Madness of the Horde King - Zoey Draven Page 0,115

seeking, scared but determined to find something.

My gift touched on something.

Something powerful, something ancient.

Oh gods!

Intense pain made my body contort as that connection sizzled in my mind. I might have screamed but I heard no sound, only the beating of a heart that I knew came from this tree, this creature. But that beating heart suddenly turned into thousands, no millions, billions of heartbeats, and I heard every single one pound in my veins, filling them, heating them until I thought I would die from this and not from the vovic after all.

Lokkaru had said the heartstone was dangerous. Now, I knew why. It was because Kakkari was alive in it. It was her pain, billions and billions of pains from billions and billions of souls, that I felt.

Then, all at once, that pain left me.

That connection softened. For a moment, I couldn’t remember anything at all. Who I was. What I was. Why I was here. As if it had been seared from my mind.

When that knowledge returned to me in a rush, I saw everything. I saw my family, our old home in our village, I saw the canopy of trees of the forest behind our village, light dappling between the leaves. I saw my father, my mother, my grandmother, my siblings. Strong Maxen, kind Eli, and beautiful Viola. I saw my life as it had been and then I saw my life as it had become. The Ghertun, the darkness of the Dead Mountain, the bitter taste of the vovic as it slid down my throat, coating it thickly, my sister’s haunted, sightless gaze, my mother’s desperation, and my brothers’ anger.

Then I saw Davik. His red eyes burning, that dark grin curling, those wicked hands touching me and making me feel too many things. I saw him watching me as I slept. I saw him frowning, looking at me like I was this thing he couldn’t figure out. He touched his chest, rubbing it as if it pained him, and then he pulled me closer to him as I slept.

Then I saw Devina, forever tied to him, watching us both from a place that we could not journey to. Not yet. A place in between, neither here nor there. I felt her sorrow, felt it choke me until I couldn’t breathe. Then, underneath, I felt her love and it helped pull me away. It was that love that pierced the veil that I had somehow found myself wrapped within, like the veil that had covered Lokkaru’s face in death.

With a choked cry, I wrenched my hand from the tree. The world around me seemed to whoosh against me, enclosing me. I heard the trickle of the stream. I heard the pyroki’s calm breaths as she slept. My fingers shimmered gold, the blood of the tree trailing down my palm.

That was the last thing I remembered seeing before blackness, like a curtain closing, shrouded my vision.

I collapsed against the tree, the heartbeat of the heartstone throbbing in my ears.

Chapter Forty-Three

I woke to a nudge.

My eyes opened slowly to hot pain pinning me to the ground. A cold snout was brushing against my arm and I saw the pyroki standing above me, nosing the rations of dried meat in a pouch attached to my belt. Rations I hadn’t eaten on the journey to the ancient groves because I simply hadn’t been hungry.

I tensed against the pain, which only made it worse. It felt like I was being branded by the Ghertun all over again except that hot poker was pressed against every inch of my flesh.

I willed my arm to move and tears leaked down my face as I detached the pouch, opening it and spreading the rations on the moss-covered ground beside me.

The pyroki ate immediately, gobbling up the small amount, as I looked above me. I was lying on my back at the base of the tree. It was night but I knew it wasn’t the same night. I’d been asleep again. Lost.

My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. Nausea built in my belly and now that I was awake, the bile rose and burned in my throat. Above me, the spot where I had dug Davik’s dagger into the tree was closed and healed…as if it had never been. As if what had happened when I’d used my gift on the tree had never been. As if Devina’s interference had never been.

I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand anything—I was slowly beginning to recognize that. Lokkaru