The Horde King of Shadow (Hordes of the Elthika #1)

Chapter 1

KLARA

Red fog swirled in the glass flask stoppered with a black wax seal.

Stepping up to the vendor stall, I nearly got elbowed out of the way by a clamoring Dakkari female, who snatched up a vial shaped like a moon fruit, rounded at the bottom and tapered at the top.

Next to me, Sora called out, “Watch yourself.”

The female’s narrowed red eyes swung to Sora, but my brave friend only tilted back her chin. Then the stranger huffed, cradling her vial close as if it were gold, and pressed real gold into the vendor’s hand before shuffling away.

“ Grimalkin ,” Sora murmured under her breath.

There was a churning in my belly, reflected in the swirl of red beneath the crystal-clear glass before me. My eyes tracked the wispy sway, wondering what had created it.

“ Grimalkin ?” I repeated, half-distracted. “That’s a new word from you.”

“Heard it from a human at that tavern off the Twelfth Limb. He told me it means old shrew in their ancient language.”

“Ah,” I commented, tearing my eyes away from the red mist in the vial to peer at the vendor, an elderly Dakkari male with golden eyes, tending patiently over his wares. I smiled. “And you liked the word and committed it to your beloved vocabulary of insults.”

“Eighteen words and counting. Isn’t it a delight to say?” Sora asked, laughing musically, a beautiful laugh that belied her crass tongue. Even the vendor turned abruptly to observe her. “ Grimalkin .”

“It is,” I agreed, tightening my arm around the book pressed to my chest.

Sora finally stepped up the vendor cart to look at what had caught my attention. She whistled, low and soft. To the vendor, she said, “A little morbid, isn’t it? Considering how many it killed?”

He sniffed, then glared. “Don’t like it? Then go.”

“Come on,” I said, pulling on my friend’s arm before she started something. Again. When we were a distance from the vendor stall, I said, “You know it’s fake anyway. Like he actually has the red fog bottled? Where has he kept it hidden away for the last two hundred years?”

“Actually, I need one,” Sora announced before flitting back. Shaking my head, I watched her beam innocently at the vendor, who looked like he wouldn’t sell to her before finally caving when he saw her glittering gold, pulled from her tunic pocket.

Turning, I absorbed the bustling marketplace, eyes darting, a small smile on my lips as I observed the chaos.

I needed a brief reprieve from the quiet of the archives, given the stiffness in my neck and the lethargy in my legs. I needed to feel the pulse of excitement of the market as I absorbed the plethora of colors and scents and sounds. The vibrant clothing for the special occasion, the waving flags, the mark of my family’s line decorating them, the musical beat of distant drums, the scent of smoked and spiced wrissan meat from a nearby vendor cart.

A seller passed me holding a thick vertical pole that was three times his height. Pinned to it were dozens of colorful silks and cloaks, swaying from his wobbly grip.

“Anything catch your interest?” he asked, his gaze already sliding to seek out other customers. “The gold scarf would bring out your…”

His words trailed when he finally looked back at me, his eyes zeroing in on my scar. His brow ticked up, the pole swaying forward in his surprise.

I shook my head hurriedly, letting my hair fall over my cheekbone, and he left—thankfully without comment.

Overhead, I spied the crooked banner hung between two buildings. It heralded the two hundredth anniversary of the red fog’s defeat in the Dead Lands. On another banner, across the market, were the beautiful faces, drawn in perfect likeness with an expert hand, faces copied from the golden statue at the front of the city of the rivalla lo’kilan .

The Five.

The five females who’d each played a part in eradicating the scourge of the red fog that would’ve certainly killed us all, wiping out the entirety of the races on our planet. Only because of them had we survived.

A spark of pride—and despair—burst in my chest.

“Look,” Sora ordered, shoving the largest vial the vendor had had stocked toward my face. She shook it, and I watched the red smoke inside gently sway. “Likely kreki ink dyed red and suspended in a water solution. Quite genius, actually, though he has questionable morals.”

“ You just purchased those questionable morals,” I pointed out, my gaze lingering on the red fog—ink—continuing to swirl. My lungs felt tight.

“What is it?” she asked, concern touching her tone.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head, tearing my eyes away from the vial to hers. I offered her a small smile before it died. “Just…today of all days, I’ve been wondering what it was like. The fog. I don’t think I’ve ever truly tried to imagine it, have you?”

Trapped in it. Suffocated by it. The sinking realization that every breath wound its way down one’s throat like a parasite—feeding, draining.

I nearly shuddered.

