I blew out a sharp exhale, unused to my orders being ignored completely.
“Why did you do it?” she asked softly, not meeting my eyes. Instead, she looked at themrikro, who paused when he saw us standing there.
She could be asking many things. Why did I punish her? Why did I take her? Why did I keep her in myvoliki, knowing it would spark rumors among my horde? Why did I want so desperately to save her?
I decided to pretend she was asking the obvious question.
“Because under myDothikkar’slaws, you had to be punished,” I told her, squeezing my fists at my sides. In my mind’s eye, I remembered the way her body jerked when that first lash fell over her exposed, delicate skin. She hadn’t cried out. She hadn’t made a sound.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, finally looking back at me. “Why did you stop at three?”
I stilled. The way she looked at me right then…her gaze was indifferent. I expected fear or perhaps disgust, but she gave me neither.
I lied. “Because you would not have lasted through the fifth.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “How many did you last through?”
She’d seen my back then, my own scars. And for once, my tongue failed me. I couldn’t answer her.
“Did you think my body would break first, or my mind?” she asked, tilting her head, as if she was curious how I would respond.
I was unable to read her. I couldn’t understand why she was asking these things. One thing I did know was that I regretted lying to her now. Part of me wanted to see how she would react if I told her the truth…that I had stopped because of Kakkari. That I had stopped because I recognized this female as mine.
Monster, my mind whispered.
“I have a strong mind,” she informed me, her voice smooth and light. “You might not think so. Many might not think so. But my mind would’ve withstood anything you gave me. My body would’ve broken long before.”
“I believe that,kalles,” I told her quietly.
Her hair was wet, I realized, curling black over her shoulders to the middle of her back. Her small eyes were dark, tilted slightly up at the corners, and her upper lip was larger than her bottom one. She was small and too thin. She didn’t look like she could lift a bow, much less draw her arrow back. But I’d seen the evidence of her skill firsthand.
She seemed satisfied with my answer and when apyrokiventured close to the fence, she turned her head to look at it. They were curious creatures as well, and I watched as she held her hand out to it without hesitation or fear. I watched with even more disbelief as thepyrokinudged the palm of her hand with its sharp snout, smelling her skin.
“Hello,” she whispered to it. It towered over her, but she didn’t seem afraid. I studied her again, my chest pulling tight with something I didn’t want to recognize.
“Have you encountered Dakkari before?” I asked, watching her and thepyrokiclosely.
“From afar, as they rode past our village on these creatures,” she responded.
“You do not seem to fear the Dakkari.”
“Should I?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me, frowning. “I’ve never had reason to.”
“I whipped you,” I rasped. “You believed you were walking to your execution and you say you never had reason to fear the Dakkari?”
“Your horde warrior whipped me,” she said, her brows furrowing in a glare.
“Under my orders!” I growled, my normally tame temper rising again.
“Do you wish for me to be angry with you?” she asked. “Do you wish for me to hate you or to cower in fear whenever you are close?”
Nik, I did not wish for any of those things, though I deserved all of them.
“I want to understand you,” was what I told her. “Because I do not know what to make of you.”
She sighed. She looked back to thepyroki. “I do not respond to things as others might. People in my village…it made them uncomfortable. They like it when you respond like them because it makes you predictable. Somehow predictability means you are safer to be around.”
I heard the sadness in her voice as surely as I heard the pounding of my heartbeat in my own ears.
