Broken by the Horde King (Horde Kings of Dakkar #4) - Zoey Draven Page 0,42

queen. And because her father was his pujerak, it would only make their ties stronger. Their love came with time—and it was a happy discovery I’m sure—but the relationship did not start with it. I admire that.”

“You would so easily dismiss those Vorakkars who decided to choose love over convenience?” I asked.

For a moment, I thought she would ignore me. She was already beginning to clean out the salves she’d layered inside my back. They only needed to sit for a short while to help prevent infection, which meant the wound was deep enough to require stitching.

“Love ends,” she said simply. Quietly. “Maybe it’s better to choose stability.”

I barely concealed my flinch.

I felt her words hit me like a strike across the face.

In my anger, I rasped, “Perhaps I will take you as my Morakkari then.”

She stiffened.

“To secure a skilled mokkira for my horde, to keep you past the frost and not let you leave. Isn’t that the stability you speak of?”

I wanted her to get angry. I wanted her to feel the bite of sadness and regret and the deep sense of loss I felt now. I wanted to peel back the layers of practical indifference she had wrapped herself in like Dakkari steeled armor. I wanted to see a glimmer of the girl whose emotions I could read as clearly as dark ink across parchment.

She didn’t prepare me when she began stitching my wound. The sharp pinch of the needle through my flesh made me grit my jaw but my heart was still pounding furiously fast from her words…and, perhaps, from the vision of her as my Morakkari.

Vok.

“You can certainly try, though it would be a waste of your time,” she said, her voice even. Then came the bite of it when she continued, “Because I wouldn’t have you, Vorakkar.”

At her declaration, I felt something spark in my chest. That low, sizzling burn that felt frighteningly like determination.

There was nothing more that I hated than being told I couldn’t accomplish something.

Maeva knew that.

She knew exactly what her words would ignite.

She’d done it to frustrate me.

Well, it had worked.

My body was tight. A strange mixture of anger, of madness, of thick, choking lust, and of biting amusement took hold.

“You would have had me once, seffi,” I purred, though my words sounded mocking even to my own ears. I hadn’t meant for them to sound that way but I heard the shocked exhale that left Maeva’s lips. “Perhaps I can have you again.”

Her hands trembled as she dug the needle into my flesh, perhaps deeper and harder than necessary.

As the tense silence stretched, I immediately regretted my words.

“Maeva—” I started, but she cut me off.

“You’re cruel, Kiran,” she whispered. “Have you ever realized just how much?”

I stiffened.

“Nine years is a long time,” she continued, “but I don’t think you’ve changed at all.”

I was saved from replying when my darukkars returned, climbing up the short incline of the hill and beginning to make camp for the night after informing me that the land was clear.

All the while, Maeva was silent behind me and she hurried to finished stitching my wound closed, as if the sooner she finished, the sooner she could be rid of me.

Long after she was done, long after the moon had risen and my darukkars had taken to their sleeping pallets, her words continued to echo in my mind.

You’re cruel, Kiran. Have you ever realized just how much?

She’d said something similar to me the last night I saw her.

What she didn’t realize was…I knew how cruel I could be. I knew. I’d begun to recognize it in Dothik, when I began training for the Trials. I’d begun to recognize it in the way I had to detach from those around me to best lead. I’d begun to recognize it in the bitter coldness in my chest, that sometimes felt like it would never leave me.

I knew that I was cruel and selfish, that I could be ruthless to get what I wanted, that I could kill without flinching, that I could bury my emotions so deep that I hardly ever felt them.

I was a Vorakkar. A horde king of Dakkar. And I had sacrificed much for it.

What I also knew was that I had never wanted to hurt Maeva. Next to my lomma, she was the last being I had ever wanted to hurt.

I’d done so anyways. It had haunted me ever since.

For the rest of the night on that hill in the south lands, with Kakkari’s stars