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

Chapter 15

KLARA

It’s every bit as stark and cold as I thought it might be, I thought, sighing, gazing around Sarkin’s Arsadian residence with a critical eye as I soaked in the hot bath.

The home had a familiar layout as the one outside the citadel. A raised bed with no fur coverings in sight. A round table with bench seating, similar to the taverns in Dothik, but this one was made of a shimmering material that resembled dragon scales.

There was a tall black cabinet opposite the bed, and I knew, from my first inspection, it held clothing and nothing else.

The washing area was at the very back of the home and only separated by a sheer gossamer curtain, which seemed utterly useless. The washing tub was sunken into the ground and the most opulent thing in the home. It had running water, for one, no doubt due to the waterfall so close in proximity, but what amazed me was that the water rushed out hot from the metal pipes. Once I’d stepped into the bath, after the first initial sting of pain as hot water had met my chafed, inflamed skin, I’d sighed happily. I never wanted to leave the confines of the bath again.

I leaned my head back over the edge, sitting on the submerged ledge that ran along the inside, and closed my eyes. I must’ve dozed off because the next thing I knew, there was a loud creaking from the front metal door and a stranger’s voice filling the room.

I gave a little shriek of surprise when I saw an unknown female enter.

“What—what…who are you?” I stuttered, slinking down underneath the bath water, my heart thundering in surprise.

“I apologize,” the female said, though her tone was bright, no remorse heard. “I didn’t mean to startle you awake, though I am glad I did. It is incredibly dangerous to fall asleep during baths, or has no one ever told you that?”

I blinked, watching as she set down a tray of hot food, opening the various dishes’ lids with a flourish, as if expecting me to be impressed.

When she looked at me expectantly, I cleared my throat and said, “That looks…delicious,” though I couldn’t see it all from this angle.

“Come and eat,” she ordered, patting the bench chair as she pulled out something else from the black satchel looped over her shoulder. “I am your food delivery and your healer tonight. You can call me Ryena.”

My heart was returning to its normal pace. Right. Sarkin had said he’d send someone.

“Ryena,” I repeated, thinking she looked familiar but not able to place her face. She hadn’t traveled with the rider horde, had she? No, I decided a moment later, observing her clothes. They were loose fitting, made of soft hides and breathable fabrics. Her boots had mud caking the very tips—at least I hoped it was mud.

She nodded. “I am one of two healers here in the village, though my specialty is hatchlings and not future queens.”

She laughed at her own joke, but it died when I didn’t join her.

“Hatchlings?” I asked under my breath, brow furrowing.

“Unfortunately for you, our other healer is currently stitching up the leg of a young boy who thought it would be a good idea to try to jump off the waterfall, at the daring of his friends,” Ryena explained. “What are you still doing in the bath? Come, come. Eat, so I can get some medicine applied to your rider burn.”

Despite her being a stranger, there was a no-nonsense and urgent tone in her voice that had me obeying. I stood, water rushing off me as I climbed out of the bath, wincing as cool air rushed over my skin.

“You poor thing,” she tsked, eyeing my bruises and inflamed skin. “That is why you will never catch me on the back of an Elthika if I can help it. I like my feet firmly planted to the earth, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, a sharp breath exhaling from me when she dug into her satchel once more. I watched as she pulled out a jar of pink-colored paste and a thick roll of what I thought were bandages. My injuries from my cliff fall were still healing, the skin puckered after my soak. “But I thought many Karag preferred to be riders.”

“I never understood the appeal,” she confessed, “though I am a minority in that feeling. My sister, on the other hand, very much ascribes to it.”

It hit me then, why she looked familiar.

“You’re Sammenth’s sister,” I said, pulling a thin cloth around my body to dry it as I padded toward the table. She looked at me in delighted surprise. “I thought you looked familiar, and I couldn’t place why.”

“We share a father,” Ryena told me.

“So you’re…you’re Dakkari?” I asked. Or at least part Dakkari, I thought.

“Through our father, yes, though even his line has been mixed with Sarrothian blood,” she replied. “There are still a couple Dakkari villages along the outer borders of the South, much to Elysom’s annoyance. They keep to themselves for the most part, but they are there if you know where to look.”

