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

Chapter 13

SARKIN

“What is that you need to watch out for?” came Klara’s quiet question.

I’d been observing her as she stood by the edge of the cliff, my eyes taking her in as I would an opponent…or a lover. Watchful and careful and hungry.

She turned to regard me with those light gray eyes. Her hands were clasped demurely behind her back. Her hair was plaited into a neat braid, wispy tendrils of it having escaped on the flight up here, which framed her soft features. I spied the small tips of her pointed ears peeking out, distractingly delicate. I couldn’t see her scar from this angle. For the first time, I wondered if I’d stolen her from a lover in Dothik. A mate.

Good, came the sudden, stray, and surprising thought. I was used to feeling possessive over things I considered mine, but I hadn’t expected those uncontrollable feelings to extend to her .

She’s my responsibility. That’s why I feel this way, I reasoned.

When I quirked a brow, she asked, “You said you were taking the first watch. For what?”

I grunted, tearing into the chunk of bread filled with meat. Flying always made me ravenous even though Zaridan was doing most of the work.

“Elthika,” I answered.

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. I thought the Elthika were friendly to the Karag.”

“Bonded ones, yes,” I answered, my nostrils flaring in slight frustration. She was like a child, wasn’t she? She knew nothing of our kind, of our race. But I needed to have patience with her, which was never a strength of mine. “We are nearing the northern border into Elysom’s channel. The East is Elthika territory. The Sarrothian have territory there too, but it is still wild land and under Elthikan rule.”

Klara turned fully to regard me, the moonlight illuminating the scar—Muron’s mark—on her face.

“We are in the outer lands,” I told her, sweeping my hand toward the view she’d been admiring. “The Elthika that live in this territory are not bound by traditional Elthikan law. They are the dragons that have forsaken it, and as such, it is dangerous territory to be in for very long. Zaridan does have sway here, as does Levanth’s. But that will only extend so far if we overstay our welcome.”

“So much to learn,” she said softly. Her spine straightened. Her chin rising. “But I’m up to the task. I was a scholar in Dothik, you know.”

I snorted. “You think your scrolls and books will help you here?”

“No, perhaps not. But my need for knowledge will,” she answered, surprising me. I heard the quiet confidence in her voice.

“Are you not frustrated by your lack of it?” I wanted to know.

“Of course I am. But I know that knowledge comes slowly. It is absorbed and savored like a wine. It might be tempting to chug it down, to quench that unyielding, maddening thirst, but in order to understand something fully, with the appreciation it deserves…knowledge, complete knowledge, demands patience. And even then, it is ever changing. That’s what my mother always said.”

I had stopped eating to regard her, her words holding me like a vise.

“It will frustrate you to know then that your soon-to-be husband has never read a book in his life,” I lied, to see what she would say. “The Sarrothian pride themselves on physical and mental strength, unshakeable honor, and willpower. Perhaps you would have been better suited for a nobleman in Elysom.”

When I’d first met her in the marketplace in Dothik, she’d had a book then. Had been aghast when I’d dared to touch it with my filthy hands, coated in Zaridan’s scale dust.

“Knowledge is not always about books,” she replied, her eyes shining in the darkness. She was a beautiful woman, the surprising want curling in my belly. “You have far more knowledge than I—I’m sure of it.”

I frowned. “Knowledge is what you pride yourself on, and you give that achievement to me so readily? Why?”

“Because knowledge is like…love,” she answered, a soft smile curling her mouth as she settled on that particular word. “It should be freely given. It shouldn’t be a selfish thing.”

Her words struck me and held on. Like she’d plunged her fist into my chest, wrapping her little fingers around my shriveled heart, squeezing tight.

Discomfort swam in me. Karag didn’t speak of such things so freely. Though perhaps the Dakkari did.

“You said Zaridan holds sway in this territory? What did you mean?” she asked, stepping toward me.

The Elthika in question was perched to the far left, curled up and resting along the cliff edge. But the spikes of her ears, which usually flattened against her skull in flight, were perked and twitching at the slightest sound.

