I gasped when he tugged me towards him, lightning fast. When his lips met mine, it was for a quick, hard, punishing kiss. One that left me reeling, especially when he sucked on my bottom lip before giving it a fast nip in warning.
“Don’t tempt me,sarkia,” he growled, glaring. “You wish to be my pet? See how you like it when I keep you chained to my bed.”
I froze, my tongue darting out nervously, and I tasted him there.
Was that…was that a possibility?
“Kakkari, you drive me mad,” he growled, releasing me, and I reached out behind me to steady myself on the pole. My knees were shaking now, though it wasn’t from fear. I was actuallygladto see that I got under his skin…though I knew that he got underminetoo.
I watched as he procured a key from the belt of his loincloth. He dropped down to one knee and lifted my foot. He inserted the key into the locked cuff around my ankle. A moment later, the chain dropped from me but he didn’t release my foot. His hand slid up my dress, up my calf, behind my knee.
I was staring down at him in bewilderment, my heart still racing, trying to beat its way from my chest. If he was trying to unnerve me again…it was working.
“You are mine, Mina,” he rasped. “Do you understand that?”
My lips parted. Why did hearing my name fall from his lips leave me feeling unbalanced?
“Your loyalties still remain underneath the Dead Mountain, but soon, those loyalties will be tied tome. To the horde. Do you understand that?”
A sharp breath whistled down my throat and I forced myself to look away from him. I didn’t know what he was saying. Or why. He thought I wouldstay?
I heard his own sharp sigh and then he was rising, his hand falling away from the back of my knee. I didn’t know howsensitiveI was there until he touched me. That small space felt branded by his hand.
“Come,” he rasped, taking my arm and guiding me from thevoliki. When we stepped outside, only the night and the tiny sliver of the moon greeted us. “We are late. And my horde waits for you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I’d been stared at before. Yet, I wasn’t comfortable with nearly a hundred—or more, I couldn’t be certain—pairs of eyes on me. Especially since those eyes were yellow and red and they belonged to fearsome-looking warriors or tall, imposing females who looked like they could snap me in two.
My own physical weaknesses had never been more apparent to me than right then.
Rowin’s voice was booming across the eastlands. Strings of Dakkari words that were roughened and yet smoothly elegant. Their language transfixed me, mesmerized me. Even though I was frozen in place, pinned by hundreds of eyes, I found myself picking out certain words, rolling them around silently on my tongue, wondering what they meant.
We were beyond the gates of the horde. Tall, black gates I hadn’t even known existed, flanked by even higher walls. As if walls and gates could keep the fog at bay.
Behind us, that reddened mist lingered. I had the strangest thought that it waslistening. That it was consuming Rowin’s words as readily as his horde was, asIwas.
I looked over my shoulder. Just as I sensed the fog, I sensed the Dead Mountain. It wasn’t that far away, though far enough to keep the Dakkari away.
Tess, I thought, swallowing, before I faced forward again. I wondered about her. About Benn. Jacques. Hassan. Kaila. I thought about the flash of anger that appeared on Farah’s face when Emmi accused me of stealing food. The ripple that went through them all, so eager to condemn me.
My fists clenched at my sides. Again, I felt that swelling in my breast. That swelling of determination.
Rowin wanted me to put on a good show?
I would.
I would do what he asked of me because I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that I was in control of anything.
He was wrong about one thing though. My loyalties were not tothem. My loyalties were only to Tess. And even then, only to the woman I’d known nearly all my life. My friend. Not the woman who slept beside Benn and whispered about me into his ear. That Tess was a stranger to me.
It was my friend I wanted to save. I still thought I could. But until that opportunity presented itself, I would wait. I would watch and listen. And wait.
Could my loyalties be tied to him?I wondered, frowning. He’d certainly seemed determined as he declared that in thevoliki.
I didn’t trust him though. I’d wronged him, yes. But he’d wronged me too. Would we ever see past that?
I didn’t think so.
