look away from his lips when he said, “I have already learned that you will tell me whatever you wish to…and nothing that I want to know.”
My lips parted.
“I do know that you have not eaten in almost two days and that you must be hungry.”
He was…surprising.
Three times now, I’d delved into his mind but only twice had I gone deep into those emotions that burned through him like fire. I realized that I’d never had the need to alter anyone’s emotions twice. Once was enough and those that I did it to I usually never saw again.
However, I’d pushed into this horde king’s mind to experience his emotions multiple times now and I wondered what the consequences of that would be.
Because everything always had a price.
Turning my gaze from him, I looked at the landscape, tensing a little in his arms. To the east, I saw the unmistakable shadow of the Dead Mountain. We had entered the mountainous region of Dakkar. Sharp pillars of stone rose around us, like large daggers that had been thrust into the earth. Some were wider than others, some were so thin that I thought they would crumble with a stiff breeze.
An inkling of foreboding ran through me. The pillars only grew more numerous. The Dead Lands were littered with them.
“Your horde is so close to the Ghertun. Why settle them out here?”
“Ungira,” he rasped.
I didn’t know what that meant.
“This is where they live after the frost. They mate through the cold season and their numbers need to be culled.”
So ungira were a type of game.
“I don’t understand the Dakkari sometimes,” I said softly, peering around a pillar as we passed.
He grunted.
“You don’t allow humans to hunt because you say it takes from Kakkari. But you are allowed to do it?”
His nostrils flared, his gaze cutting to me. “When the Nrunteng settled here, they hunted opiril. You will never see one though. They hunted them to extinction, wiped out an entire species over the course of four years, though the opiril had been around since our beginning.”
I bit my lip.
“When vekkiri arrived, one of the first villages wiped out a small herd of wrissan that were meant to grow through the warmer season to feed my horde,” he rasped.
“You were a Vorakkar even when the first humans arrived?” I asked, surprised. How old was he? And when had he become a Vorakkar?
He exhaled sharply. “Nik, I was born in a horde. My father was a darukkar.”
A warrior, I knew now.
“With the wrissan gone, the horde fell. We had to return to Dothik or else we would have starved in a single moon cycle. We used the last of our stores on the journey to the city.”
His fists clenched on the reins, his golden skin whitening. He squeezed so hard, I thought the chain would disintegrate in his hand.
Without thinking, I placed my fingers over his fist, not knowing why I wanted to soothe him. His sigh was gruff but his hand loosened nonetheless. I stared down at his hands, at the myriad of raised scars there. His hands were calloused and rough. The hands of a warrior.
“It was never about hunting, kalles. It was always about a careful system that the Dakkari hordes have had in place for centuries, one that honors the beasts that roam our land, one that honors Kakkari. Outsiders do not understand our ways. They never will. They take but do not give.”
Carefully, I said, “Perhaps because the Dakkari have never given them the chance to. I was born here. On Dakkar. On the same planet that you were. This is the only home that I’ve known…and yet, I’d never heard about the overhunting or why we weren’t allowed to hunt.”
He grunted.
“There has to be a better life,” I whispered. “For everyone.”
“Our Dothikkar does not give weight to the lives of vekkiri. Or Killup, Nrunteng. Or Ghertun.”
“And what about the Vorakkars?” I asked quietly. “Do the Vorakkars care?”
His jaw tightened.
He didn’t answer and I turned my gaze away. I didn’t know why his answer mattered to me. What I asked didn’t matter at all, actually. Even if I wished there was a better life ahead, I didn’t actually believe there was one. Not for me at least.
My fate was to return to the Dead Mountain, to work there until I died. The Ghertun controlled me. They always would. I couldn’t survive for more than a month away from them, even if I managed to escape. The poison, the vovic, coursing