My question was a whisper against his skin and I had the strangest sense that I could smile until I fell asleep.
It was later in the night but the fire in the basin was still burning hot. Davik had put more fuel onto it after another round of sex. And now, after our third, I was lying boneless and content against him, nestled in the crook of his arm, tracing his scars and the golden tattoos embedded into his skin.
Something was different about him. The horde king was almost…relaxed. As relaxed as I’d ever seen him, so different than the first time we’d had sex, when we’d fought and he’d stormed from thevolikiafter seeing whatever it was he’d seen in the shadows.
And he was touching me. Soft little caresses all over my back, up and down the bones of my spine. They were lazy touches but they made me tingle. A deep sadness had lodged in my chest briefly as he did, knowing that soon I would never experience this again. I would never lie next to a male like this again. It was only with him and it was only temporary.
He was gliding the backs of his claws across the upper cheeks of my bared backside but then he stilled at my question, only briefly before he thumbed the bones at my hips.
“They are creatures,” he told me, his voice roughened with his contentment. I wondered if he was tired, if he wanted to sleep, but then I remembered he’d been sleeping for three days. “Creatures that can fly over long distances.”
“Like birds,” I said, remembering my mother telling me about those. Creatures from the Old World, creatures that had thrived in the colonies as well.
He made a sound in his throat. “Perhaps. We use them sometimes to send messages.”
“Yourpujeraksaid one came fromDothik,” I commented, shifting my chin so I could look up at him. His red eyes flickered down to mine and his other hand came to brush my lips. The look he was giving me made my heart pound…and I was certain he could feel it.
That look made me feel like I was melting. Melting away like the frigid frost after the cold season.
I wanted to melt away until there was nothing left of me. Until I was this little pool on the ground, this little mess.
“Lysi,” he said. “Two of the otherVorakkarswere in the archives in the city, looking for whatever information they could about the lost heartstone.”
My heart thudded again but for an entirely different reason. Instead of excitement, I’d begun to feel dread whenever I thought of the heartstone. And because of that dread, I felt guilt because I thought of my family, still underneath the Dead Mountain, and I knew that the heartstone was our only hope…if Lozza kept his word.
“Did they find anything?” I whispered.
“Just what we already know,” he told me and I hated that I felt relief at that. I was a selfish woman, for wanting to lie here in his arms and not think about what would come next. “You spent a lot of time with Lokkaru while I was asleep. She didn’t mention anything?”
“No,” I said, swallowing. “She just mentioned more about love and how you nourish it and feed it. I asked her about her mother, about what she was like, and she said that was a ridiculous question because she thoughtIwas her mother. And when I told her I wasn’t, she stopped talking entirely and went to sleep.”
His jaw set and his chin tilted down, those soft lips morphing into a deep frown. “She gets worse as the days pass. The cold season was difficult for her. Before it, she was healthy and…there. Her mind was stronger.”
“You care for her,” I guessed.
“I care for all those in my horde,” he told me. “But Lokkaru…”
He went quiet for a brief moment.
“A few years ago, I was having a difficult time,” he told me. “The Ghertun had attacked a Nrunteng colony and when I journeyed there with a fewdarukkar, there were so many dead. We helped bury them, gave them back to the earth, back to Kakkari, but even still…that night I swore I saw them again. Rising up. Shadows in the night all around me.”
I tensed, which he could feel. Air whistled from his nostrils and he stroked me, as if to calm meandto calm himself.
“When I came back to the horde, Lokkaru saw me, saw something in my eyes, and she told me that sometimes the dead have a way of returning. After that, there were a couple days I don’t remember. Lost time,” he said gruffly. “But when I woke, she was tending to me.”
My heart ached for him, heavy and full in my chest.
“No one really knows what I see,” he admitted to me. “Very few in my horde do but she was the first being that I felt trulyunderstoodwhat haunts me.”
“Davik,” I whispered. “You’re not mad, you know that, right?”
His brow furrowed.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
He breathed in my words but I knew that he didn’t believe me.
“I have always been this way,” he said, dismissing my words. “My sister called them my demons. My demons in the dark. She was always afraid they would get her too.”
