owe you an apology as well,” I decided to say, picking at the furs that tickled my legs on the bed. Water trickled when he turned to look at me, his brow furrowed.
“For what?”
“For that night,” I said. “Truthfully, I have no idea who the Vorakkar was.” The one that had my father killed. “It was wrong of me to accuse you of anything. I think…I think I was just feeling…vulnerable.”
I didn’t know if that was the right word but it was the only one I could think of to describe my emotions that night.
“And you were right. Names do have power. I didn’t realize how much.”
“Because I called you Vivi?”
I licked my lips. It didn’t hurt as much, hearing him say it now. That first time, though, it had felt like a punch in the gut.
I cleared my throat. “My father wanted a better life for us. He grew up in the old Earth colonies. He knew what peace felt like, what the lack of fear felt like, until his home was destroyed and that was taken from him too.”
When I darted a peek up at him, I saw Davik was watching me carefully from his place in his bath. I got the strange sense that hearing me speak was helping to keep him calm, keep his mood steady. So I kept talking.
“Hordes didn’t pass by our village often. The men took risks. They hunted so we were not hungry. They gathered materials and supplies from the forests so that we might live more comfortably, though they knew it was against your laws. We were a small village, one of the last to settle here. We thought we were safe. Until a horde came. I saw my father executed,” I told him, though I didn’t meet his eyes. I kept my gaze on the furs, kept picking at the little tufts of hair across it. “I watched him die, heard my mother’s screams, and my sister crying. And all I could do was stand there, like I was seeing something from someone’s else life. Not mine. It was a nightmare but I never woke up.”
In some ways…I was still asleep.
“I am sorry about your father, leikavi,” came his voice. “I truly am.”
When our eyes connected, I knew he was. I knew that he was because he knew deep, terrible loss as well. Loss that festered like a wound, one that never quite healed. I knew because I’d sensed it—I’d felt it. Buried inside him.
I cleared my throat, trying to shake off the memories. I couldn’t allow them to suffocate me. I needed to move forward, like always.
“What I’m trying to say is that,” I started, meeting his eyes, “my father always called me Vivi and hearing you say it…it just brought back a lot of buried memories, some happy and some sad. And I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. And I don’t think you’re a monster.”
His jaw clenched.
“And…and if you don’t want me to have your name,” I said, “I will never speak it again. I promise you that. I promise that I never meant to steal it in the first place.”
The horde king blew out a long, even breath. His gaze flickered to the fire in the basin, watching the flames dance for long moments.
Finally, he said quietly, “I want you to have my name.”
Something warm spread in my chest at his words, the sensation foreign and startling.
“Really?”
“Lysi,” he murmured, his gaze returning to me. “But I want to know how you discovered it.”
I owed him that much. I’d stolen his memory, after all. It was his knowledge by right, even though it exposed me and my gift. If my mother knew what I was about to confess to a horde king of Dakkar, she’d lock me away before I could even open my lips.
Davik finished washing quickly before he stood from the bathing tub. He passed a clean fur over his body once before striding towards the low table, still heaped with food. He gestured for me to join him there and I carefully scooted down the bed, slipping from the edge, sitting across from him at the table.
“Did you eat?” he wanted to know.
I nodded but I always felt like I could eat more. Like my body had been starved for too long and wanted to make up for what had been lost.
“Eat more, leikavi,” he commanded, as if he could read my thoughts.