Page 35 of The Horde King of Shadow

“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.

“Theancient,” 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 ofethrallbeing 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 itethrall. 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 withethrall. 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? Asours?

“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 ofpyrokisfor centuries, yes? To this day, they still rely on them, yes?”

She nodded.

“And would you not argue that the bond between apyrokiand 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 numberof 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 thesy’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’ssy’ashafor 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.

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