“Maybe you should ask them,” Sora pointed out, nodding her head at the banner. My gaze snapped back to the Five, to their beautiful faces. “Maybe like Vienne, the great white-haired sorceress, you can ask her in your dreams,” she teased. “You more than anyone.”

I heard the slight mockery in her tone, and it made my shoulders tighten. “You don’t believe she had visions in her dreams?”

Sora scoffed. “The evidence is subjective at best. There is no denying she possessed a great power. But I think it was the lore surrounding her husband that sparked those rumors.”

I knew what was true. Sora didn’t.

I forced a small smile, my gaze landing on a cart that sold kuveri bread, the small, dark berries spilling their juices into the spongy baked good. I shuffled forward, purchasing a slice quickly, offering half to Sora, who shoved it eagerly into her mouth.

Across from the fountain in the center of the market, a vendor was shouting. Calling out bets for the shadow moon tonight. A crowd grew around him, gold being shoved and waved into the air to catch his attention.

Sora dropped the bottle of red fog into her bag, and it clinked against a quill tip. “Maybe we should place a wager. Seems like a sure thing. What do you think?”

“They always come,” I replied, picking at my bread. “It’s not a question of if .”

Now people placed bets on when . Exact times. On how many would come. On which dragon would be in the lead. If it would rain. If a cloud passed over the moon when they landed at the East Gate.

That was where the gold was.

“Will you try to speak with them again?” Sora asked. Her lip curled, and I felt a flash of shame in my chest. I knew she didn’t mean for her teasing to feel malicious…but sometimes it felt like she was poking fun at my expense. “Or get caught by the guards? Don’t make me tail you all night.”

Just like my family, Sora was infinitely skeptical of my theories on the dragons and the world I believed lay beyond Drukkar’s Sea. She was Dothik’s leading scholar. Her mind and its limits were infinite. She could recount a book she’d read as a child, word for word, could tell you which pages had been ripped, which ones had held stains. She could tell you what she’d eaten while she’d been reading that book and what lecture her mother had given that evening.

Still, she didn’t believe me. When it was her that I wanted to believe in me the most. Sometimes I thought she pitied me. That she only humored me because of our unlikely friendship. Or perhaps because of my bloodlines, which was even worse.

“I told you before—that was a misunderstanding,” I said. “I was out on the wildlands. I’d forgotten it was the shadow moon.”

I knew Sora didn’t believe my lie. But she was wrong about me trying to speak with them. I wasn’t insane. I’d just wanted to see them. Up close.

The tavern bells began to ring, filling the marketplace with a rush. Soon, the temple bell would sound.

“I need to get back,” I told her, eager to leave. I didn’t want to fight about this again.

“Klara,” Sora said, catching my arm. “I’m only teasing…”

“I know,” I said, giving her a smile I hoped looked genuine. “It’s not that. The feast—I didn’t realize how late it was.”

Sora didn’t believe me. I knew it was one thing she didn’t respect about me. That I retreated and fled instead of standing my ground. She always held her ground. She was better suited to be a high-ranking guard of the Dothikkar rather than tucked away in the quiet archives, spouting off her evening lectures to whomever would listen.

Sora huffed out a sharp breath through her nostrils, her tail flicking. “Don’t lose that,” she commanded, her eyes sweeping to the book clutched against my chest.

I felt a twist of discomfort when she turned her back, stalking to the bets maker in the center, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the crowd while fishing out gold from her pocket, waving it over her head.

For a moment, I stood perfectly still, observing the growing crowd. Listening to the cacophony of hundreds of voices enclosed in the marketplace, bouncing off buildings and funneling down the road.

In that moment, in a moment that nearly stole my breath, I felt incredibly lonely.

Someone jostled my shoulder, a drunk staggering into me, a slurred curse on his lips. The movement shoved me into a tall, imposing figure, and I felt my chest seize in panic when the book tumbled out of my grasp.

The drunk’s boots kicked the book—one of the archives’ most cherished tomes—when he stumbled off, and I gasped out my alarm as it skidded across the filthy road.

Before I had a chance to react, it was retrieved by the male I’d run into, his large figure bending low to snag it off the worn cobblestones.

When he turned toward me, my eyes latched onto the book. Quickly taking stock of its condition, I was relieved to see it had no significant damage on the leather-bound cover, at least from what I could see.

Then I watched the stranger flip open the pages. Curiosity, perhaps, but I nearly cried out in protest, my feet carrying me closer without a second thought. My love of books was perhaps the only thing I had in common with Queen Kara. This was her book. The one she’d painstakingly hand copied from the original text, of Bekkar’s history. It was priceless.

