to his Morakkari, but to his own blood.” When I took my gaze from the forest in the distance, I saw her expression was astonished. Her emotions were so easy to read. It was…strange. Different. “He fucked a darukkar’s wife, got her with child, and then killed the babe once it was born to hide his shame, especially from his Morakkari.”
A soft gasp escaped her lips.
“That’s…that’s terrible. He killed his own child?”
I inclined my head.
“The accounts of who this sorceress was, or where she came from, are unclear, but it was assumed that she was a member of his horde. On the night that the Vorakkar took his child’s life, she became enraged. Those that survived say she channeled Kakkari’s power, fed by her grief. The account says she created a storm above the horde, bringing down unseen strikes that made the ground shake and fires burn. She destroyed everything. Everything the Vorakkar had touched, or cared for, was gone.”
Her neck turned and she gazed away, though her eyes were unseeing. I wanted to know what she thought of. I wanted to know what she was hiding, what she was truly afraid of.
“And the sorceress?”
“Gone,” I rumbled. “Disappeared. She was never seen again. Some believe that Kakkari’s power killed her as well, though her body was never found.”
“So that was why the Dothikkar called me a sorceress,” she murmured quietly. “I had wondered.”
“He is a superstitious male,” I said, feeling a prickling of annoyance whenever I thought of him. “He did not know what to make of your sudden appearance.”
“That was a terrible story,” she said, her face still turned to the plains.
I chuffed out a sound of disbelief. “I quite like it.”
“Why?”
My shoulder lifted. “It is a story of vengeance.”
“Vengeance?” she said, frowning. Then her eyes returned to me. “More like unnecessary slaughter. The sorceress was wrong to kill so many. They were punished for their horde king’s crimes. Females. Children. What is so noble and honorable about killing innocent beings? She was a villain. That was not vengeance. It was murder.”
Her words struck something in me and I growled, “And what do you know of vengeance, leikavi?”
“Enough to know that sometimes you never get it,” she said, her voice throaty, her eyes narrowed slightly. “And that you can spend your whole life letting it consume you, poison you, or you can make amends in your own soul and move forward.”
For a moment, I was speechless, glaring down at her, my jaw tight.
“It was the horde king’s responsibility to bear his punishment on his own. Wasn’t his child’s death enough? Why spill more blood?” she finished, her eyes shimmering with tears though she glared.
“The horde is an extension of its Vorakkar. A crime brings about vengeance and there is no escaping it once it comes. That is the way of our world,” I grated.
“And sometimes,” she said, “I wish I was a part of a different world. Not this one.”
I thought of my family. Of my sister, my mother, my father. Of their cries and screams, of my lungs burning as I sprinted towards our home, panic and dread churning in my gut so strong I’d almost vomited. What I remembered most was that I’d heard my sister’s screams streets away. And no one had come to her aid. I hadn’t gotten to her in time.
Bitterness twisted within me.
“You think I do not wish the same, kalles?” I rasped. “As you said, you must make amends in your soul…and move forward.”
Chapter Twelve
Gold streaks shimmered through the sky as the sun descended. It was something I’d missed seeing. Under the Dead Mountain, I’d been cut off from the sky, from the earth.
Sparkling, wispy trails floated and danced above us, like they were celebrating the setting of the sun, the end of another day. It was a phenomenon that happened rarely.
It was beautiful. Breathtaking. I was all too aware of the horde king’s eyes on me as I tilted my face back to watch the tendrils glimmer and shift, catching the rays of the golden sun. Soon, I would be back under the Dead Mountain. Soon, the sky would be taken from me once more, so I might as well enjoy it while I could. Even if his red gaze made the back of my neck prickle.
In my periphery, I saw the forest looming to our left. The darkness of it made me anxious. The Ghertun called it the Dead Forest because of the creatures that lurked there. Because any Ghertun