he’d gone to Dothik and come back a little harder, a little colder.
“The Vorakkars are to meet in the Dead Lands.”
Alarm made me still.
“The Dothikkar demands it.”
My jaw ticked. I didn’t know much about the Dothikkar. Our saruk was not terribly far from Dothik but the Sorakkar, Kiran’s father, had never once said anything pleasant about the king of Dakkar.
All I knew was that he had never traveled to the wild lands. A king of Dakkar who had never stepped beyond the walls of his city.
“Will it be dangerous?” I asked quietly.
The Dead Lands were where the Ghertun lived. In the Dead Mountain. Which, as Kiran said, had been cloaked in a strange, dark fog after the events that had transpired there earlier in the year.
“Worried for me, seffi?” he teased softly, but I saw through his attempted deflection.
“Kiran.”
His breath huffed from him.
Quietly, he said, “I am more worried about the journey, about how the journey during the frost will drain Roon, than I am about the east lands. Though, truthfully, I do not know what we will discover there.”
“Maybe you should stay,” I whispered softly. “It’s safer here.”
His jaw tightened.
“I cannot,” he murmured. “Because no matter how I feel about the Dothikkar’s orders, I am still a Vorakkar. I still made an oath to uphold his wishes and to obey his commands. He is still our king. For now.”
I sighed.
“And will his reign be over soon? Maybe a better king should take his place now more than ever before.”
“He has bastards, I am certain, born from his mistresses’ wombs. He took a wife long ago but she never bore him a child and she’s long passed into the next life,” he told me and my heart started pounding in my chest just from the way he was looking at me. “He never experienced the gift of a child from his chosen queen.”
I swallowed, the tension between us changing into something more electric.
“Kiran,” I whispered.
He leaned down to kiss me, taking it freely now that I had offered it to him. His arm slid around my waist and his warm palm spread across my belly.
He broke the kiss just as my sex began to tingle and warm. In my ear, he growled, “Perhaps I should get you with my child, seffi. If there isn’t one already.”
My breath hitched, my eyes flying to his.
I was shocked at the way my body throbbed at the idea.
“Then you would stay with me,” he continued. He pulled back to look in my eyes, deeply. He kissed me again as I began to shift on the furs. A sigh escaped his throat. “But I want you to choose me. I want you to choose this life freely. Not because there is a child.”
Swallowing, I realized I needed to steer this conversation away from talk of us having babies.
“So the king has bastard children?” I breathed, feeling his palm trail away from my belly, even though I felt his continued warmth there, a phantom touch. “Could one of them become his heir?”
Kiran blew out a long breath. The corner of one side of his lips quirked up because he knew what I was doing.
“I suppose so, lysi,” he murmured. “But the only one I know of that would make a good king might never take the throne. That throne, at least.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“Because the Dothikkar’s Trials recently ended and a horde king was born from them.”
Lysi, I’d heard the news. A couple moon cycles ago, a new Vorakkar had been victorious in the Trials. He would take to the wild lands soon with a new horde.
“This new horde king is one of the Dothikkar’s bastard sons, though not many know that.”
Surprise made me stiffen. “Truly?”
“Lysi,” Kiran said. “And from what I have heard, this new Vorakkar wants nothing to do with his father or his throne, though he would be the best choice for his heir. The better king for Dakkar.”
I had no idea. I had no idea about the happenings in Dothik. For obvious reasons, I had never been there. No one outside the saruk—and now Kiran’s horde—knew that a human girl had been raised among the Dakkari, as one of their own. Though my father had traveled to the capital once or twice and he’d told Laru and me about it. He made it seem like such a grand, opulent place.
But…if I were to become Kiran’s wife, if I were to accept his offer, these were things I would need to know.
I must’ve