And his hands are filthy, I thought in alarm, my gaze catching on a black chalky dust coating the male’s palms. He turned a page, and I saw a black smudge linger on the delicate parchment.

Sora would kill me.

“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Please don’t?—”

For the first time, our eyes met. Whatever words I’d been about to utter died pathetically in my throat.

The male in front of me reminded me of the horde kings of old, of their imposing statues that had been erected in every outpost, in every village throughout Dakkar, even in the priestesses’ temple in the North Lands and here in the districts of Dothik.

Only he wasn’t a horde king. Whether living or dead, I knew every last Vorakkar of our history.

This mysterious stranger seemed to make the western market slow on the periphery of my vision. My heartbeat became both a lazy, languid thing, while also fluttering like a caged thissie in my breast.

His silken black hair was cut short, curling slightly at the nape of his neck. His eyes were multicolored, like golden jewels in their very center before expanding outward to a light brown, ending with a circle of deep green. I’d never seen their likeness before.

Though he had sharply pointed ears, I didn’t spy a tail swaying behind him and thought it likely, given his eyes, that he had human blood running in his veins.

The golden richness of his skin only made his eyes glow brighter. I could envision him hundreds of years ago, on the back of a battle-bred pyroki , sword unsheathed, as he rode across the wildlands, like the ancient Dakkari.

His jaw was wide. His dark lips were full, large enough to make a little shadowed divot just beneath them. Nearly three heads taller than me, he had broad shoulders and his thighs were straining against the tight black trews that encased them. He was wearing a black, fitted, long-sleeved tunic. Over it was a black vest that molded to the stretch of his wide chest, resembling flexible armor. It shimmered with triangular scales that caught the afternoon sunlight.

I frowned. Pyroki scales? No. Pyroki scales were more flattened along the top edge.

“Are you done staring, aralye ?” came his voice, deep and rich, though I thought I caught a stray edge of irritation too.

As heat flooded my cheeks, my gaze dipped to the book. Initially curious about the commotion, the onlookers started to disperse around us, but I let my dark hair fall even further into my face, wanting to hide from the nosy gossips. I only hoped they didn’t recognize me.

“ Hanniva ,” I croaked, not meeting his eyes. Please . “I’ll take that back now.”

“So eager to reclaim it,” he murmured. His words struck me as…careful yet deliberate. “Did you steal it?”

“What?” I breathed, frowning. “No, of course not.”

Those eyes skimmed over the open book in his possession, but I felt my patience snap when he ran the pad of his thumb down the parchment, leaving that black dust in its wake.

“Your hands are filthy,” I informed him, only imagining Sora’s horror in my mind as I stepped forward, firmly snagging it from his grip. “And this book is very old.”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “My apologies, aralye . I forget how much of a brute I am around such delicate things.”

I stiffened. Was it my imagination, or were his words dipped in warning?

“I know every dialect spoken on Dakkar,” I informed him carefully, wary now. “I’ve never heard that word before. Aralye .”

The male’s lips curled. The small, mocking grin made my knees nearly buckle.

“Perhaps it’s one I made up” was all he replied.

Something in my gut told me he was dangerous. Despite his beauty, I knew I needed to get away from him and fast.

“Thank you for your help,” I rushed out quickly, tucking the book close to my chest. A gust of wind funneled down from the Spine—the main road that cleaved the city of Dothik into two separate halves. The wind spread its fingers across the marketplace and briefly blew back the shadowed curtain of my hair. “But I must be going.”

The skinned flesh on my knees gave an aching protest when I pivoted away, but then I felt a warm, strong, sudden hand clamp down on my forearm. The stranger turned me back to him, his eyes utterly trained on me. Focused . The hairs on the back of my neck rose, a sensation I knew all too well.

Frozen, I watched as his hand flashed forward, sweeping back the hair from my left cheek to expose the scar there.

I watched as his lips pressed together. Shock? Disgust? I knew what he saw—a flesh-colored scar resembling the wild roots of a tree, beginning at my left temple and curling down my cheek, slashing through one eyebrow.

“Who are you really?” he rasped, the edge of his words sharp and dangerous like a blade.

Wrenching myself away with strength that surprised even me, I blew out a sharp breath, unable to shield my glare. He’d left a black smudge on me in the wake of his palm.

Not answering, I took a step back. Then another, clutching the book I’d spend my evening painstakingly cleaning after the feast. The male never moved, and I felt like prey.

When there was enough distance between us, I turned on my heel and fled.

I felt his eyes on me until I reached the Spine. When I made it to the Dothikkar ’s palace, only then could I breathe again.