Klara leaned against a rocky boulder, crossing her ankles in front of her as she regarded me. The pose lengthened her legs, encased in her tight trews. I couldn’t help but look. Did her cheeks pinken because of it?

“Zaridan is one of the remaining descendants of Muron,” I said softly when I swallowed, feeling familiar pride swell up in my chest as I looked over at her. “One of the ancients.”

“Muron?” she asked quietly, her eyes shifting back and forth between mine. I saw it then…her passion for knowledge. The need for it. The most surprising thing of all was that it lit a fire in my belly. It was an attractive trait in a mate, one I’d never given much thought to before.

“ The ancient,” I answered, holding her gaze. “The Elthika revered him like a god once. His bones make up the stretch of a northern peninsula—a sacred place for the Elthika.”

“Does Zaridan look like him?” came the unexpected question.

I nearly laughed. “It’s difficult to say,” I said. Then I tilted my chin back and said, “That scar on your face…that is the mark of Muron. Zaridan’s line.”

Klara’s hand touched the scar on her cheek. “How can you tell?”

“Muron led a battle once against an enemy faction of Elthika, to bring order to their race. An impossible feat. His dragon horde was severely outnumbered, the odds against them. So the stories go, he was struck by lightning during battle and the scar it made was permanently imprinted onto his body, right over his heart. The strange thing is that the lightning didn’t hurt him—it made him stronger. A heartstone gift. It was the first recorded moment of ethrall being used in our history.”

Klara’s lips parted, but otherwise she was frozen in place along the boulder.

“You call it the red fog. We call it ethrall . But they both are rooted into the power of the heartstones, and that power grows like the boughs of a tree. Wild and untamed. It manifests in different ways, like your gift,” I said, nodding at her. “That day, that heartstone power flowed through Muron. He alone, when many of his brothers and sisters had already fallen, defeated the enemy faction with ethrall . Suddenly a new order of Elthikan rule came to be. But Muron’s scar never faded. It passed to his descendants. You can see it on Zaridan, even from here. On her back flank.”

Klara’s breath hitched, and her eyes sought it out eagerly. They widened on the familiar mark. “But…then why did Zaridan pass it to me?”

The question of the millennium, I thought. Why would Zaridan cross into dreams to find a Dakkari princess and mark her as mine? As ours ?

“Only she knows,” I said instead.

“And you listen to her without hesitation?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And she listens to me. That is the nature of a bond with an Elthika.”

“Even if you cannot communicate?”

“Oh, but we do,” I told her, brow furrowing. “Your hordes rode on the backs of pyrokis for centuries, yes? To this day, they still rely on them, yes?”

She nodded.

“And would you not argue that the bond between a pyroki and their Dakkari rider is strong? Perhaps they cannot communicate with words, but you communicate with everything else within your power. With the Elthika, it is the same. You learn to hear every unspoken thing in the beat of a heart. The gust of a wing. Elthika can make a seemingly infinite number of sounds, strung together in different ways. Just like language, like words. You learn to listen closely. They are far more intelligent than us, and so they listen closely too.”

Klara stared at me. “Like the sy’asha ?”

My chin tilted back. “Yes. That is one way they will communicate. Effectively, at that.”

“And what does it mean?”

I wasn’t certain I wanted to tell her yet. But I didn’t see the point in deceit when we would soon mark our marriage in the Arsadia, deep within the temple of Lishara.

“It is the song of an accepted bond,” I said. “Zaridan accepted you, on the wildlands beyond Dothik. She gave you her song. I am her rider, and that bond can never be replaced. But she has taken you under her protection, given you her oath, which all Elthika must do with their rider’s chosen mate.”

“Oh,” Klara whispered. “And…has an Elthika ever rejected a rider’s mate?”

My lips slid up in a rueful smirk. “All the time. Elthika are possessive creatures, even more so over their riders. They do not accept outsiders easily. And if a rider does not have his Elthika’s sy’asha for their intended mate…it is not a circumstance that ever ends happily.”

