Madness of the Horde King - Zoey Draven Page 0,113
to failure. To death. Death that I had felt begin to creep up on me as the day dragged, as my furious heart seemed to pump and thicken the poison running through my veins even faster.
The pain had started, a couple days earlier than I had anticipated. Though it was night now and I could barely see a few feet in front of the pyroki guiding me through the groves, I knew that the veins in my right arm were completely blackened and were steadily trailing up to my shoulder, across my neck.
As I’d always known, the symptoms of the vovic would come on fast. It had been weeks since my last dose. So, in reality, the pain was right on time. It was me that was late.
I trailed my fingers over the pyroki’s scaled neck, feeling the muscles underneath shift with its gentle but hesitant trots.
“There is nothing to fear here,” I whispered down to the creature. I didn’t know how I knew that but I did. Perhaps it was Lokkaru’s own knowledge. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the heartstone kept this land cleared of threat, of danger.
It was not the groves I feared.
My body was aching all over. I had pyroki burn between my thighs where I straddled its back. My back was tight and sore. My arms shook from holding onto the pyroki’s thick neck.
The burning in my arm had started, making the muscles seize tight, a hotness that scalded me, though I shivered from cold. The vovic was trailing across my neck and soon it would lodge in my chest, in my belly, my womb, my legs. I would feel it in the strands of my hair, in the tips of my toes. It was merciless and unyielding.
“Draki,” I urged the pyroki, repeating words I’d heard Davik speak, and the beast’s trots quickened, weaving around trees that I only saw as they passed us by.
I steered the pyroki by nudging its neck and I guided it in the direction I knew the heartstone lay. I knew these groves like the back of my hand. Lokkaru had to have spent an ample amount of time here to give me such a map. I wished that I had asked her about her life more, about why she’d lived in the wild lands, alone, for so long. If she’d ever been scared. If that fear was perhaps why she’d chosen to journey to Dothik, to steal fruits from the Dothikkar’s garden to sell on the streets…which was how she’d inevitably met Davik.
I wondered if she’d ever been in love but then I pushed that thought away with force when it brought another prickling of pain to my chest.
My pyroki and I traveled through the ancient groves for most of the night and I knew that we were drawing near when I heard the familiar trickling of a small stream. A stream that we followed, a stream that my exhausted pyroki drank from, a stream that I wanted to drink from but feared I was too weak to climb onto her back again once I finished.
Pain spasmed in my wrist and arm, making me bite my lip, making my eyes water. It was a throbbing kind of pain, but it was manageable. Soon, it would come in waves, each more intense than the last, until those waves would end and then it would be constant…building, building, building until my heart gave out.
The closer we came to the tree, the more the ground seemed to hum underneath us. My pyroki paused every now and again until I urged her back into motion, as if uncertain what we were about the stumble upon, as if her instincts warned her away.
But my instincts pushed us forward and soon, I felt relief pierce me when I saw blue light glowing in the distance. Soft at first, just a hint that there was something hidden there. As we drew closer and closer, it grew brighter and brighter, until I could actually see the trees around us, massive trunks so wide I was surprised I could see around them, their skin black with age.
There was only one tree I was seeking, however, and a few moments later, as my pyroki passed underneath a heavy curtain of vines hanging down from branches…I found it.
A sob tore from my throat, relief so potent and bright that it briefly banished the pain.
It was just like in my dream. Just like in Lokkaru’s memory. It had changed, however. It