“I still can’t believe there have been Dakkari here, all these years, on your shores,” I confessed, my legs giving out underneath me with the weight of that knowledge after the day I’d had. Luckily I was close enough to the bench that it caught my fall. Ryena rounded toward me, wielding that strong-smelling jar of salve. “Everything we know…everything we thought we knew about the world has been completely challenged by your people.”

“I imagine it would’ve been quite the shock, seeing those first few Elthika,” she gave me. “I grew up in a Dakkari village with my sister, and there aren’t many wild Elthika down there. I remember my first time seeing one, I nearly wet myself.” I laughed in surprise, in the dry delivery of those words. “And then it’s even more frightening when you see one up close.”

Ryena raised her eyes—red eyes, Dakkari eyes—to my face. I watched her pupils track over my scar, and her lips pulled slightly. “The rumors are true, then. You really do bear the mark of Muron.”

I still didn’t quite know what that meant, but all I could do was sit still as Ryena tugged the cloth away, baring my naked body. The bruising was purple today, and between my thighs, it was a raw mess. Even Ryena winced.

“Did the Karath see this?” she asked.

My cheeks flamed. “Of course not.”

When he’d patched me up the night I’d fallen off the cliff, my thighs had been firmly shut .

“You best be careful,” she warned. “We don’t need this infected, especially since your instruction is beginning soon. The salve will help a lot though. One of my own making when Sammenth was going through the beginnings of her rider training. She said it was the only thing that helped her heal quickly,” she told me, pride in her tone.

I smiled. Both the sisters, I noticed, had an openness about them, a kindness that I hadn’t quite found in any of the other Karag I’d come in contact with in the last few days.

“These will heal fine though,” Ryena told me, cocking her head and applying gentle pressure to the lacerations across my ribcage. She held out the jar. “You want to do the honors?”

I nodded, taking it from her gratefully.

“Keep it,” she told me. “Put some more on in the morning too. I’ll speak to the Karath about getting you more protective clothing for riding.” She picked up my hide trews, poking her finger through the hole the friction had made. “These obviously won’t do. He should know better…but the Karag believe that the quicker the skin thickens up on the inner thighs, the easier it will be for a rider. Pain now, relief later, or so they say. It sounds better spoken in Karag.”

I swallowed as I dabbed my finger into the salve before spreading it on my inner thighs. I hissed at the sting, but it slowly gave way to a pleasant, numbing warmth.

“They’re not wrong, I suppose,” Ryena continued, getting the bandages unraveled. “The skin will toughen with repeated trauma and irritation. Not that I agree with the method.”

I listened to her voice, finding it a much needed distraction as I spread the stinging paste…though when I got all the skin covered, only a couple breaths went by and then I was blissfully numb. The skin didn’t throb. The pain melted away.

“Thank you,” I breathed, closing my eyes in relief.

Ryena looked at me. “You should tell him next time. You should not have to withstand this. There is no pride in pain.”

For the Sarrothian, that very much seems to be the case, I couldn’t help but think.

I helped her wrap my inner thighs with the thick swaths of clean bandage. Once they were covered, she urged me to eat, though I was too tired to properly be able to appreciate it. She set out yet another jar of the paste for me, leveling me a look that said, You’ll need this—trust me .

“I’ll check on you tomorrow, but otherwise, rest. Sleep well, Klara.”

“ Kakkira vor, Kerisa, ” I said quietly. Dakkari for Thank you, Healer .

She paused at the threshold of the door, giving me a knowing smile. She nodded.

“ Veekor, ” she ordered back to me. In Dakkari, it meant sleep .

With that she left.

Once I’d eaten, with my wounds tended to and my body clean, I found a fresh tunic from Sarkin’s cabinet, which ended at my knees, and then pulled the thin blanket off the bed. I curled up on the hard floor to sleep.

And for once, I dreamed of nothing.

I was woken by hands and an angry-looking Sarkin, his face illuminated by the hearth I definitely hadn’t lit, a flickering fire that changed colors—from blue to gold to purple.

I tensed when he pulled open my thighs, and I kicked out at him. “What are you doing?” I exclaimed groggily.

He held them open, my tunic shoved up to my stomach, his calloused hands on my calves. He whispered a curse under his breath, and I looked between my thighs, saw the bandages had already bloodied through the night.

Sarkin unwound them, and when I tried to fight him, he growled, “ Faryn. ”

I stilled immediately, a primal part of me obeying whatever it was I heard in that tone. I recognized that word. It was the word that had made Zaridan pull back her ethrall on the wildlands outside Dothik.