I swallowed, my eyes running up Klara’s form carefully. “Zaridan gave you her song upon meeting you,” I said quietly.

“Is that…rare?”

“Rare?” I repeated. I shook my head, standing to stretch. Klara’s neck craned back to meet my eyes. “It has never happened before in our history.”

She said nothing at first.

“I suppose that means you are well and truly stuck with me,” she finally said.

Silence dropped between us. When I glanced over at Zaridan, I saw that her head was raised, peering at the both of us from her place on the cliff, no longer hiding that she was listening to our conversation.

Stepping forward into Klara, I brushed the tendril of hair away from her scar, remembering the jolt I’d felt in the marketplace in Dothik when I’d first seen it. How it had felt like all the air had been sucked from my body, a strange sense of familiarity and knowing making the city sway. As if I’d been there before. As if I’d been remembering her.

Heartstone magic was an unpredictable, dangerous, and powerful thing. Klara of Rath Serok and Rath Drokka was at the root of it all.

She cleared her throat when the silence stretched too long between us, lowering her cheek so that my touch slid away.

“You, um, said that Zaridan has sway here because of Muron. What of the other Elthika? Levanth’s, was it?”

“Levanth is one of my riders,” I corrected. “The navigator wing, I’m sure you remember.”

She stilled. “Ah. The female you went into the forest with tonight. Alone.”

That made me straighten, hearing an odd note in her tone, one I recognized from earlier. “What?” I asked quietly, irritation beginning to burn in my belly. I couldn’t stand cowardice. “Would you like to ask me something?”

Her lips pressed together. Then her mouth opened. “Everyone saw.”

“Nothing happened,” I rasped, stepping closer, lowering my head until our eyes were parallel. “I am not only a Karath of the Sarrothian people, Klara, but also the lead commander of a rider horde. You think I would do something like that when I have given you my vow?”

“I don’t know you, Sarkin,” she whispered. “I have no idea what you would or would not do. I know nothing of the Karag. Nothing of the Elthika. I know what I saw. And I saw your own rider horde react in a specific way when you went off with her. Alone ,” she said again. “Into a dark forest. What would you have me think?”

Bright anger tightened in my chest. The dishonor she thought me capable of…it was maddening!

“I know these forests better than most, Klara,” I snapped. “Levanth needed my help locating the closest stream for our water supply. I showed it to her so she could direct others to it, and then I returned to the camp. To you .”

A sharp breath left her. “ Oh. ”

“Let me ask you this,” I began, trying to keep tight restraints on my temper. “Do you expect your husband to be in your bed alone? To never stray? Even given the circumstances of this marriage?”

Her brow furrowed. A spark of her own irritation shone hot in her eyes, and the mere sight tightened my abdomen. “How could I even begin to answer that? There’s too many factors to?—”

“Your heart’s reaction, then,” I exclaimed, my voice beginning to rise, pressing my hand to the thundering beat of her chest. Her eyes widened. “Don’t think. Give me an answer. Now!”

“Yes,” she breathed, glaring. “Yes, then.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because I’m the child of an affair, of a broken sacred vow, spoken before Kakkari!” she retorted. “It hurt a lot of people, including me.”

Shock went through me. My lips pressed together, and I leaned back, understanding dawning.

“You…you must have known. You’ve been watching us for a long time.”

“I didn’t,” I confessed. “We were there to observe, not to ask questions that would get us exposed.”

To the Karag, especially the Sarrothian…her birth would certainly cast Klara in a bad light if the truth got out. The Sarrothian were a regimented people, almost to a fault. Rarely did they see the shades of gray in this life. They saw right or they saw wrong. And if you fell onto the wrong side of that divide…it would take you years to be seen as an equal again.

Memories were long, unshakeable things among the Sarrothian.

I would know that better than anyone.

“Then we are in agreement,” I finally grunted.

Her lips parted in disbelief. “What? Agreement about what ?”

