I repeated, narrowing my eyes.
I could tell she hadn’t meant to say anything. Her cheeks were the reddest I’d ever seen them. That flush even extended down the column of her neck and that fascinated me.
Unconsciously, I leaned forward in the washing tub, my gaze riveted on her.
“Tell me, leikavi,” I murmured, trying to soften my tone.
“No,” she said quickly. “I—I didn’t mean to…”
She trailed off. On the tray, she saw the goblets of brew Arinu had brought and took a swift sip from one, only to cough as the potent wine burned down her throat. This wine was not watered down, not like the wine I’d given her in Dothik.
“Let us trade then. A story for a story, lysi?” I murmured, knowing she liked stories.
Once she was done coughing, I knew my words intrigued her. She wiped the back of her hand over her lips, her grey eyes calculating.
“What story will you tell me?”
“What do you wish to know?”
Her gaze flickered down at the table.
“I—I want to know about your scars,” she said.
My spine stiffened in the washing tub but I laid my arms on the edge to conceal my sudden tension.
“The ones on your back,” she clarified. A soft breath escaped me in relief.
An easy enough story to tell.
“Lysi,” I said. “Very well.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mortification ran hot, trailing over my flesh. Mercifully, he decided to speak first.
“They are my Vorakkar markings,” he told me, turning slightly in the massive bath so that I saw the deep whip marks. “The last hardship of the Vorakkar Trials.”
Disbelief threaded through me.
“All Vorakkar wear them. Because if one does not, if they do not cover every part of his back, then he did not complete the Trials.”
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. I had never given much thought to how Vorakkar were chosen.
“And these Trials, you complete them all and you become a horde king?”
“Lysi.”
“How many are there?”
His grin made my belly heat. “Too many and not enough.”
“And…has a Vorakkar ever failed the last Trial?”
He began to scrub at his flesh, washing his body. “Nik. Because when you get to the last Trial, after them all, it is perhaps the easiest.”
“You think it’s easy to be whipped hundreds of times?” I whispered, aghast. I had thought that those scars had been the cause of the rage within him.
But now, I wasn’t so sure.
“Physical pain is fleeting, leikavi,” he said, his tone surprisingly…gentle. Like he was speaking of something else entirely more pleasant than having one’s back stripped of flesh.
And all Vorakkars experienced this. They all wore the scars. I tried to think back, to the Dothikkar’s grand hall, when the other horde king had given me his furs, if he’d had scars too. But I’d been too frightened to notice much of anything.
“What would you endure if it meant you could have everything you have ever wanted?” he asked me next.
My brows lowered.
To be free of the Ghertun, to have my family safe and together again, to live a free life?
I would endure…anything.
“You wanted to be a Vorakkar that much?”
His red eyes glowed, water dripping down his cheek, over his scar.
“I wanted to right wrongs done against me and mine,” he rasped. “I wanted to return to wild lands under my own terms. Being a Vorakkar allowed me to do that.”
There was something in his tone that reminded me of how he’d fought off the jrikkia. An unparalleled and focused drive, unbending in its ferocity. Savage, even.
I wondered what wrongs had been done against him…and I shuddered to think what he’d done in retaliation.
“Now,” he said, water trickling as he rose from his quick bath. “Come wash while the water is still hot.”
His body gleamed golden in the light…and this time, I didn’t look away from him. Water sluiced from his skin as he reached for a large cloth to dry off with. Never had I seen a body like his…and I doubted I would ever see one like his again. He was different from me, from anyone I had ever known.
My earlier realization, that I had three and a half weeks left before the black moon, returned to me.
My adventure…my last taste of freedom.
I was away from the Dead Mountain, with fine food warming my belly, and a hot bath awaiting me. All the while, I hadn’t seen my family in weeks. And even then, we had only caught glimpses of one another in passing.
All the while, they suffered under the Dead Mountain—Viola most of all.
But even when I returned,