not understand and I never will,” I told her, shoving her into the arms of a warrior guard. To him, in Dakkari, I said, “Do not let her from your sight. Take her back to my voliki and stay with her until I return. Find another guard to stand watch outside.”
“Lysi, Vorakkar,” the guard, Urik, replied.
Vienne’s gaze flared in disbelief, mingling with her fear and her panic. She obviously feared the Ghertun—fear that made me want to kill them, so she would never feel that kind of fear again—and yet, she begged me to see them? Speak with them? For what purpose?
Not now, I thought, watching as Urik began to drag her away, though she struggled in his grip. There was a Ghertun scouting party that we needed to track down and eliminate. I would deal with my leikavi’s anger later. Right now, the horde was in danger.
Still, I watched her until she was lost in a sea of darukkars as they raced to their pyrokis, remembering the way she’d trembled with barely leashed fury as I told her about Mala. One of my darkest secrets, now bared to her forever.
Hedna found me. “What is it?”
He was still fastening his sword to the belt around his hips.
I shook my head, erasing all memory of Mala. I was a Vorakkar now, not a young male frightened and alone in Dothik.
That was my past. And I took solace in the knowledge it was gone forever.
“Ghertun,” I informed Hedna.
Ghertun who had seen her. Ghertun who knew that she was here, among my horde, I amended quietly.
They needed to be eliminated, no matter what.
His lips pressed together.
“What are we waiting for?”
“One is alive,” a darukkar reported to me, eyeing me because I was dripping in green blood, blood that had splattered across my chest and across my cheek when I’d beheaded one of the Ghertun.
I grunted, scowling, hardly capable of words. Whenever I killed, I grew quiet. Like I knew I was just adding to the shadows that I would see. My own private little army of the dead.
“Your orders, Vorakkar?”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I stepped over another dead Ghertun, stalking over to the small group of darukkar that had assembled close by. In the middle of them, surrounded by the points of their swords and lying on the ground, was the last of the scouting party. A breathing Ghertun with green blood rolling from the corner of his mouth.
My darukkars fell away when I approached.
“Rothi kiv,” I growled at them. Leave us. I wanted to speak with this Ghertun alone.
If my darukkars were surprised, they didn’t show it. On my periphery, I saw Hedna lingering, however.
“You too, pujerak,” I said, keeping my gaze on the vertical slits of the Ghertun’s eyes. They closed from left to right, not top to bottom, a translucent film covering them for a brief moment before it peeled back with every blink.
“We can take him back to the horde,” Hedna said quietly.
“Nik.”
This Ghertun would not set foot inside my horde. This Ghertun would not get close to her.
Hedna knew I would not be swayed and he, too, fell away, giving me and the Ghertun privacy. His breathing was ragged in his chest, his hand pressed to a wound in his abdomen, trying to keep the blood inside.
“You spy for Lozza?” I asked him quietly.
Those eyes blinked slow, that film appearing before peeling back.
“Tell me what I wish to know, Ghertun, and I might be persuaded to let you scurry back to your mountain.”
A laugh bubbled from his throat, wet and scratchy. “You?” he asked, his tone incredulous, even this close to death. “I know who you are.”
My jaw tightened.
The Mad Horde King.
“Then that is all the more reason to speak,” I rasped, narrowing my gaze on him. “Don’t you think?”
My dagger flashed in the moonlight as I cleaned it off on his skin, the edge of the blade just pricking his scaled flesh. His breathing quickened. For the first time, a flash of uncertainty flickered in his gaze.
“Were you looking for her?” I asked, my tone deadened and even.
“Who?”
My head cocked slightly and I grinned down at him. My teeth flashing made him blink faster, his breathing going rapid again as he desperately eyed the dagger in my hands.
“The female?” the Ghertun asked, his voice shaking. “No.”
I remained silent, so he would know that answer wasn’t enough to slake my thirst.
He continued quickly. “Our king just told us to watch for her. We followed her to the city,