Madness of the Horde King - Zoey Draven Page 0,103

trail up my inner forearm. When I pressed my fingers into my flesh, I felt a throbbing ache. From experience, I knew it would turn into burning, shooting, teeth-gritting pain.

Once, I’d displeased my sibi under the Dead Mountain. I’d stayed out late on an errand. I’d been trying to sneak into the mines because I knew that sometimes my brother, Eli, worked there. I’d desperately wanted to see him. I’d returned, however, disappointed, only to realize that I’d forgotten the food my sibi had sent me out to get.

They didn’t hit me. They didn’t yell at me. They didn’t withhold my meager rations. Instead, they’d done something far more cruel.

They’d withheld my dose of vovic. Slaves usually received one every two or three weeks, days that I used to count in my mind silently, anxiously. Though we could survive without a dose for a month, the pain by the end of that month was usually too debilitating. My sibi knew that. They’d kept me in withdrawal for three days. Useless to them, spread on the floor where I slept, sweating, my bones feeling like they would break, the blood in my veins burning like it was on fire.

The pain had been so severe I hadn’t been able to call upon my gift. I had never felt more helpless.

I’d been so grateful to them when they finally gave me my dose. I’d worked extra hard to please them in the following weeks, the knowledge of which made me sick to think about now. Because I was a coward. I was a spineless coward.

I was staring, unseeing, inside Lokkaru’s voliki. My vision was wavering, watering, and I dashed away the tears that ran down my cheeks, angry. I was angry.

I was angry with Davik, for trying to give me everything I wanted but could never have. I was angry at him for not finding me a year earlier, before I’d ever taken that first dose of vovic between my lips. I was angry at him for using that body on me, because now I would come to crave it, miss it. I was angry at him for showing me he wasn’t the cruel monster I’d believed him to be that first night in Dothik because I’d already begun to fall in love with him.

I was angry that my father had died. I was angry that my beautiful, beautiful sister was abused and raped by her sibi almost weekly. I was angry that the few Ghertun underneath the Dead Mountain who would look at me in shame and apology whenever I crossed their paths had done nothing to help us. I was angry that I was too weak and too cowardly to help us.

My breath came hard and quick. I was staring at Lokkaru, who held my future in the fractured, glittering remnants of her mind. I needed to breach it, to find the lost heartstone.

Without that heartstone, I had no power.

Lozza had promised me freedom and safety—a life free from vovic—when he’d sent me from the Dead Mountain. I’d entered his mind as he promised me that. And while I couldn’t read thoughts, I could read emotions. Lozza had been amused. There had been deceit in his mind, naturally, but whether it was a lie about a possible antidote, or a lie about releasing my family and me…I didn’t know.

The only way forward was to have hope that there was an antidote. When I returned to the Dead Mountain with the heartstone, I would use my gift on Lozza, in front of all of his council, in front of his wives and children, in his darkened hall. I would force him to give me the antidote, the antidote that would free us from vovic’s clutches forever.

His council, his family, might think it was strange that he would give it over to me, a lowly slave. But it wouldn’t be as suspicious as if I had forced him to give it to me at any other time. In their eyes, we would be settling an agreement we’d made. I would hand him a heartstone as he handed me the antidote, after all.

No. There was an antidote. I had to believe that. Or we were as good as dead.

I could only rely on myself. No one else. Not even Davik, who’d promised me everything I’d wanted while taking my choices away.

With that thought in mind, I strode forward and crouched at Lokkaru’s side. If entering Davik’s mind multiple times gave me his memories then