control, I carefully avoided the horde king’s gaze, but I knew he was watching me. In my periphery, I saw him occupying the place where I’d been sitting.
I scrubbed my skin with the wet cloth draped over the edge until my skin was pink. Then I washed my hair before dunking underneath the water completely. When I resurfaced, my hair hung in translucent strands around my shoulders, some sticking to my cheeks and my neck.
Attempting to steer the conversation into tame territory, I asked, “How long will we be here?”
His home, his voliki as he’d called it, was spacious and expensively furnished with plush rugs and carpets lining the floor. It was domed, supported by thick beams of black metal in the center, poles that surrounded the mess of exquisite furs that comprised his bed. Behind the bed was a shadowed area that the fire’s light didn’t reach, but I thought I spied chests and storage. The washing tub had been placed close to the entrance and close to the low table where the food was. A weapons rack with glimmering blades and swords was mounted onto one of the curved walls.
Saving the Dothikkar’s keep—and not the dungeons—it was the nicest and most comfortable place I’d ever been. I was surprised. I’d always had this image of Dakkari hordes as…barbaric. I knew they were nomadic, following game across the planet, wherever they might lead.
Remembering the sight of the horde as we passed through the walls, seeing all the Dakkari faces peering up at us, the carefully spaced voliki, the training grounds I’d spied, the crops, the resources that had been gathered…I came to the realization that hordes were just like small cities. Organized, well-kept, disciplined, efficient.
“As soon as Lokkaru tells us something of value, we will depart,” he murmured.
My gaze cut to him, lips parting. “You just told me her name.”
“She would have told you it regardless,” the horde king said. Save for the golden cuffs around his wrists and the gold tattoos inked into his flesh, he was still naked, though mercifully he’d thrown a fur shawl across his thighs. Sitting on the cushion at the lower table I’d been occupying, he was sprawled comfortably, leaning his back against one of the stabilizing beams for support.
I watched as his tail flicked across the rugs and the gold on his wrists cast beams of light across the walls.
“I thought the Dakkari didn’t like to give out their names.”
“They do not,” he said. And suddenly, with a burning need, I wanted to know his. Would I ever know it? “But Lokkaru does not care about such things. She is a terun. An elder. She does not have much time left.”
Fear and dismay went through me.
“Do you think she still remembers anything about the heartstone?” I asked softly.
“It is difficult to say. Her mind comes and goes. So pray to Kakkari that she remembers something.”
And if she doesn’t?
But I let that fear go unspoken.
“I’m sure she will,” I said, wanting to remain positive. She has to.
There was still time left. But we couldn’t delay long.
“Will we meet with her tomorrow?”
“Lysi,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving me. I didn’t need to push into his mind to know what he was thinking. His gaze trailed down to the surface of the water and he frowned…as if frustrated that it blocked his view of me.
Heat bloomed between my thighs once more and I pressed them together to stifle it, even though it put pressure on my pyroki burns.
“Come out from there, leikavi,” he ordered once I was done washing.
“What will I wear?”
There was that feral, untamed look in his eyes and I envisioned that that glassy, still lake in his mind rippled. Just slightly.
“I will keep you warm,” he promised, his voice dark and husky.
Though the water was still hot, I shivered in its depths. “I can wear the tunic I was wearing before.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. Not what he wanted?
“Shy now, kalles?” he mused. “When I first encountered you, you were wearing a shift so sheer you may as well have been wearing nothing at all.”
Even still, he rose from his position, going into that shadowed darkness behind his fur-mounded bed.
“That dress was made of Ghertun skin,” I informed him. “Their moltings. Of course it was sheer. They do not want to spare their valuable resources for us.”
Quiet came from the darkened side of the voliki before he murmured something in Dakkari. It sounded like a curse.