She is the strongest of us all, I thought, regret and grief mingling with my need for her.
I didn’t care if I had to beg. I would go to her on my hands and knees, though aVorakkarkneeled for no one.
ThisVorakkarwill kneel for hisMorakkari,I thought, determined.
I would win mythissieback. I had to.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The smell of my own vomit made nausea rise again and I dry-heaved over the wooden basin. There was nothing left for me to throw up. I only ate my carefully rationed food in the early evening, once I was certain the sickness had passed.
When my stomach felt settled, I wiped my mouth on the nearby cloth and sank back on my heels, staring at the wooden wall of the home I’d lived in for countless years of my life. Upon my return to my village, I’d found no one had taken it over, probably because it was in serious disrepair and let in much of the cold. My table and chest had been looted, however, leaving only a broken chair behind. The hole-ridden old furs from my makeshift bed had disappeared. Even my bow was gone.
It was smaller and colder than I remembered, but over the last two and a half weeks, I’d tried to fix it up as best as I was able to. I took snow from outside, melted it, and scrubbed the floors and walls, erasing years of grime and dirt. I ripped some of my pelt away and used the pieces to patch some of the holes in the wood that let in the worst of the draft. I could do nothing about a fire, however. Since the Dark Forest was frozen over, I had no fuel to use and no starter, not to mention a proper basin.
Still, it kept me busy, at least for the first few days after returning to my village, which had already created quite a stir.
I ignored the questions, the stares, the whispers. I’d been stared at my whole life, so it was nothing new. I’d kept my head down, spoke to no one, and went about my life, as I had always done before.
After living among the Dakkari horde, where I’d had friends, companionship, purpose, and a true home, I felt even more isolated, even more lonely than I’d ever remembered being. Because now, I knew what I was missing. Because now, I knew what true happiness felt like and losing it was debilitating.
Staring into the dirtied basin—feeling some of the numbness that had shrouded me for two and half weeks slip away in favor of fear—I knew that soon, everything would change.
The morning sickness had come even before I’d left the encampment, though at that time, I hadn’t even remotely suspected what I knew to be true now. It had only happened twice and I’d forgotten about it completely until I arrived back at my village. Two days in, I’d had nausea since waking. Thinking it was just heartache, that it was just missinghim, I wrote it off. Until the next morning, it returned with a vengeance. And the next morning…and the next morning…and the next morning after that.
Two weeks in, it hadn’t let up. Though I emptied my stomach in the mornings and ate very little in the evenings to extend my rations as long as possible, my belly was growing rounder, my breasts fuller. It was almost alarming how quickly my body was changing, until I realized that the Dakkari might have a quicker gestation period than humans.
I was pregnant.
And the father of my child had broken my heart. The father of my child would claim another female as his wife…and I would likely never see him again. He would never know he even had a son or a daughter.
I was too numb to truly feel anything about the pregnancy other than dread. Dread and fear because I didn’t want to raise a child in this village. I didn’t want my child to know hunger and cold. It was the last thing I wanted.
But it was done. I was already pregnant. I had to accept it.
And sitting there, staring into the dirty basin full of my vomit, feeling the chilly draft weaving through my poorly patched holes, I knew that I could not subject my child to this life. I thought of Grigg, who controlled the credits, who controlled our food. I thought of Kier, who’d sneered when he’d seen me walk through the village gates. I thought of the whispers and wondered how the village would treat a half-human, half-Dakkari child.
Not well.
Many blamed the Dakkari for our way of life. Would they take out their anger and frustration and fear on my child?
I couldn’t allow that to happen.
Something sparked in me right then, the first flicker of strong emotion I’d allowed myself to feel. It was determination. Determination to provide my unborn child with a better life than I’d had. It was the need toprotect.
But how?
Another horde, I thought, the answer coming easily.
Odrii had told me that anotherVorakkarhad taken a human as hisMorakkari. The horde king of Rath Kitala. Until now, I hadn’t realized that Dakkari and humans could create offspring together, but if I was pregnant…it was very likely the humanMorakkariwas pregnant as well, or had even delivered a child already.
Would she help me? Our children would be different from all the rest, but it was likely they would find comfort in one another. A Dakkari horde with a human queen would be more accepting of a half-Dakkari child, certainly more than my village would be.Safer.
I could be useful to them too. I knew how to craft arrows of Dakkari steel. Before I’d left, mymitrihad just begun teaching me the technique for crafting swords. If the horde had a weapons master, I could assist them. If not, I would learn whatever skill was required of me to be of use.
There was only one problem, however. Finding them. The realization made my shoulders slump.
It was almost impossible for me to know where a specific horde would be. All I knew was that Seerin was leading his horde south after the thaw. I knew nothing of Rath Kitala’s whereabouts.
