in the saruk.”

My jaw tightened, as did my arms around her.

“And there was a male I liked kissing, who made me smile again,” she whispered. “Kikoni. Do you remember him?”

In my mind, I saw the flash of a male I might always be jealous of now, even as I felt…gratitude towards him. Because he had made my seffi smile again, something I hadn’t been able to do. And she’d always deserved to smile.

“But when we did more than kiss,” she continued, “I couldn’t…”

She cleared her throat, leaning away from me a bit, though I wanted her to stay right there.

“I couldn’t go through with it. Because all I could remember was you,” she said, her eyes glassy even as her lips quirked in a hopeless, sad smile. One I never wanted to see again. “And that must’ve scared Kikoni because he never looked at me again.”

It was hard for her to tell me these things—these vulnerable parts she’d kept hidden—and it was hard for me to hear them. But I wanted to hear them. I needed to.

“But it wasn’t you it was hurting,” she said, meeting my eyes, wiping at her cheek as she brought her knees to her chest across my lap. She pressed her cheek into one knee and kept my eyes. “Because of course you knew none of this. You were far away, Kiran, somewhere on the plains or in the mountains or wherever you were. All I knew was that you were away from me. Away from home.”

Which were one and the same, I knew as I stared at her, as I watched the tears drop