I wasn’t surprised by what he was implying. “You’ve seen them your whole life?”
I knew his answer though he didn’t speak it.
For some reason, though I tried, the words wouldn’t come out. That he wasn’t plagued by madness but that he had a gift. Like me. Perhaps an unwelcome one.
His hand trailed beneath the fur, his fingers brushing me between my legs. A distraction? A diversion?
“Will you tell me something?” I whispered, my breasts growing heavy as familiar heat began to bloom from his expert touch.
“Neffar?” he grunted, stroking the seam of my sex, finding his seed still coating me when he dipped his finger inside.
“What happened?”
My question made him still. His eyes flashed up to mine.
“Nik,” he rasped, shifting.
For a brief, agonizing moment, I thought he would pull away from me again but he only moved so that he was hovering over me, pulling the furs away to reveal my nude body underneath. His hands went to my legs and spread them wide as he played with me. My lips parted, the familiar coils of desire and lust beginning to spiral.
“Not tonight,leikavi,” he rasped, looking down at me. His expression wasn’t angry—I’d dared to ask such a private question—and I knew he knew the one I’d asked. “You owe me a story first since I told you one this night.”
He leaned down to kiss me and when I gasped, he delved his tongue inside and stroked my own, making the world go hazy.
Against my lips, he murmured, “Besides, maybe you will dream it.”
My eyes shot open.
As he slowly began to press into my body, as my walls stretched tight around him and his chest filled and expanded with the pleasure, he rasped, “Though I pray to Kakkari that you do not.”
* * *
I did dream that night.But not what Davik feared. And it was a strange dream.
A very strange dream.
Davik and Devina were sitting together on a grassy hill, looking over a breathtaking view of valleys and waterfalls. I knew that I was dreaming a memory—hismemory—but I was myself. I wasn’t seeing it through his eyes—I was an outsider looking in. Though I stood right beside them, they didn’t see me.
I knew they weren’t in the eastlands, for this place was far too lush and beautiful to be in the east, and as I drank in the view before me—all loveliness in the silvery moonlight—a breeze brushed over my cheek and beside me, I saw Devina shiver.
“Here,” Davik said, removing the furs from his shoulders to place around his sister. “I told you to bring your shawl.”
Devina shot her brother a sheepish smile. They were young, though not quite as young as they’d been in theungiramemory I’d stolen. This was, perhaps, four or five years later. Davik had grown big, coming into his strength. And Devina’s impish features had turned lovely and beautiful.
It was strange seeing Davik without his scar on his cheek.
“I wish we wouldn’t leave,” Devina said. “I love this place. Do you thinkLommacan convince Father to leave the horde so we can settle in Rath Rowin’s outpost? I think it’s near, isn’t it?”
They spoke in Dakkari, but I could understand every word.
“Don’t speak such things,” Davik replied. “Father would be upset if he heard you say that.”
“I’m tired of travelling so much,” she said. The look Davik shot his sister told me that he didn’t feel the same and this was perhaps where the siblings differed. “I wish we could stay in one place. For the rest of our lives.”
“I want to be in a horde forever,” Davik replied. “It is in our blood to roam.”
Devina sighed and looked down at the valley of waterfalls. “We are coming of age. Perhaps I will marry soon. And hopefully he won’t be adarukkar. Perhaps a merchant. And we can live in Rath Rowin’s outpost together and have many children. Or maybe inDothik.”
Davik grunted. “Why would you want to live in that city? It’s too loud. Too…crowded.”
