He was awall, I realized. A wall of muscle and strength and power. I couldn’t see anything beyond his broad shoulders and the ridged lines of his chest and abdomen. He was a block in my vision. He was all I saw.
“I know hunger well,vekkiri,” the horde king said, his voice dark and rich and cold.
Purposefully, I avoided his eyes, keeping my gaze on the ground. Jana had told me a story once, of demons that could take your soul if you looked too closely and for too long.
And this horde king…he was a demon made flesh.
“Identify the other hunters,” he rasped, “so you will not be alone in your punishment.”
I’d never huntedkinnu, for their flesh was too hard to pierce with simple arrows and my level of strength. Kier, Tyon, Sam, and Ronal had hunted thekinnu.
Though I owed them nothing—though Icertainlyowed Kier nothing—I kept my mouth shut. Ronal had a young daughter and Tyon had just taken a bride in summer. I liked his bride, Piper, and I didn’t want to make a widow out of her.
“Nik?” the horde king rasped. “You will not say? I know you did not hunt them alone.”
Still, I said nothing.
“Very well,vekkiri,” he said. My hands began to tremble at my sides, the blanket of numbness beginning to slip. “This is what I must do. These are the laws of theDothikkarand Kakkari demands blood as payment.”
He said the words quietly, as though to himself, as though in reminder.
Kakkari? What did their goddess have to do with my execution?
When I looked up, I saw his jaw was hardened, his face cold and unyielding. But he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were unseeing, far away.
“Bnuru kissari,darukkar,” he called out suddenly, making me flinch. It echoed around the clearing and I heard movement behind him.
“Kissari, Vorakkar?” the messenger said beside him, seemingly surprised by whatever the horde king had ordered.
“Lysi,” the horde king growled, his tone welcoming no more questions.
Another Dakkari male appeared in my vision and the horde king stepped away. A hulking, massive horde warrior, with dark hair and gold eyes, with gold clasps in his hair and a deep scar running down his side, came forward.
In his left hand was a coiled whip.
Realization hit me, along with sickening dread. He would have me whippedbeforehe killed me?
“Face your village and kneel,vekkiri,” the horde king ordered.
This was it.
Clutching Blue’s feathers in my damp palm, I turned. I faced my village and I kneeled, though I felt like I wasn’t in my own body at all. I wondered who the grounder I’d killed last night would feed.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment.
One,my heartbeat in my ears. Two, the ringing sound of a sword being unsheathed. Three, silence from the village.
Because the silence was as loud as a scream.
Footsteps approached and I opened my eyes. They were the horde king’s, but he stopped in front of me, a few paces away, his back to the villagers.
Then the warrior approached, his footfalls vibrating the ground around me, little pebbles digging into my knees. My eyes opened, but I saw nothing as I felt his sword touch the back of my neck.
My numbness left me when I needed it most and I began to tremble.
I don’t want to die.
The thought came suddenly, fiercely. Tears pricked my eyes but I looked up at the sky and saw another merchant vessel, as faded as the crescent moon, pass Dakkar. I wondered where it was going, who and what it carried.
