The horde King of shadow

Chapter 25SARKIN

“Me?” Klara asked.

“Tell me how you got your scar. About your dreams.”

Her hand reached out from underneath the surface of the water to press her fingertips to the mark.

“You recognized Zaridan because you’ve seen her before,” I said. “You told me that.”

“Yes,” she told me. “I started having dreams when I was young. They started slowly, easy enough to write off, easy enough to disregard as a child’s imagination.”

“But you saw the same things, over and over again,” I guessed, knowing that that was the case for Karag who exhibited power like Klara’s.

“An Elthika came to Dothik when I was twelve. We’d just returned from the wildlands, two days before. After that day, the dreams started happening almost nightly. In one of them, I remember Zaridan slashing out at me, and I woke up with my face bloodied, screaming.”

Discomfort curled in my chest. “You were just a child. You must’ve been afraid.”

“Yes,” she admitted, her eyes darting back and forth between my own. We were close enough that every so often, I felt her knees brush my legs as she kept herself afloat. How easy it would be to reach out and hold her against me. “But it was my mother who was most afraid after that.”

“Tell me why.”

I had my suspicions, but it was different than hearing her perspective. During our scouting missions and from the reports of our spies, we’d learned the Dakkari priestesses of the North Lands were snapping up anyone who showcased just a hint of magical ability. They were feared. They had the authority, under the Dothikkar, to take whomever they pleased.

“It’s complicated,” she said, her lips quirking in a sad smile.

“Help me understand, then.”

She blew out a rough breath, looking over the darkened, rippling water of the lake. I watched as her eyes tracked beyond the edge of the shore, going into the forest.

“I am descended from not one but two powerful females who exhibited Kakkari’s gift. The ability to wield heartstones, to feel their power and cha

“And the other?” I asked, though I knew.

“Kara of Rath Serok. Who I’m named after. The first hybrid of our history, who wielded not one but two heartstones during the battle that defeated the red fog,” she said. Her eyes lifted to mine. “The ethrall.”

My lips pressed together.

“As such, everyone in my line has been scrutinized by the priestesses very carefully. We don’t know much about heartstone magic, but we do know it can pass down through bloodlines.”

“Does that mean your mother had a gift as well?” I wondered.

“Yes,” she said. “She did. She had visions, like me. Hers didn’t happen in sleep though. They could happen anytime, so she had to be careful. She had to be mindful about who was watching her.”

“And what did she see?”

“She called them the lost horde kings,” Klara told me, a sad smile on her lips, but her voice was strong and proud.

“The Dakkari who landed on our southern shores centuries ago,” I guessed.

“I can only assume,” Klara said. “She saw this place too. We are both co

“That’s why you wanted to know about them,” I said, inclining my head. “It proved you right. It proved that your mother knew a truth that no one else did.”

“People called her crazy,” she said. Though she tried to hide it, I saw how it still cut her. “They called her mad, just like they called Davik the Mad Horde King. They dismissed her. Part of why I dedicated my life to research and knowledge was to prove that she wasn’t.”

I could see the love she had for her mother.

“What happened to her?” I asked, straying even closer. She bobbed under the water when her legs faltered, and I reached out to grip her waist. Her lips parted, but she slowly relaxed into my touch, trusting that I wouldn’t let her slip beneath the surface.

“My mother grew up in a noble family in Dothik…because of her bloodline. She and my father, they’d known each other since they’d been children. They’d grown up together, loved each other. But he married another, one who helped secure him his throne. My mother might’ve been from a noble family, but they were poor. My father’s wife wasn’t,” she said. “Their affair continued for years, until my mother found out she was pregnant with me. She knew the queen wouldn’t accept that. She feared retaliation, knowing I would have a legitimate claim to the throne, especially because of my other bloodline, and so she left. My great-uncle was a horde king. He extended her a home, and she took it. I was born on the wildlands. I grew up on the wildlands.”

“Did she ever tell you who your father was?”

She shook her head. “My mother kept a lot of secrets—that being one of them. There were rumors. Children could be cruel growing up, repeating things they’d heard their parents whisper about. I never believed them until my mother told me herself.”

