My gaze connected with my sister’s shadowed eyes, my own. Their red color was faded, however. She was smiling at me but it was sad.
“You know better,” my sister, Devina, said, her voice nothing but a whisper threading through my ears.
You know better. She’d always told me that, after I lashed out, or did something our mother didn’t like. She’d always been the calm one of us, level-headed and pragmatic, whereas I embodied turmoil and trouble.
Then it happened just like it always did. Black blood began to bloom underneath the light dress she wore, spreading over her abdomen. Bile rose in my throat, my heartbeat thundering in my ears.
“Pyroth,” I breathed, pleading.Stop. But I didn’t know if it was meant for the blood spreading rapidly or for myself. “Hanniva.”
“Davik!” came my name. My sister’s mouth had sounded it out silently but the voice had been Vienne’s.
I felt hands on my face, over myscar. Vienne was in front of me, trying to get my attention.
Bellowing, I jerked out from beneath her hands, tearing my gaze away from my dead sister, feeling that constant dull ache in my chest where Devina’s life force should’ve been.
It isn’t her,I thought desperately, my temple beginning to pound.It should be. She should be here. But she isn’t. Gone. Lost.
Taken.
I needed to kill Jarun and Ollisan all over again. Those sons of whores. I wouldn’t berightuntil I felt their blood on my hands again. To this day, theDothikkarhad never known what happened to them. No one but me did.
My eyes were unseeing as I pushed away from Vienne. She stumbled back, words I couldn’t understand falling from her lips. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight. When I left myvoliki, when I felt the cool night air brush through my hair and across my face, I sucked in a deep lungful, needing to get it into my lungs.
I laughed, the sound desperate and humorless, echoing across the encampment.
That night, when I’d still been deep inside Vienne, as she was rocking her hips against me so sweetly, beginning to tighten around me, with her soft moans in the air, looking at me like she’d found something utterlywonderful…I thought I’d found a semblance of peace. I’d felt more centered, more in control than I ever had before.
She’d smiled as she found her pleasure, pure and delighted and innocent…and I’d felt something give and loosen within me at the sight. A surrendering of something I’d never given a female before.
Just this night, I thought I could berightfor Vienne? I thought I could be someone different, someone gentle for her?
This is who I am, I knew.
The Mad Horde King, who saw shadows that spoke. The Mad Horde King, who couldn’t fuck a female without rememberingher,with her cloying scent and seeking hands, who had once fed on my desperation and grief like a parasite. The Mad Horde King, who hadbutcheredthe ones responsible for his family’s murders, who had grinned as their blood dripped from his hands.
My laugh died.
I was the Mad Horde King and I would never be anything different.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chills ran down my arms.
The back of my neck prickled.
I stared at thevoliki’sentrance and then I heard a burst of Davik’s laugh before it slowly faded away.
His footsteps retreated and then he was gone.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around my naked body and slowly turned to face the shadowed section of thevoliki. My eyes tracked over the space that Davik had stared at intently.
Because sometimes I see beings that are not there.
That was what he told me when I asked him why he was called the Mad Horde King.
Yet…I wasn’t quite sure that those beingsweren’tthere.
Therewasenergy there. Ifeltit. Isensedit. I gathered the energy of my own gift, imagining that it filled the space in front of me before I pressed it forward, seeking, searching slowly and hesitantly for something that I wasn’t entirely sure Iwantedto find.