“We arrive to the Arsadia soon. We will seal this marriage, and I expect you to uphold your oaths to me, your husband ,” I said. “Just as I will to you.”

Realization was dawning over her expression.

“Levanth and I were involved once . When we were young, not old enough to know better, and never since. But I trust her with my life, just as I do with all those in the kya’rassa —my rider horde,” I told her. “Believe me or not. That is for you to decide. But do not accuse me on a whim when you know nothing about what I value.”

Klara held my eyes. She must have heard some truth in my words because she said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“The Elthika,” I began, matter-of-factly, “mate for life, and so they choose carefully, if at all. They never stray from their bonded mates. It creates unnecessary division within a legacy. It is not romantic , Klara, so get that out of your mind. A mate bond is logical, bordering on cold, and it takes discipline. The Sarrothian believe what the Elthika believe, more than any other Karag might.”

Did I spy a flash of disappointment? “I didn’t know,” she said.

“Now you do,” I said simply, releasing her and stepping away.

I’d laid it out for her. I didn’t want her to think this would be a passionate, consuming union between us. Perhaps she had wanted a marriage like that. Perhaps she had wanted a love like in her precious history books, of the Vorakkar of old and their mates…but she wouldn’t find it with me. I wouldn’t allow that. Love was a distraction and nothing more.

Better to disappoint her now so she knows exactly what she’s committing to before the Arsadia, I reasoned.

“Anything else you wish to address?”

She rubbed at her forearm as a cool breeze made her shiver. “How…how do you expect your people to ever accept me?”

I inhaled a slow breath. I shouldn’t have been surprised by her oddly vulnerable question. My chest even gave a little twist, my instincts telling me to comfort her. I’d watched her get rejected by numerous Sarrothian tonight.

“Klara,” I said, waiting until she met my eyes. I spied sadness there. Loneliness. And it made even more discomfort wiggle in my chest. “Don’t get discouraged by the horde. And tonight…you handled it better than I expected.”

She snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “By slinking back to Zaridan?”

“Who presented you with her sy’asha for all the horde to hear,” I growled. She blinked and then looked over at my Elthika. “She honored you tonight, and she knew exactly what she was doing.”

“But why don’t you do that?” she asked. “If I’m to be your queen and you leave me so quickly to my own devices, as if you cannot wait to get away from me, what image does that present to the Sarrothian?”

“Klara,” I bit out. “The horde values strength . I’m doing you a favor, whether you see it or not. They need to see you stand on your own. They need to see that you are comfortable with Zaridan, that she respects you to obey your commands. And this is only the beginning.”

“You…you’ve been calculating out how they see me,” she realized softly. “You planned this. It was a test?”

“An opportunity,” I corrected. “I won’t lie to you. You are an outsider, a Dakkari—who no one will trust because they know you are not loyal to me or to the Sarrothian.”

She opened her mouth, her brow furrowed.

“It’s the truth,” I rasped. “Because given the choice, this very moment, would you not turn your back and return to your true home? If I promised to release you from a marriage and no harm would come to your people? Wouldn’t you wish to be back in Dothik by tomorrow? We could leave right now.”

“You don’t know what I would choose,” she argued softly, and I stilled at the surprising honesty I heard in her voice. “There are many reasons for me to be here, and some of them don’t concern you at all. Or your people.”

“That may be the case, but it proves my point. None of your reasons are out of loyalty.”

She didn’t answer, just raised her chin slightly, as if in challenge. And I felt the burn of her sass curl straight to my cock.

Much too long since I’ve had a female, I thought, irritated.

“Let them see your strength,” I rasped. “This rider season will be tough on you. But as queen to the Sarrothian, there is deep-seated expectation that you cannot ignore. And the first test will be your strength and your willpower. You’re much too small and weak to claim an Elthika of your own.”

She sputtered, her eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

“But they will never accept you if you don’t, so…you will have to claim one regardless.”

Her jaw dropped. “ What? ”