“Isn’t this your horde?” I asked, remembering the Dakkari warriors spilling into the walls of my village. Just thinking about them made me tired, made me want to fall back into that dark place of sleep, where I felt nothing at all.
“A part of it,lysi.”
There were more?
My eyes slid shut, but my head swam when they did, spinning and spinning in circles. My stomach felt like it was filled with acid.
I was going to vomit. The pain made the nausea worse. Bile rose in my throat and I sucked in a lungful of air through my nostrils before my stomach heaved.
At the last moment, I turned my head and managed to miss vomiting all over the creature we rode. I heard the horde king curse and pull at the reins, slowing the beast to a halt.
I had nothing to throw up, not even water.
When I touched my forehead, I realized I was sweating, which explained the chill.
Something was wrong.
I felt him dismount and then he was standing next to his creature, looking up at me.
Fear struck me in that moment, a ridiculous reaction considering I’d just been speaking to him without it. In a flash, I remembered the bite of the whip and I flinched away when he reached for me.
The horde king frowned, a scar on the edge of his lip pulling down slightly. He ignored my flinch and pressed his clawed fingers to my cheek. I hadn’t been touched in so long that I froze, staring down at him.
“Vok,” he said under his breath. “You are burning.”
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered, turning my face away, fingers reaching for an arrow that wasn’t there. “Please.”
He growled, low in his throat, but his hand retreated. Instead, he jerked something away from the harness around the creature’s flank. It was a flask of animal hide. “Drink,” he ordered, thrusting it into my hands.
“What is it?” I asked, suspicion tinging my tone, even as another wave of nausea rose. Black spots appeared in my vision and I swayed.
“Water.”
I sniffed it before I took a sip. It was clean and fresh, possibly the cleanest water I’d ever had. I took a greedy mouthful, then another, feeling it soothe my scratchy throat.
When I realized that I had drained the whole skin, I gave it back to him and managed to meet his eyes.
Nik,nik, he’d murmured, right before the whipping had stopped. He’d looked at me like he’d seen an old spirit. I’d thought him cold and detached, but his expression then had been anything but, hungry demon that he was, bent on consuming my soul. He wasstilldoing it, right then. I felt it. What would happen when there was nothing left of me?
My vision went black for a moment. I heard him curse, I felt my body slide.
Then everything went dark.
* * *
The next time I woke,I smelled something strange. Pungent. Earthy.
My back was on fire. Twisting, I cried out, bucking like a frightened animal, feeling a foreign weight on me. I sensed others, wherever I was, and heard the Dakkari language, rasped in roughened tones, just above me.
“Be still,kalles,” camehisvoice. The demon horde king.
I was lying on my front, on a bed of soft furs. My ripped tunic had been torn away, my bare breasts pressing into the bed.
When I lifted the heavy weight of my head up, I saw him kneeling by my right shoulder, grasping both my wrists in a firm hold, restraining me to the furs.
Panic and pain lit my veins. Despite the fogginess in my head, I was lucid enough to realize I was half-naked in the presence of Dakkari males, being held down by their brutal horde king. And I’d heard the rumors of the Dakkari. Barbaric, dark things that were whispered about from village to village.
I thrashed against his hold harder and felt a rush of warmth on my back, followed by a sharp pain.
