shining bright overhead, with luminous ancient constellations that told ancient stories, stories I had once recited to my seffi…Maeva didn’t meet my gaze once.
Chapter Sixteen
“We have arrived,” Kiran said quietly, close to my ear.
I nodded, holding myself stiffly on Roon’s back. With the exception of when I’d checked his wound earlier that morning, Kiran and I had barely spoken as we continued on our journey.
His words sparked a drumming of nerves and anticipation and curiosity within me.
From a distance, his horde looked like a massive sprawl of hide-covered, light brown, domed tents that I knew were called volikis. I spied figures, tall and imposing, bustling around the front of the horde. A wall was being erected, one made of dark wood and reinforced with Dakkari steel beams, which glinted in the bright afternoon sunlight.
As we drew closer, I determined the horde was much larger than I’d originally anticipated. I had my first jolt of fear. What if I couldn’t handle being a mokkira to a horde this size? For some strange reason, I thought the horde would be smaller, more intimate, more manageable.
But the sheer sprawl of it, the noise from voices and laughter, the clanging of metal, the chatter that filled the air like a buzzing…I had my first stab of doubt.
Then I set my jaw, determination coursing through me, pushing out that doubt.
I can do this, I thought. I will do this and then I will return home.
The desire to return to the saruk had plagued me all night, keeping me tossing and turning, especially after the exchange with Kiran—of heated words, of the stinging hurt and throbbing remembrance they had awakened.
But this was a new day.
Kiran might still have the power to hurt me. Perhaps he always would, given our history. I needed to accept that, recognize it, so that I could control my emotions better.
Lomma had told me that acceptance was the first step towards healing. From my own experience, I knew that to be true. It had taken me a long time to accept that she was gone, buried in the ground, her spirit firmly with Kakkari once more…but it wasn’t until I did that I finally felt some anger and hurt and grief release from me.
I would use the same approach with Kiran. I had been doing the opposite by pretending that I was indifferent to his presence, by pretending that he hadn’t hurt me as much as he did, by pretending that I wasn’t disappointed or really vokking angry with him over the years.
But maybe I needed to accept those emotions, feel them deeply, and then release them. Maybe then I would truly be free of them. Free of him.
Last night, as I stared up at Kakkari’s stars, very aware that Kiran was sleeping only a short distance away, I’d come to this decision. The decision that I wouldn’t hold a grudge against him, that I would take advantage of my time in his horde, that I would take advantage of the opportunity to be a mokkira, a master healer, what I’d always wanted.
It didn’t matter that Kiran could still hurt me, that he mocked me with his words.
It didn’t matter.
Because I didn’t trust him.
As such, I would never be in danger of loving him again.
I would come to his horde, I would be useful to the horde members in whatever way I could through the frost, I would help bring new life into this world, and—perhaps most exciting of all—I’d be able to interact with beings of my own race.
Humans lived among his horde.
That was enough reason to journey here.
The half-finished horde gates were drawing nearer and nearer. One of the workers spied us in the distance and a loud cry of greeting echoed over the land. More heads snapped up, more voices joined in. Around us, Kiran’s darukkars responded with a greeting call of their own, though the Vorakkar was silent at my back. As if sensing that he was home, Roon sped faster.
The horde was close to a forest whose name I didn’t know. And as we rounded the line of the trees, I felt a jolt of surprise and delight when I spied what I thought was Drukkar’s Sea, only it lay in the wrong direction. Behind it, jagged black mountains sat tall and proud, so high that I couldn’t see the tops of them in the cloud covering.
“Is that the sea?” I asked in my surprise.
“Nik,” Kiran said. “It is called a lake. The water that comes down