I assumed, now, it meant stop or cease .

“I found blood on Zaridan’s harness. Dried red blood,” he growled. “Then Ryena came to tell me. So why didn’t you?”

When the bandages fell away and he saw the red streaks, angry and chafed, he whispered out a rough curse, sliding back to lean against one of the stabilizing poles at the foot of the bed, one long leg stretched out in front of him.

“Do you think me such a monster than I wanted you to suffer through this ?” he asked, angrier than I’d ever seen him as he glared.

His head leaned back against the pole, and he blew out a rough breath before bringing his hands up to rub at his tired, no doubt wind-stung eyes.

“I didn’t want you—or your riders—to think I was weak,” I mumbled, coming fully awake.

When his eyes crashed to mine, I realized that I was sprawled out on the floor, half-naked, with my legs spread wide. I struggled to sit up and close them.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “We should reapply the salve anyway. It’s been a few hours.”

He dragged his body up, graceful and strong, crossing to the table and snatching one of the jars off. He was uncapping it as he returned, crouching in front of me.

“I’ll do it,” I said quickly, embarrassed.

He only growled. It was a warning, making me bite my tongue. I’d never seen him like this. I was used to him being in control, bordering on stoic and cold.

“Open, Klara,” he commanded, and I didn’t dare disobey him.

With a loud swallow, I slid my legs apart, turning my head to the side as he slid the paste across the skin. The numbness had worn off, the flesh sensitive again, and I sucked in a breath. His touch never paused. It was methodical and careful. Even…gentle, which I hadn’t expected.

When I turned my head back, our eyes met briefly. The moment felt charged, the tension palpable. It was a strange sensation, to be in pain and yet…his touch was making me feel warm. His touch was a distraction.

His nostrils flared, something flickering in his eyes, making them so molten I nearly gasped. With a soft curse, he finished, leaning back on his heels, and I reached for the roll of bandage before he could, wrapping my upper thighs again.

“Again I find you on the floor,” he said after a long, lengthy silence had passed.

“But at least I was sleeping this time,” I returned.

He was referring to the night in his citadel. When he’d brought me back up to his private quarters to tend to my wounds and then he’d tied our ankles together with a long cord so I wouldn’t wander away in sleep. Only I hadn’t been able to sleep that night.

Sarkin had. But I hadn’t even joined him in the bed, finding it too intimate. The cord had been long enough that I could perch myself on the plush chair near the bed as Sarkin had slept. But after a couple hours, I had moved to the floor to try to sleep.

“Is sleeping in my bed really that deplorable?” he questioned, his voice sounding tired.

My brow furrowed. He didn’t understand.

I’d never slept beside a male—that was true.

“It’s not that. I like to sleep closest to the earth as I can,” I told him, drawing my knees up to my chest gingerly.

“Why?”

“Because Kakkari is the earth,” I answered.

“Your goddess,” he said, a subtle realization dawning in his tone. “I hate to tell you this, aralye , but we are high above valleys and forests here. A few feet above that, in a more comfortable bed, will not make much difference.”

“I know,” I said, with utmost patience. “I saw where we are. But this,” I started, spreading my hand next to me to touch the floor, “reminds me of home. Of living on the wildlands, when my mother was still alive. It…it brings me comfort,” I confided.

Sarkin regarded me in the low, flickering light. It was quiet here, I realized. So incredibly quiet. Beyond the walls of the stone structure, I could hear nothing. Not the whistle of wind or a dragon’s cry.

“I feel rooted. I feel safe,” I added. “Connected to something greater than me. My people are of the earth and your people are of the sky. Isn’t that strange?”

His expression was unreadable, but the intensity in his eyes nearly made me shiver. Out of curiosity, I would give a lot to hear what he was thinking.

“You can’t sleep on the bare floor all night,” he finally said. “It’s Arsadian stone, sourced from the mountain behind us.”

I watched as he crossed to a chest, one tucked away against the wall, between the bathing area and the table. He pulled pelts, furs, and intricately woven blankets from within its depths.

When he returned to me, he spread them out beside the bed as I shifted to the side. A cozy little nest of furs, just like in a horde.

My heartbeat had picked up again, skipping. A part of me had expected him to scoop me up and place me in bed instead of going to the trouble of making me one.

