His hair is pulled back, sooty brows pinched above his savage stare that clings to me. That casts a cord between my ribs, down into the depths of my icy internal lake where it snags something heavy and thrashing that I can’t quite glimpse.
I begin to tremble, my teeth clanking together so hard I’m surprised they don’t shatter. I blame it on the fact that my skull is probably on the verge of cracking. It’s certainly not something deeper. I’m not shaking like an egg threatening to hatch from this overwhelming surge of relief now packing my chest full. Relief that he’s here. With me.
That—
It’s definitely not that.
Every other clan member aside from Hock smacks their fists to their chests four times, the thumping clamor filling the crater with a drone of respect. Kaan does it once—a vision of ruin and rage.
His gaze shifts to the male still straddling me, his eyes blazing so full of flames I should be scared.
Frightened …
I’m not.
“Dagh ata te roskr nei. Ueh!” His dense, gravelly voice carries the foreign words with such carnal ferocity I feel each syllable abrade my pebbling skin. He smacks his fist against his chest again, this time splaying his hand, dragging his nails diagonally down his torso. Four distinct scratch marks bloom—risen and angry. “Gagh de mi dat nan ta … aghtáma.”
The words cut like blades, making me wince. I don’t have to understand the language to know the King is … well …
Pissed.
Hock rises—Kaan’s match in size. “Agath aygh te nei dahl Tookah atah. Agath dein … vah! Lui te hah mát tuin.” He repeats Kaan’s motion, scratching his own skin, then again with his other hand, creating a welted X upon his heaving chest.
Kaan snarls. “Heil deg Zaran dah ta réidi. Heil deg dah ta réidi!”
Hock spits on the ground, repeats the clawing motion, then charges. Kaan mimics—like two great mountains merging toward each other.
Clashing.
I feel the motion like a boulder lobbed at my ribs.
Heads pressed together, clenched hands firmly cast at their sides, they snarl. Such violent intimacy in their almost-embrace that I’m certain the energy they’re exuding has the power to cleave another crevice in the ground.
Saiza is suddenly at my side with another female, both scooping me up, threading my arms around their necks and dragging me toward the tent.
“Whas being sssaid?” I slur past my clanking teeth, trying to blink away the haze beginning to cloud my vision.
“Hock is claiming the victory over your battle, despite the fact that you did not submit,” Saiza says as I’m carried past the Sól now making her way to Hock and Kaan in long, hip-rolling strides. “Kaan is declaring you are not free to be claimed by anyone. That you were not raised in our ways and are not accustomed to such traditions. He is demanding the trial be void. As Hock’s roskr—his greater, in your tongue—he is demanding Hock accept his great victory over Zaran and step out of the battle ring to add a dot to his réidi. Hock, in turn, is challenging the roskr order and wants to battle Kaan. If he wins, he will earn many more dots for his réidi.”
My heart dives, the thought of Kaan battling Hock to the death spawning something spiky and uncomfortable in my chest.
“Kaan isss King of The Burn,” I force out. “Hock would dare to challenge the crrrown?”
“Your crowns mean little here. We claim part of no kingdom. Only the réidi matters. We only pound chest four times for the roskr-éh. The greatest.”
My brows collide, and I look over my shoulder at the snarling males still spitting words at each other. “If Kaan is ssstrongest, why is he not Oah?”
“He was, until his pah died,” Saiza whispers when we reach the tent. “He offered uith-roskr—second greatest—the bones of our ancestral Oahs. Oah Knok has been a worthy Oah.”
My gaze sways to Oah Knok as I’m helped onto the dais before I’m spun and settled upon the rug, the hurt on my temple dabbed at with something cold and damp.
I sway, the scene before me splitting, converging.
Splitting again.
Rygun reigns over the arena from his lofty perch on the edge, his mammoth size casting half the crater in shadow. Set amongst that fearsome pronged face, his inky eyes trace Kaan’s every move with crushing intensity—not helped by the fact that he multiplies every time the world splits.
I feel the opposite.
There’s not one single part of me that wants to watch this fight unfold. Just a slumber ago, I wouldn’t have batted a lash at watching Kaan Vaegor have his head sawn off in an arena. Instead, I would’ve cheered.
Now, even the thought makes me want to vomit.
I don’t understand it. Don’t want to understand it.
Don’t want to watch.
“Well,” I rasp, bringing a shaking hand up to feel the hurt on my head, frowning when my fingers come away bloody, “while they’re occupied, howww ’bout I pretend to be dead and yyyou two throw me back in the river?”
“It is not that simple, I’m afraid.”
That’s not the right attitude to have.
“The Fate Herder’sss gone,” I slur, looking around my wobbly surroundings, not seeing it anywhere. “I think it can be that sssimple if we believe hard enough.”
She swipes some of the blood from my chest. “I do not think it is gone; I think it is just choosing not to be seen.”
I frown, searching the crater, still trying to make sense of this fated mess.
Failing.
Every time I think I’ve got a grasp on it, the grains of understanding slip through the gaps between my fingers.
If it wanted me dead, that would’ve been the moment.
So what does it want?
“You have a vahli serpent bite,” Saiza says, running the pad of her thumb over the two stinging prickles on the mound of my breast, all the color leaving her face. “Where did this come from?”
Guess nobody saw Hock flick his pocket python at me. Wonder how many other opponents have fallen victim to his vile, dishonorable methods.
I don’t respond, mainly because there’s no point.
It’s done. The moment I no longer feel like I’m going to crumble if I stand, I’ll launch back out there and hack off his head, then mulch his brain with my fist.
Saiza’s eyes widen, whipping toward the ring. “Gas kah ne, veil dishuva!” she sneers, her words so honed I swear they could slit skin.
She stands and makes for the cluster of urns at my back, clanking around while she mutters beneath her breath. There’s the sound of her stirring something before she presents me with a cup of chilled water perhaps pulled from one of the runed urns. Though it looks almost …
Lumpy.
“Drink this,” Saiza instructs through gritted teeth, cutting another sharp glance in Hock’s direction. “I mixed the water with an antidote that gives it a strange feel, but it will counteract the venom in your system.”
I dip my head in thanks, my features twisting as I sip down globs of the sour jelly-like concoction, feeling the icy swallows seep through my bloodstream at a rapid pace. Chilling me from the inside out.
Smoothing some of the wobbles from my mind.
The Sól crouches in the sand, pinches some between her fingers, then sprinkles it on her tongue just as I drain the rest of the mug in a single face-scrunching gulp. Tipping her head, the Sól begins chanting, reaching for the sky. She stops, slams her palms on the sand, grips two handfuls, then flicks her fists over so fast most of it sprays free.
“What’s she doing?”
“Reading the will of the Creators,” Saiza whispers, taking the empty cup from my hand.
Slowly, almost eerily, the Sól loosens her fingers, milky eyes searching the grains left in her lax grasp. “Gath attain de ma veil set aygh te,” she says, her murmured words somehow echoing across the dusty expanse. “Hailá atith ana te lai …”
A hush falls over the crowd, and Kaan’s face pales. He spears me through with a wide-eyed stare that chills me to the bone.
“Did she say something b-bad?”
“The Sól has announced that since blood has already been spilled in your honor, you must not leave this crater unclaimed. That if you do, more moons will fall in this place of ill-spilled blood and the Johkull Clan will lose our place of sanctuary. That many will perish. Her word is final.”