I smiled, knowing what he told me was a gift, an offering. Masters were almost as secretive about theirpyrokis’ names as their own among the Dakkari, or at least that was what Lokkaru had mentioned to me a couple days ago when we’d passed the enclosure and watched thepyrokisfor a few hours. Lokkaru had enjoyed watching them.
“Nillima,” I whispered. It sounded familiar. “I think you said her name when thejrikkiahad come. I remember it.”
After Davik brought her out from the enclosure, I reached out to touch thepyroki’sneck. However, she made a sharp sound and trotted away from my touch, huffing out a puff of air that was like smoke from her nostrils.
I shook my head. “She still hates me, I see.”
“She has always been jealous,” Davik told me. “She is a selfish, possessive creature.”
His hands came to my waist and he lifted me onto Nillima’s back before climbing up behind me. The position was so familiar that I swore I felt my inner thighs give a throb of protest, remembering thepyrokiburn that had come from riding on Nillima’s back for too long, all the way fromDothikto the horde of Rath Drokka.
“You should get used to riding on apyroki,leikavi,” he rasped quietly in my ear. “Though I promise, we will not go far.”
His words made me pause. Why would I need to get used to riding on apyroki? I would not be here much longer, after all.
Unless—
No, I thought, firmly keeping my mind from going to that hopeful place. Because it could never happen, would never happen.
“Why did you choose her?” I asked, in an effort to distract myself from my dangerous thoughts.
“It is more like she chose me,” he rumbled, leading Nillima quietly through an entrance close to the enclosure, one separate from the front. I realized it was an easy exit fordarukkarsor hunters, perhaps, so they wouldn’t have to lead theirpyrokisthrough the horde.
“What do you mean?”
“After I was appointed to my position ofVorakkar, after I passed the final Trial,” he began, “I was expected to choose mypyrokifrom theDothikkar’sown…collection.”
He said that word as if it was distasteful.
“But I did not,” he murmured as we left the encampment, as the wild lands of the east rose to greet us. It wasn’t as richly beautiful as the place I’d seen in his memories—theTrikki, a place I desperately hoped to see one day, though I knew I would not, with its lush, vibrant valleys and silvery waterfalls—but the eastlands had their own quiet beauty. “It was my first moon cycle asVorakkar. I had led my horde—small and new then—to the north and one night, I left to go out to the wild lands. I had no place in mind to go, but I just kept going.”
Wandered, I thought.
Lokkaru had said that Davik used to gowanderinga lot at night.
“I came across an ice forest. It was the cold season then. The first frost had long fallen. And on that quiet night, I heard a sound from inside the ice forest. A sad sound. A calling.” Davik reached forward to stroke Nillima’s neck and she pressed up into his touch, the little lush that she was. “Inside, I found her. Still young. She was injured. Her mother and her siblings had abandoned her because of it.”
Something tugged at my chest, deep and achy. My touch settled over his wrist, on the golden cuffs that encircled him there, hot to the touch.
“I brought her back to the horde, though she fought me the whole way. It made her wound even worse. But somehow, I managed to get her back. In the days that followed, I watched over her. She was not…easy. More than a dozen of my scars are from her.”
“Will you show me which ones?” I asked, the question off my lips before I second-guessed it.
“Later,” he promised, nipping at my ear as he did. I shivered against him and his arm tightened around me.
“But you healed her,” I said, wanting him to continue with his story. “Eventually.”
“Lysi,” he rasped. “From that moment on, she’s been bonded to me.”
The Dakkari had a special bond with theirpyrokis, one that I didn’t think humans, or Killup, or Nrunteng, or Ghertun could understand.
I went quiet, listening to the sound of Nillima’s claws curling into the earth as she propelled herself forward. Surprisingly soothing, one I’d heard a lot on our journey fromDothik.
“You’re…” I tilted my head to look back at him, as a breeze lifted a strand of my hair and blew it across my cheek. “You’re very caring, you know. It’s in your nature.”
Disbelief shot through his eyes and he snorted. “How do you figure?”
He didn’t believe me. That much was obvious.
