He blew out a long breath that ruffled my hair, his arm tightening around me.
“I was frightened too, Luna,” he confessed softly, his voice guttural and raw. “I have never been so frightened in my entire life.”
My chest squeezed because I heard the truth in his voice.
“Promise me you’ll stop thinking you failed me, Arokan,” I said, seeing his irises contract at my words. “Promise me.”
His jaw clenched as he said, “I will do my best,kalles. That I can promise you.”
It would have to be good enough. It would take time to move past this, to move on. It had both shaken us, I knew, but I knew that it would make us stronger. I didn’t doubt that.
I took his hand again. I leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips and then I pulled back and said, “I love you, Arokan. No matter what, I love you. I regret not telling you sooner.”
He leaned his forehead against mine. His voice deepened as he said, “I love you too, my Luna,rei kassikari, rei Morakkari. I think I have from the very first moment.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Two days later, when the sun sank just below the horizon, Hukan was standing before the raised dais, before Arokan and I.
Night was falling. Her judgment was coming. The horde was assembled, the mood somber, the air so thick with tension, with anger, with disbelief, that I felt it as tangible as a touch against my skin. It weighed heavy in my lungs as I sat beside Arokan.
I was dressed in gold, my shoulders and thighs bare. On my skin, for all the hordes’ eyes to see, was the Ghertun marking that had been burned into me. The healer had offered to cut it from my skin, so as not to be reminded.
However, I wore my burn like a badge now. I didn’t want to erase what had happened simply because it hurt me to think of it. It had happened. I accepted it. I moved on.
Just like Arokan’s scars, it had become a part of me the moment they’d burned it into my skin. I wore the marking of an enemy and it would forever be a reminder. I accepted that too.
But it also reminded me that I survived. I came out the other side, not the five Ghertun who had taken me.
And now, Hukan would answer for her betrayal. She was standing there, unchained, dressed in nothing but a white shift dress, her feet bare, her hair undone.
Arokan had just finished recounting her crimes for all the horde to hear. He had finished revealing her conspiracy with the Ghertun to take me to their king when he said to her, “You have betrayed us all, Hukan of Rath Kitala.”
I couldn’t help but flinch when he used her given name, a public disgrace. It pained Arokan, I knew it did. I wanted nothing more than to reach over and take his hand, but I was his queen and I had to be strong. I would sit beside him as he did his duties asVorakkar.
“She is not Dakkari,” Hukan hissed. “I did this foryou. It was always for you.”
Arokan’s hands clenched into his throne, but otherwise, he held his emotions in check.
“She is Dakkari,” he argued, his voice deep and hard. “As is the child she carries in her womb at this very moment.”
A murmuring went through the horde and Hukan’s face paled. I jerked my head over at Arokan before I looked at my brother from across the way. I hadn’t told him just yet, but he inclined his head when he saw me watching, as if to say it was alright. He was watching Hukan’s trial with Mirari standing right next to him.
“A child,” Hukan said softly. Her eyes flashed to me. To Arokan. “I—I did not know there was a child.”
“Mychild,” Arokan growled. “A child of Rath Kitala, yourownline. You betrayed my queen and you betrayed your ownblood.”
Hukan was shaken by the news. For all her hatred of me, it seemed she held no hatred for my child. Because my child would share her blood, the blood of my husband, of his mother.
Before Arokan delivered his judgment, I knew what it would be. He’d told me before the trial had begun. Dakkari were never executed for their crimes. Instead, they were to face the judgment of Kakkari. They were exiled into the wild lands, never again to have the comforts and security of a horde. They were given a single dagger with which to live or to die. If Hukan somehow reached an outpost, it was up to their leader to allow her admittance or not.
A lonely, uncertain, and harsh existence awaited her.
Tears pricked my eyes thinking about it. Not for Hukan’s sake, but for Arokan’s. This was a female he’d grown up loving and respecting. A female that had looked after him after his own parents had been murdered by the Ghertun. Yet, she’d conspired with them to betray me, to betray him.
I didn’t feel sorry for her. She’d made her choice. She hadn’t denied it when she’d been confronted and two Dakkari had been murdered because of her.
My heart ached only for Arokan, for the difficult decision that he’d had to make and the grief that would always haunt him because of it. He would always live with this decision.
