Before us, the sky was beginning to lighten. We hadn’t quite reached the end of theDothikkar’sroad but I could see where it gave way to the plains. The quiet, endless plains of Dakkar.
The only sound I heard was the clattering of hispyroki’staloned feet on the stone. And a slight rustling of a breeze through the trees.
It was almost…peaceful.
My shoulders sagged.
I licked my lips and said, keeping my voice hushed, “About a year ago, they attacked my village. They came at night. We had no warning.”
I could still hear the screams. I could stillfeelthe terror. I remembered my grandmother shuffling us into the hidden cellar, which my father had dug out years before. But just as my mother, my brothers, and my sister had dropped down into it, the door behind her had crashed open. I remembered the rasping sounds of their laughter, the wet sound of their blade as they plunged it into my grandmother. Her blood had dripped down, through the cracks in the floor.
Her sacrifice had meant nothing because the Ghertun had found us anyway. They’d killed my grandmother because she was too old to be of use to them.
“They slaughtered most of the village. They looted what food we had, the food we’d grown, pillaged our homes, and took some of us back to the Dead Mountain as slaves.”
“They chose you and your family?” he asked.
“Yes,” I whispered. “They—”
I frowned.
“I—I didn’t say anything about a family,” I said.
“I assumed,” he murmured and I stiffened when his hand came to brush my hair aside, draping it over one of my shoulders. “Why else would you do this if not to protect those you love? I know desperation better than most. I know the lengths to which we will go to protect our family. Or to honor them.”
I need to be careful with him, I thought.
He was intelligent, that much was obvious. He was a horde king. He was a leader. Of course he was intelligent. And observant.
“Why did they choose your family?” he asked next.
My lips pressed together.
Because I’d used every last bit of my gift to make them spare us. I’d used it on every last Ghertun that had attacked our village, persuading them to choose us, though I’d been passed out for days afterwards and the pain hadn’t subsided for weeks.
“I answered your question. I want my story now,” I said.
He chuffed out a sharp exhale that I felt whisper across my neck. His hand tightened on my hip.
For a moment, I thought I’d been fooled. Misled. Then he started, “Over a century ago, a horde warrior stole a heartstone during its transport to an outpost. It has been lost ever since and this is the heartstone we need to find.”
My stomach sank.Lost?
“There are only five in existence that we know of. Do you know what they do?”
“No.”
I hadn’t given much thought to the heartstone, only that Lozza wanted one desperately. I didn’t much care what it did.
“They possess great strength because it is said that Kakkari’spower lies within them. That they are fragments of her divine power.”
“And thisdarukkar…he stole it?”
“His wife was pregnant with their first child,” the horde king told me. “She had fallen ill and the horde’s healer believed that the child would be lost…as would his wife. The warrior would lose both in one single moment.”
My heart twisted in my chest, my brows lowering in understanding.
“He was desperate,” I whispered.
