His gaze narrowed. “To save you.”
“You should have left me,” I whispered, licking my dry lips.
“You would have died,” he told me, his jaw ticking. With irritation? With regret? With impatience? I didn’t know. I couldn’t read him and usually I was very good at reading people.
“Wasn’t that the point?” I couldn’t help but ask, remembering the way I felt before I knelt on the ground of my village, thinking it was an execution.
“Nik,” he bit out. “I told you before. I was never going to kill you,kalles.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t know how I felt about that knowledge, but I heard the truth in his voice. If he wanted me dead, I would be. But why had he taken me from my village? Why did he bring me here?
I didn’t think I wanted to know. One possibility flitted across my mind, but it was ridiculous. I’d heard of Dakkari males taking human females from villages before. But I was not the taking kind. I was small and pale and strange-looking. If anyone from our village was the taking kind, it would have been Viv. She was beautiful.
“What doeskallesmean, demon king?” I whispered, my eyes popping open when I heard the fire spark again. The fire was beautiful too. A swirl of red and orange and gold and all the shades in between.
I almost smiled because it was so beautiful…and I liked beautiful things. Like a full moon, all round and silvery, or the shimmering pink fog that sometimes settled over the land on a cold morning.
But my eyes would not remain away from him for long. He was beautiful too.
“Kallesmeans female in my language,” he told me after a brief pause.
I thoughtkalleswas a pretty word, but I would certainly never tell him that.
His jaw ticked and again I couldn’t read him. “Demon king?” he rasped.
It took me a moment to realize I had evencalledhim ‘demon king.’
“You think me a demon?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, my fingers stroking the furs underneath me. I didn’t know what beast they came from, but it was the softest thing I’d ever felt. “Jana told me about demons. She told me when you look too closely, they steal your soul.”
He went still. He even seemed to stop breathing. Those grey eyes burned into me.
“And I felt you taking it,” I whispered, my breath quickening in fear, remembering that sensation. “Ifeltit.”
So why was I still staring into his eyes?
Swallowing, my gaze dropped to his chest and I traced one edge of a tattoo until I ended my perusal at his side, where I saw a deep scar. A scar so deep it puckered his skin inwards.
I was a curious being—sometimes to a fault—but even I knew not to ask how he’d received such a scar.
“So, Kakkari has shown you as well,” he said softly, that brutal voice cutting into me, making my chest tighten. He said it with an almost speculative tone.
“Shown me what?” I asked, my gaze drifting over to the bath again, wanting it. When I moved slightly, my back tugged and that icy numbness lifted for a moment, my lungs squeezing from the throbbing pain.
A noise whistled from his slitted nostrils. He didn’t answer my question.
Instead, he said, “I am no demon,thissie. Because if I am one, then you are one too.”
I frowned, surprised by the way his words dragged something fierce and angry from me.
“I want to leave,” I said, glaring at him across the domed tent. “You should not have taken me from my village.”
“You will not leave,kalles,” he said, his tone harsh but firm. I tensed when he rose from his seated position. “Not until I say you can.”
My breath whooshed from my lungs in disbelief, in confusion.
He turned, heading towards the entrance of the tent. I was about to argue, about to push up from the furs. Then the words died in my throat.
