The horde King of shadow

Chapter 15KLARA

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 ru

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 a

“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 begi

I smiled. Both the sisters, I noticed, had an ope

“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 i

I swallowed as I dabbed my finger into the salve before spreading it on my i

“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 i

“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.