Mountain, if only for a short period of time. And then tentative hope had sprouted when he’d told me his terms.
“Lozza knew he couldn’t send a Ghertun to Dothik. The Ghertun would be killed on sight. He knew that humans are seen as the weakest race out of us all. He knew a female human would be very little threat to deliver a message. He thought I was persuasive…but he also thought me expendable, should the Dothikkar wish to kill me instead of listen to me.”
Davik made a sound in the back of his throat. Was he thinking of that day? When I’d been led into the great hall of the Dothikkar? When the Dakkari king had looked at me, much like Lozza had—amusing, a brief entertainment, but expendable?
Then I’d ruined it all by opening my mouth.
Right then, remembering that day, I was tempted to smile. The look on the Dothikkar’s face had been…bewildered. As if he couldn’t understand how such a lowly human like me could bring such turmoil to his city.
“So, no,” I told him softly. “Lozza doesn’t know about my gift. What I can truly do. Because if he did…I don’t think he would have let me out of his sight at all.”
I shuddered. For that, I was grateful. To be a slave of Lozza’s was unthinkable.
Now that I’d begun to speak of it, I couldn’t stop. It felt…nice talking about it. Instead of keeping it bottled up inside me, always afraid someone would discover it for themselves and then use it against me.
“My gift hurts me when I use it,” I said. “My head feels like it’s splitting in two, I get nauseous, I feel weak and dizzy. Lights get so bright they are blinding. Usually I sleep for a very long time afterwards.”
He nodded, as if he’d realized this already.
“But only when you change emotions,” he finished for me. Davik processed this all quickly. I could see how fast his mind worked, though he’d already had his suspicions before.
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “When I only want to feel, it doesn’t hurt me like that. It’ll only give me a brief headache before it goes away. But even now, it seems to be…changing.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Earlier,” I said, biting my lip as I felt a flush spread up my neck. “When I entered your mind…it didn’t hurt me. At all. It felt different. My gift might be changing again, getting stronger.”
When I’d been younger, I’d only been able to sense people’s emotions. My mother simply thought me an empath, more sensitive to others’ feelings. She’d dismissed it. After a while, however, my gift shifted, changed as I aged. Not only could I sense someone’s emotions, I could alter them. When I’d told my mother that, she’d looked at me in horror. As if seeing me for the first time. As if I were some beast in her daughter’s skin.
I shut my eyes, taking in a deep breath, before I met Davik’s eyes again.
“You…” I licked my lips. “You’re the first that’s ever felt me.”
His red irises flared briefly.
“Felt my gift, I mean,” I said softly, feeling my cheeks heat. “Not even my family could tell when I was using it. What...what does it feel like to you?”
“Like my skin is electrified,” he rasped, making my breath hitch. “Like I’m being touched. Then there’s warmth and I swear I can feel you, all over. In the air I’m breathing. Underneath my skin. In my blood. On my tongue.”
His words tightened my nipples, which was not the response I’d expected.
“It’s different with you,” I confessed after a short pause. “Even that first night. There was something different and I—I don’t know why or what it is.”
“Maybe because my mind does not work like others’. Maybe because I am…” he trailed off.
Mad?
Was that what he was going to say?
I didn’t think that was what it was.
I thought…I thought it was because he was like me. Different. He was connected to something larger, something beyond himself.
He had a gift all his own…only he didn’t realize it. He thought it was made of hallucination, of madness. Whereas it was very likely he’d been born with it. Just like I’d been.
When I opened my lips to tell him these things, no sound came out.
“Tell me how you discovered my name,” he commanded softly, staring at me from across the table. He’d stopped eating, though he had to be starving. I wondered if he thought any differently of me