“No,” I breathed.
Something reflected in the moonlight. Eerie, watchful black eyes met our gazes, unflinching. Five pairs of eyes total, eyes that were nothing more than vertical slits. Their teeth were razor-sharp, like blades, and yellow, stained from the roots they so enjoyed gorging themselves on. Their legs, bent heavily at the knee joint, just like apyroki’s, shifted as they tracked us and I swore I could hear their bones creaking in the quiet.
A pack of Ghertun were watching us from within the shadowed darkness.
Bile rose in my throat, that familiar, bitter fear returning to me in a rush, as if it had never left.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Let me speak to them,” Vienne said, her voice soft and shaking. “Please!”
We had just made it back to the encampment. As we did, I bellowed a war cry to mydarukkars, loud and echoing, and in an instant, they were racing from theirvolikis, dozens and dozens in a rush.
“Nik,” I snarled down at her. If she hadn’t been with me, I would’ve gone after the Ghertun right when I’d spotted them spying in the darkness. How long had they been watching us? Watchingher?“Never.”
“Davik, you don’t understand,” she said. “Please!I need to—”
“Nik,I do not understand and I never will,” I told her, shoving her into the arms of a warrior guard. To him, in Dakkari, I said, “Do not let her from your sight. Take her back to myvolikiand stay with her until I return. Find another guard to stand watch outside.”
“Lysi, Vorakkar,” the guard, Urik,replied.
Vienne’s gaze flared in disbelief, mingling with her fear and her panic. She obviously feared the Ghertun—fear that made me want to kill them, so she would never feel that kind of fear again—and yet, she begged me to see them? Speak with them? For what purpose?
Not now, I thought, watching as Urik began to drag her away, though she struggled in his grip. There was a Ghertun scouting party that we needed to track down and eliminate. I would deal with myleikavi’sanger later. Right now, the horde was in danger.
Still, I watched her until she was lost in a sea ofdarukkarsas they raced to theirpyrokis, remembering the way she’d trembled with barely leashed fury as I told her about Mala. One of my darkest secrets, now bared to her forever.
Hedna found me. “What is it?”
He was still fastening his sword to the belt around his hips.
I shook my head, erasing all memory of Mala. I was aVorakkarnow, not a young male frightened and alone inDothik.
That was my past. And I took solace in the knowledge it was gone forever.
“Ghertun,” I informed Hedna.
Ghertun who had seen her. Ghertun who knew that she washere, among my horde, I amended quietly.
They needed to be eliminated, no matter what.
His lips pressed together.
“What are we waiting for?”
* * *
“One is alive,”adarukkarreported to me, eyeing me because I was dripping in green blood, blood that had splattered across my chest and across my cheek when I’d beheaded one of the Ghertun.
I grunted, scowling, hardly capable of words. Whenever I killed, I grew quiet. Like I knew I was just adding to the shadows that I would see. My own private little army of the dead.
“Your orders,Vorakkar?”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I stepped over another dead Ghertun, stalking over to the small group ofdarukkarthat had assembled close by. In the middle of them, surrounded by the points of their swords and lying on the ground, was the last of the scouting party. A breathing Ghertun with green blood rolling from the corner of his mouth.
Mydarukkarsfell away when I approached.
“Rothi kiv,” I growled at them.Leave us. I wanted to speak with this Ghertun alone.
