from my dead sister, feeling that constant dull ache in my chest where Devina’s life force should’ve been.
It isn’t her, I thought desperately, my temple beginning to pound. It should be. She should be here. But she isn’t. Gone. Lost.
Taken.
I needed to kill Jarun and Ollisan all over again. Those sons of whores. I wouldn’t be right until I felt their blood on my hands again. To this day, the Dothikkar had never known what happened to them. No one but me did.
My eyes were unseeing as I pushed away from Vienne. She stumbled back, words I couldn’t understand falling from her lips. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight. When I left my voliki, when I felt the cool night air brush through my hair and across my face, I sucked in a deep lungful, needing to get it into my lungs.
I laughed, the sound desperate and humorless, echoing across the encampment.
That night, when I’d still been deep inside Vienne, as she was rocking her hips against me so sweetly, beginning to tighten around me, with her soft moans in the air, looking at me like she’d found something utterly wonderful…I thought I’d found a semblance of peace. I’d felt more centered, more in control than I ever had before.
She’d smiled as she found her pleasure, pure and delighted and innocent…and I’d felt something give and loosen within me at the sight. A surrendering of something I’d never given a female before.
Just this night, I thought I could be right for Vienne? I thought I could be someone different, someone gentle for her?
This is who I am, I knew.
The Mad Horde King, who saw shadows that spoke. The Mad Horde King, who couldn’t fuck a female without remembering her, with her cloying scent and seeking hands, who had once fed on my desperation and grief like a parasite. The Mad Horde King, who had butchered the ones responsible for his family’s murders, who had grinned as their blood dripped from his hands.
My laugh died.
I was the Mad Horde King and I would never be anything different.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chills ran down my arms.
The back of my neck prickled.
I stared at the voliki’s entrance and then I heard a burst of Davik’s laugh before it slowly faded away.
His footsteps retreated and then he was gone.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around my naked body and slowly turned to face the shadowed section of the voliki. My eyes tracked over the space that Davik had stared at intently.
Because sometimes I see beings that are not there.
That was what he told me when I asked him why he was called the Mad Horde King.
Yet…I wasn’t quite sure that those beings weren’t there.
There was energy there. I felt it. I sensed it. I gathered the energy of my own gift, imagining that it filled the space in front of me before I pressed it forward, seeking, searching slowly and hesitantly for something that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to find.
I almost gasped when I felt something pressing back. A lightness speared through me and the tight muscles in my body relaxed. My fear melted away. Whatever was there…it wasn’t an evil thing. Whatever was there felt wonderful. It felt safe and peaceful. The emotions changed abruptly and I felt my eyes well up when intense sorrow covered me like a shroud, making it hard to breathe. Suffocating.
Then the connection broke. My breath left me as if pulled from my lungs…and then whatever had been there was gone.
I was alone again. The chills on my arms faded and I realized I was crying, tears tracking down my cheeks.
Swallowing, I wiped them away, never taking my eyes off the shadowy place of the voliki.
My chest squeezed when my thoughts returned to Davik. To what had occurred between us…and then what had occurred in the aftermath.
“If you think me such a monster, Vivi, if you think it was me that killed your father then why did you beg me to fuck you? What does that make you?”
I flinched. Just remembering his words and the malice in them made my gut churn. I stole a fur throw off the bed and wrapped it tight around my shoulders. When I walked towards the fire basin, suddenly chilled, the space between my legs twinged. Muscles I never knew I had ached.
I’d finally discovered something I’d wanted to experience for a long time. So why did it make me feel so empty? Why did the place where my heart thudded in my