Madness of the Horde King - Zoey Draven Page 0,105
felt woefully helpless in situations like these. I did not know how to care for a female. I did not know how to comfort her with words.
I should know these things. She would be my Morakkari, after all. I wanted to comfort her.
“Leikavi,” I murmured to her, softly so no Dakkari around us would hear. “Tell me what you need.”
That got her attention and she blinked, looking up at me in saddened surprise.
“What I need?” she whispered.
I inclined my head.
Her brows furrowed and she said, “Oh, Davik.”
“Neffar?”
She glanced back at the crowd gathering around Lokkaru’s grave. “This isn’t about me. This is about you and your horde’s loss. Please don’t worry about me.”
I frowned. “You have as much of a right to grieve as the rest.”
“I feel like I don’t,” was what she whispered, looking up at me with shimmering eyes, shaking her head. Her arms were wrapped around her body and though the night was unnaturally warm for the season, she trembled like she was cold, a fur shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “I knew her for a week. You’ve known her for ten years.”
“Time has nothing to do with grief,” I told her and she looked up at me in saddened surprise.
Though Vienne had only known Lokkaru for that short period of time, it didn’t diminish the affection they’d felt for one another. I also worried that it had been Vienne that had discovered her body. Vienne had already seen so much death within her own family—her father, her grandmother. Both deaths had been gruesome and violent.
I cupped the back of her neck. Though I still could smell the earth clinging to me from Lokkaru’s grave, I scented her underneath it…soft and sweet and warm.
Dropping my forehead to hers, I decided to say nothing right then. We would discuss this once we were back at the encampment, once she was warm in my furs and had recovered a little more from the sadness that covered her like a veil.
When I pulled back, needing to return for the final burial, Vienne caught my hand. Her voice trembled as she said, “I—I think she knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That she was leaving soon.”
“Lokkaru was old,” I said gently, reaching out to brush her cheek. “Her time in this life was over. She has gone to the next.”
Vienne looked like she wanted to say more, her eyes darting between mine. Then her shoulders sagged slightly and she nodded, releasing my hand. I frowned, catching hers again when I realized her fingers were chilled to the bone.
“You are freezing, Vienne,” I murmured, my brows furrowing.
“I’m all right,” she assured me. Her eyes looked past me, towards the grave. “It looks like they are waiting for you.”
When I turned, I saw the eyes of my horde on us, though they averted their gazes quickly.
“Come,” I said, pulling her forward. “You will be at my side, as my Morakkari should be.”
Where you belong, I added silently.
When I knew that she would be my wife, that definitive moment last night—that determination that had risen within my chest, certain and absolute and unyielding—still left me reeling with its potency. But I didn’t question. For all my faults, I always made firm decisions and stood behind them.
As I pulled her forward, I didn’t notice her hesitation as she fell into step beside me.
Or maybe I simply ignored it.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The dream felt muddled and hazy. It felt wrong as it tugged at the edges of my mind.
I was sobbing in this dream. And I knew it was a dream. So I did everything that I wanted that I couldn’t do in my reality. I cried and screamed until my throat was raw. I saw the stiff face of Lokkaru, looking up at me from her bed, where she’d died, only this time her eyes were open and staring deeply into me.
It made horror coil in my chest. Lokkaru’s face morphed into my grandmother’s, with her light blue eyes and grey hair that she’d always kept trimmed short and out of the way. Only I saw red blood appear across her throat.
It was a dream so I changed it, wiping away the image of my dying grandmother, but I sat huddled, trapped in the confines of my mind and not knowing what was happening or why.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut but I could hear what sounded like a stream nearby, though my vision was blackened, though I couldn’t see anything anymore.