older. Though his hair was dark—I didn’t think the Dakkari’s hair turned grey like humans’ did as we aged—the lines in his face, deep and weathered, gave him away. His back was hunched slightly and when he reached forward to grab my face, turning it this way and that way, I saw that his hands shook.
His nose wrinkled. The night before, the Dakkari male had said I stunk like rotting flesh, no doubt because of the stream filth I’d used to coat my hair dark. I’d grown immune to it and right then, my hygiene seemed like the last thing I should be worried about.
“Why do you request to see the Dothikkar?” he asked. His voice was strong, hardened. The Ghertun had wrongly assumed that not many in Dothik would speak the universal tongue. Every Dakkari being I’d encountered thus far had.
“I—” I began, but my voice croaked. “I have a message for him.”
I was all too aware that once I delivered the message, the Dakkari might decide to kill me and send me back to the Ghertun as a warning.
“A message?” the male scoffed, peering at me in the darkness. His red eyes glowed, reminding me of the Dakkari male’s eyes last night, twin orbs in the darkness. “What message could a vekkiri bring that the Dothikkar would listen to?”
I swallowed.
“How did you get into the capital?” he demanded, stepping forward. The guard behind me shifted.
“I have a message for the Dothikkar,” I said, proud when my voice didn’t shake, though my limbs trembled. It didn’t matter how I’d breached the city. “A message from Lozza, the Ghertun king.”
The male froze.
“Neffar?” he growled. The guard behind me moved. The guard behind the older male did as well, his hand coming to the hilt of his sword.
“Hanniva,” I said quietly, meeting his eyes. “I must speak with him.”
I hoped that he saw the desperation in my gaze. I hoped that he saw my fear. Perhaps he would pity me. Or perhaps he would have the guards kill me where I stood.
At that thought, a strange sense of quietness draped over my shoulders, as if I’d used my gift on myself, taking away my fear and in its place pushing stillness. Or perhaps it was despair coupled with acceptance.
Because it was in that moment that I realized my destiny wasn’t my own. The guards could decide to kill me and I could do nothing. I could not fight back. Whatever would happen…would happen.
Instead of killing me, the older male said something in Dakkari and the guard grabbed my arm, leading me forward through the gate of my cell and to the door of the dungeon.
Once we stepped from it, we walked down a darkened hallway, passing various Dakkari dressed in black—the Dothikkar’s guards, I guessed. They wore no armor, not like the patrol guards, but they all had swords at their sides. The Dakkari male last night had had a sword too. Had he been one of the Dothikkar’s guards?
We attracted many stares and it was only when I happened to look down at my feet that I realized why. My cloak was gone. Somehow I’d managed to forget that. When they’d brought me to the dungeon, they’d stripped it off, searching for weapons.
I was only wearing my sheer shift dress, the one made of pressed and treated Ghertun moltings. I was walking almost naked through the halls of the Dothikkar’s keep. The eyes of the dozens of guards we passed made my belly clench with dread.
You should be used to it, I thought, clenching my teeth together until my jaw ached. It was what I’d been expected to wear under the Dead Mountain. Then again, I’d been assigned to a single household as a slave and I left only occasionally. Even when I’d been summoned to meet with Lozza, only a handful of Ghertun had been in attendance in his private rooms.
I’d never been looked at so freely as the guard led me through the keep and it made my skin feel tight and wrong.
The older male walking a few paces ahead of me never looked back. He was wearing a long cloak made of brown hide, the tip of his tail flicking out from beneath it. There was an elaborate golden pattern stitched into the material and it shimmered whenever we passed by the lanterns hanging on the walls.
From the darkened hallway, we climbed up a set of spiral stone steps until I was winded and limping. The dungeon