Just the thought brought a lump to my throat. That he would sacrifice his desires for his sister’s happiness. Didn’t that speak to him as a male? One who’d had great ambitions of becoming adarukkar, just like his father?
And now…he was aVorakkar. Leading his own horde across the wild lands of Dakkar.
“I remember that night,” he said gruffly. “One of the last nights before everything went wrong.”
Dread pooled in my belly. Devina had said she’d wanted me to see that particular memory. Was that why?
“She…” I trailed off, wanting to tell him what had happened after they’d disappeared from the memory, only to have Devina take their place. A different Devina. An older one with blood pooling from her abdomen and her lips. I was a coward, however, and instead said, “She said that she wanted you to find a good female, one who would watch over you when she was gone.”
His jaw flexed and tightened. His brow furrowed and even I could see the pain blooming in his eyes from my words. But then my breath hitched when I noticed something else in his gaze…longing.
I was rattled by the realization that hewanteda female. A wife. So why hadn’t he taken one already?
Though that thought sent a surprising sizzle of jealousy to the pit of my belly—though I had no right to feel it—I knew that any female would be lucky to have him, despite his temper. Lokkaru had been right…he was the best of them. Others just couldn’t see it.
“Why…why haven’t you taken a wife yet, Davik?” I whispered to him, his cheek cool underneath my palm. “She wanted you to have one. Someone who would care for you.”
Like I do, I thought, the realization making a bubble of sadness well up in my chest.
Was that what Devina had meant when she’d begged me to help him? She said she wanted him tolet her gobecause she wanted to be freed. But how?
I couldn’t quite meet his eyes but I knew he was looking at meintently.
“The otherVorakkars…don’t they take wives? Isn’t it your duty to?”
“Lysi,” he murmured and I sighed when I felt his hand come to my hair, when he ran his long, steady fingers through it. “But I decided long ago that I would not.” He added softly, “That I could not.”
“Why?”
I gathered the courage to meet his gaze. I suspected there were many females among his horde—beautiful, strong, bold Dakkari females—who would be happy to fill the position.
His nostrils flared. That longing in his eyes had never faded and the longer he looked at me, the more that look made my heart pound.
“For many reasons,” he said. “Reasons that we will not speak about tonight, however. Reasons that are difficult to explain.”
Fair enough, I thought but I couldn’t stop the disappointment from filling me.
“Maybe you should reconsider those reasons,” I found myself saying. Devina had wanted it, after all, right? And I was trying tohelp, though the words felt like blades on my tongue.
“Was that the end of the memory?” he asked, steering the subject back on course.
There was more, of course. What had come afterwards.
But I knew he would be angry and upset if I told him. Perhaps even disturbed. His deadtwinsister, two halves of the same whole, had come to me in a dream—just like Lokkaru experienced with her father and perhaps even her mother, though she could not remember.
How could I tell him what I’d experienced when I didn’t even understand it yet myself?
Feeling a lump lodge in my throat, I said, “Yes.”
He looked at me carefully. “Why did it upset you so much? That memory? When you woke, I feared you had seen…” he trailed off.
“I—I don’t know,” I stumbled. “I just…sometimes I can feel the emotions from a memory. That memory…it felt sad.”
At least I could tell himthattruth.
“I remember being irritated in that particular memory. Not sad.”
“Because of Jeva?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. The female he’d apparently been ‘tupping in the forest.’ A female even his mother knew about.
