I could hear a kioni dropping from several yards away. His voice was jarring, especially since I was used to the quiet now.
“I am Maeva,” I told him.
He made a sound in the back of his throat. “You give your name to a stranger so willingly?”
“I am human,” I said. “Everyone in the saruk knows my given name.”
“Lysi, but you obviously grew up among the Dakkari. Why would our customs not apply to you?”
Because they never have. I have always been different from you, I thought, gritting my teeth.
I looked up at him from my kneeling position. Observing him carefully. It seemed to make him fidget.
“I’m assuming you’re his pujerak,” I murmured before shifting my gaze to my satchel, grabbing handfuls of the dark nuts and tossing them in my bag. They clinked against the vials I had stored in there.
“What makes you think so?” he asked. He was leaning against a tree, his arms crossed over his wide chest. Despite his relaxed position, his eyes were shifting through the trees, seeking any possible threat. He was handsome, I recognized, with yellow eyes. He looked around Laru’s age, slightly older than me, but younger than Kiran.
“You gave orders to the darukkars,” I said, shrugging. “And they followed them without hesitation. I don’t know much about horde life but I do know that darukkars only listen to their Vorakkar and their pujerak.”
He regarded me in the same manner I’d looked at him. Carefully.
“Who are you, exactly?” he repeated, his voice gruff.
“I already told you.”
“Nik. Who are you to him?”
Him.
The kioni glittered like little black jewels before me, as the sunlight began to dapple through the trees. Morning had arrived, chasing away the dawn. Already, I could feel the temperature shift, warming, though my blood still ran hot from the earlier events.
“I am no one to him,” I said.
The words…hurt. Oddly enough. But it was a dull kind of ache. I’d learned to live without Kiran. It was obvious to me that he hadn’t loved me, not even in a familial way. If he had loved me, if he had cared for me, he might’ve still broken my heart, but he wouldn’t have shattered me so completely.
In my mind, the Kiran I knew was dead and gone. A Vorakkar had risen in his place and it was that Vorakkar who was a stranger to me.
“I don’t believe that,” the pujerak said quietly, his features bordering on…disturbed. “No one would speak to him the way you did and not be punished for it. It is obvious to me that—”
“The Rukkar and I knew each other as children,” I said, cutting off whatever he was about to say because I didn’t want to hear his opinions on something he knew nothing about. “If you think we seem familiar to one another, that is why. I have known him almost my entire life, up until he left. As such, we have not seen one another in almost a decade. But I…I will work on being more respectful to his position in the future.”
Not that I would see him. I had no idea why Kiran had returned home. Or what he wanted at the saruk. I assumed it was to see his parents, the Sorakkar and the Arakkari.
The pujerak went silent, continuing to study me from his place against the tree as I stuffed my satchel full of kioni. When I stood and began to exit the forest, he followed after me, his heavy footsteps crunching on the ground.
“You don’t have to follow me,” I informed him. “I come here almost every morning. I’m in no danger.”
“The Vorakkar gave me an order to watch over you and I will see it through,” the pujerak replied. His words made my belly ache a little. It reminded me of how Kiran had always looked out for me. “The polkunu’s presence is disturbing enough. It charged us as we passed this forest.”
“We have never seen one in these lands. I didn’t know they ventured this far south,” I said, emerging from the tree line, half-expecting to see Kiran and his darukkars still ringed in a circle, but the land was empty save for a lone pyroki, which waited for its master. The rest must’ve reached the saruk already.
“They don’t,” was all the pujerak replied, his voice gruff. His pyroki immediately approached and he took the reins to steady the beast. “Come, kalles. I’ll help you up.”
I bristled at the words, casting him a sharp look. “I know how to