“Help me,” he said, his hand going for a sword that mydarukkarhad already taken from him. He was weaponless, dying. He knew he had nothing left to offer. “Help me and I will tell you how to save her.”
He lies, I thought.
“I—I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not by a Dakkari,” he spat that word as if it was sour on his tongue.
“Then tell me what I want to know,” I hissed.
“It will take her quickly once it sets in.” He began to laugh again. “You will watch her die.”
My nostrils flared, something shifting in my chest, something unfamiliar.Panic.Fear, for someone other than myself. The last time I’d felt it…it had been when I’d watched my sister die.
Nik.
“What are you talking about? What will take her?” I growled. “Tell me—”
The Ghertun went limp, his laugh dying in his throat all at once, as if that last, lingering effort had drained him of his life force. The film covered his eyes, though his eyelids remained open. No more blood pushed from his lips.
Dead.
I wouldn’t see him in the shadows, I knew. He wouldn’t haunt me.
But his words certainly would.
You will watch her die.
I hadn’t delivered his mortal wound but I wish I had.
“Burn them,” I bellowed to Hedna. “Burn them all.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
As I paced the floor of Davik’svoliki, I felt anger choking me.
Anger.
It was bitter in my throat, tasting of bile and frustration. I had felt it earlier, on Davik’spyrokias he told me about Mala and his abuse when he was younger. But this was different. This was angerathim, notfor him.
That might have been my only chance, I thought again as my bare feet treaded over the plush rugs and carpets lining the domed home.
Mala had had nothing to do with how he’d treated me after he’d spied the Ghertun. That had been allDavik, theVorakkar, the horde king who expected his orders to be followed.
He hadn’t even listened to me. He’ddecidedfor me, turned me down before I could give him a reason to let me speak with the Ghertun. I wore their mark on my flesh. They wouldn’t needlessly kill a slave…and they had to know who I was. What Lozza had sent me to do.
They might have even had a dose of the poison—both my antidote, for more time, and my doom—of thevovicthat they grew deep in the Dead Mountain. The Ghertun smoked it. It was a drug. A relaxing drug and harmless to them. But when it was heated and compressed and the oil was extracted and left to age, its properties changed. The process made it deadly, so that evenGhertunslaves were vulnerable to it, though less so.
Most who owned slaves always had a dose of thevovicon them. Just in case.
That might have been my only chance.
A lucky coincidence. Or at least a lucky encounter, though I’d detested seeing a reminder of the race that kept me a prisoner.
Davik hadn’t seen it that way. He’d dragged me through the encampment. He’d thrown me into the arms of a guard, who stood watching me pace from the entrance of thevoliki,and I knew another one was stationed just outside the door.
He’d made a decision for me without listening to me at all.
Which was why I’d been rightnotto give him my promise. The promise he’d asked of me, not to enter his mind anymore.
This is why, I knew. Because earlier this evening, my will had not been my own. He’d taken it from me.