“I’m confused,” I admitted. “Why did you both return to Dothik then? Especially if she was trying to keep you safe?”

“My great-uncle died,” she said. “The horde collapsed. We had nowhere else to go, but my mother had family in Dothik, who helped us get established. We got a small room above a tavern in the market district. My mother worked there. The dreams became more frequent, and when I woke that night with this scar…that’s when she got even more scared.”

“Your father found out you were in the city. He found out about your birth,” I guessed.

She inclined her head, and my fingers tightened on her hips.

“He actually wanted me back then,” she said, a sad smile crossing her face. “But I think he just wanted to feel attached to my mother in some way. And I was that link to her. He was furious that she’d hidden the pregnancy. When I was fourteen, he had me come live in the palace. Maybe to punish my mother—I don’t know. But she made a deal with him, or maybe even the queen. Something I could never truly figure out. But I went to live with them…and my mother was sent away. To the orala sa’kilan.”

“The priestesses,” I knew, understanding finally dawning.

“One year later, I received news that she was dead.”

My jaw tightened, a knot forming in my belly.

“She was always so scared of the priestesses. Ever since our heartstones were wiped out, they’d been trying to create new ones. With the power that some Dakkari manifested, that’s what they would use—using people like power sources,” Klara said. “But more times than not, it would kill them. That’s what happened to my mother. She was used for her power, and it killed her. And the worst thing is that I think that was the deal. She willingly went to the orala sa’kilan so that I would be protected from that fate.”

It was a tragedy. Pure and simple. What the Dakkari were doing to their own people…it was pointless. Heartstones couldn’t be created.

“She gave her life to keep me safe in Dothik. I don’t know the extent to which my father knew. I do know he loved her—he wasn’t seen for weeks when we heard of her death—but he became cold to me after that. Like he could barely stand to look at me,” she said. Her eyes were glassy with a film of tears. “I just wish we’d stayed on the wildlands. We were happy there. Safe. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

“I’m sorry, aralye,” I said gruffly, my chest tight from the tale. “I didn’t know.”

She wiped under her eyes and then splashed her face with water. She gave me a half-smile, trying to dispel some of the tension between us.

“It wasn’t all bad,” she told me. “Da

I remembered her brother, Da

Did it soften me toward the Dakkari male? Knowing he’d watched over his sister?

Perhaps.

I’d seen how protective he’d been over her outside the East Gate. Knowing what I knew now, my estimation of him increased. Because he hadn’t needed to love Klara. It would have suited him better to have ignored her, like some of her own family had, no doubt.

“Heartstones ca

“With the roots of the thalara tree,” she guessed. Her own visions had proved that.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s terrible what your priestesses are doing. Pointless and terrible. Then again, most things are when it comes to power and fear. Together? That’s a deadly combination, especially in a group of people with unchecked authority.”

She inclined her head. “Do I get to ask a question now?”

It depends on what it is, I thought immediately. Then I felt shame. She’d been honest with me. More open than I’d thought she might be. But I was used to the Sarrothian, who kept their emotions close and their tongues behind their teeth more times than not.

She wasn’t anything like a Sarrothian. She couldn’t be more opposite.

“Yes,” I said instead.

“Is Dakkar in danger from an attack by the Karag?”

That wasn’t the question I’d expected. But she’d perhaps wondered why I’d been poking about her history. Did she think I’d asked about her family, her mother, her father because I was trying to glean information?

“Make no mistake, Klara,” I began, “the Karag have been monitoring the Dakkari for decades.”

“Spying, you mean.”

“Call it what you want. But the Karag do not make it a habit of entering a war with neighboring nations without reason. And certainly not unprovoked.”

“But you want the heartstones.”

I blew out a breath, adjusting her slightly so that she was more in the crook of my arm, her naked side brushing mine.

“We were spying, as you call it, because we were trying to establish if there were heartstones worthwhile to try to take.”

“To steal, you mean,” she corrected again, quirking a brow, and I huffed out a sharp laugh.

“I prefer negotiate for.”

Klara laughed, the sound carefree and beautiful. For once. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh like this.