Then my mouth went dry, a sharp inhale whistling when he kicked off his boots, unclasping his flexible armor of his dragon-scale vest, slipping the metal hooks off. When his bare chest was exposed, I heard the heavy thud of his vest as it fell to the floor.

I’d seen his chest before, though I’d still been half-traumatized from my near-death fall. But now…I admired it as it gleamed in the soft light, the muscles creating hard planes and deep shadowed valleys. The body of a warrior.

“I’m going to bathe,” he said. “Sleep.”

He turned as he tugged off his trews. My face felt hot, my heart a rapid thud in my chest when I caught the flash of his firm backside, a telltale silvery scar where his tail had once been.

I thought about what Sammenth had implied, that Sarkin hadn’t been destined to ride an Elthika, and I wondered what she’d meant by that.

When I heard the splash of water and Sarkin’s deep, contented sigh, I bit my lip. The desire to watch him bathe was surprisingly overwhelming, my curiosity making my hands twitch.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that he was a mere mortal like the rest of us, even though his drive and discipline seemed otherworldly. Over the last couple days, I’d witnessed firsthand the respect he wielded among his riders. He was magnetic in his command. I could understand why he’d risen to the rank of Karath , but I found myself wanting to know how . Why. I wanted to know him .

I tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come, as distracted as I was with the delicate sounds of water. In my mind’s eye, I imagined him washing, running those calloused palms over his scarred, warm, firm flesh. I squirmed in the furs, pushing my hair away from my neck when it felt too hot. Yet beneath my stolen tunic, my nipples were pebbled tight.

I hadn’t given much thought to what a marriage to him—and the loyalty that he expected—would mean. Sex, obviously. Siring heirs as a Sarrothian queen would be expected, wouldn’t it? Though I didn’t know about legacy here, if the horde passed down through bloodlines or if their leaders were chosen in other ways, like the Vorakkar of Dakkar had once been.

“I can hear you thinking, princess,” came his roughened voice. “I thought I told you to sleep.”

He’d emerged from the bath, and though I couldn’t see him from my vantage on the floor, with the bed blocking my view, I heard him drying himself off with a cloth near the table of my half-eaten food. Scrubbing it through his wet hair roughly.

“I had been sleeping so nicely before I’d been rudely awakened,” I reminded him, though there was no bite in my tone.

“You should’ve told me about the severity of the rider burn,” he responded easily. “Then I wouldn’t have had to.”

I huffed out a sharp breath just as he rounded the bed. I blinked quickly, catching a shadowy glimpse of bronzed flesh. Naked bronzed flesh. And there was something in his grip. A leather cuff?

“What are you doing?” I squeaked when he dropped down beside me. On the floor. In the nest of furs and blankets he’d made me.

“Sleeping,” he answered. Without asking—the high-handed male—he dragged my ankle toward him, securing the leather cuff. This cordage was shorter than the one he’d used at the citadel and on the clifftops the last two nights—though I hadn’t slept once on our journey.

The other cuff he attached to his ankle, and he tugged on the strength of the cord, testing it.

When he was satisfied, he let out a deep sigh and fell back beside me. And I fought with everything in me not to inspect his body with hungry curiosity, my skin practically buzzing with the need. I’d seen statues of naked men before…but none had ever quite looked like Sarkin. I’d also seen plenty of naked bodies in my lifetime. Most Dakkari were not shy about nudity, but I’d grown up more sheltered than most, even when we’d lived on the wildlands.

“ Shy’rissa, ” came the tired word. “Sleep,” he translated.

I felt the heat of his body, making me even warmer. The tug at my ankle was oddly…comforting.

Yet it felt like a grip too. It was impossible to ignore.

“You’re…you’re…”

“Naked?” he asked, voice groggy. “This time tomorrow night, you’ll be my wife. You will get used to it. Shy’rissa. ”

Well, when he put it like that …

There was a swooping sensation in my belly when he murmured those words, like I was falling off the edge of the cliff all over again.

“ Veekor, ” I whispered.

“What?”

“ Veekor. It means sleep in the old Dakkari language.”

Sarkin shifted. Above us, I watched the flames from the fire in the hearth flicker along the walls. If only to keep my gaze off him.

“ Veekor , then,” he rasped.

I hid my smile when I turned my head.

“ Shy’rissa, ” I said.