Page 41 of The Horde King of Shadow

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 willnevercatch 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 theKarathsee 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 firmlyshut.

“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 ridertraining. 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 theKarathabout 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.

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