They were grey. Unlike human eyes, Dakkari eyes were pitch black with only a ring of color for their irises. Most were gold or red. But his were grey.
That wasn’t all that was unusual about him. Dark blond hair spilled just past his shoulders. blond hair was rare, even among humans, at least in our village. On Dakkari…well, I’d never seen a Dakkari with hair that color.
He was handsome, I noted. It was a fact, like his blond hair or grey eyes. His jaw was sharply sculpted, the bridge of his nose flat, his proud cheekbones high. His eyes were unreadable as I looked into them, though he studied me as I studied him.
His beauty meant nothing. Kier was handsome as well, but he was cruel. This horde king was beautiful, yet he would kill me. I was strange and ugly and I was about to die. It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
For the first time, I thought that perhaps Ishouldfear the Dakkari more than I feared humans.
A Dakkari male stepped between us, breaking my gaze from the horde king, though he hovered just on the edge of my periphery.
“Drop your weapon,vekkiri,” the male said, his voice raspy and cold. His eyes were ringed in red, not grey. “Unless you intend to use it.”
I blinked, not sure if I was more surprised that he spoke the universal tongue or that I was clutching my last arrow in my palm, unable to remember when I’d grabbed it.
Staring down at it, I looked at the pitiful thing. Grounder blood still decorated the tip and I remembered the second grounder that had looked up at me last night from its burrow. Those three eyes…dark and silent and frozen.
As for the shimmering feathers at the end of the shaft…I ran my fingers over them, feeling their tickling softness, remembering the creature they’d come from. I’d called her Blue. I’d found her with a broken wing in the Dark Forest one summer, long ago. I’d brought her home, fed her pieces of my meals, and she lived with me for many years until I found her dead one morning without warning.
I’d cried for hours. It had been after Jana had died and Blue had made me feel a little less alone. I hadn’t cried since.
Before I dropped the arrow at his feet, I plucked Blue’s feathers from the end of the shaft and kept them tightly squeezed in my palm.
Then I looked up, tilting my head back to the sky. It would be a beautiful day, just on the cusp of the cold season before everything would turn grey and white and blue. Any day now the winds would come and they would change everything.
“We saw you hunting last night,vekkiri. Do you deny this?” the Dakkari male said.
“No,”I said, still looking up at the sky. I saw the faded outline of the crescent moon and I traced it with my eyes. “I killed a grounder last night.”
The Dakkari male paused, his lips downturned into a scowl when I looked back to him. Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to admit it, but it was the truth, wasn’t it?
“Do you know why we have come,vekkiri?”
I didn’t say anything.
“There have been reports thatkinnuherds have grown low,” he continued. “We suspect that your village has been hunting them, though you know our laws.”
My brow furrowed. Thekinnuhad moved on.
“You hunt them too,” I said to him, which was probably not the wisest thing to say before his horde king ordered my execution. But that was the beauty of it. I had nothing to lose.
But he could make your death slow and painful, I realized belatedly.
“There is a balance to giving and taking,” he growled, “but your village has only taken. Now, once the cold season ends, the horde that relied on thosekinnuwill go hungry due to your overhunting.”
Lips parting, my breath whistled from my lungs. “Go hungry?” I whispered, a flicker of disbelief and rage igniting in my chest. “What do you know of hunger?” My gaze locked on the horde king, sitting atop his black beast. “What doyouknow of it?”
Those grey eyes narrowed on me and warning bells went off in my head, but I didn’t care. Maybe I was mad, as mad as the villagers whispered.
I froze when the horde king swung his leg off his creature, dismounting with a surprising grace, though the impact of his weight seemed to shake the ground.
Sucking in a breath, I held it as he approached.
Show no fear, or he will know how weak you really are, my mind whispered.
Does it even matter? I wondered next. I was about to die. I could piss my pants in fear and I would be dead before it cooled. It didn’t matter.
The horde king came to a halt next to his messenger and my hands shook with that fear.
