Page 3 of The Horde King of Shadow

I forced a small smile, my gaze landing on a cart that soldkuveribread, the small, dark berries spilling their juices into the spongy baked good. I shuffled forward, purchasing a slice quickly, offering half to Sora, who shoved it eagerly into her mouth.

Across from the fountain in the center of the market, a vendor was shouting. Calling out bets for the shadow moon tonight. A crowd grew around him, gold being shoved and waved into the air to catch his attention.

Sora dropped the bottle of red fog into her bag, and it clinked against a quill tip. “Maybe we should place a wager. Seems like a sure thing. What do you think?”

“They always come,” I replied, picking at my bread. “It’s not a question ofif.”

Now people placed bets onwhen. Exact times. On howmanywould come. On which dragon would be in the lead. If it would rain. If a cloud passed over the moon when they landed at the East Gate.

That was where the gold was.

“Will you try to speak with them again?” Sora asked. Her lip curled, and I felt a flash of shame in my chest. I knew she didn’t mean for her teasing to feel malicious…but sometimes it felt like she was poking fun at my expense. “Or get caught by the guards? Don’t make me tail you all night.”

Just like my family, Sora was infinitely skeptical of my theories on the dragons and the world I believed lay beyond Drukkar’s Sea. She was Dothik’s leading scholar. Her mind and its limits were infinite. She could recount a book she’d read as a child, word for word, could tell you which pages had been ripped, which ones had held stains. She could tell you what she’d eaten while she’d been reading that book and what lecture her mother had given that evening.

Still, she didn’t believe me. When it was her that I wanted to believe in me the most. Sometimes I thought she pitied me. That she only humored me because of our unlikely friendship. Or perhaps because of my bloodlines, which was even worse.

“I told you before—that was a misunderstanding,” I said. “I was out on the wildlands. I’d forgotten it was the shadow moon.”

I knew Sora didn’t believe my lie. But she was wrong about me trying tospeakwith them. I wasn’t insane. I’d just wanted to see them. Up close.

The tavern bells began to ring, filling the marketplace with a rush. Soon, the temple bell would sound.

“I need to get back,” I told her, eager to leave. I didn’t want to fight about this again.

“Klara,” Sora said, catching my arm. “I’m only teasing…”

“I know,” I said, giving her a smile I hoped looked genuine. “It’s not that. The feast—I didn’t realize how late it was.”

Sora didn’t believe me. I knew it was one thing she didn’t respect about me. That I retreated and fled instead of standing my ground.Shealways held her ground. She was better suited to be a high-ranking guard of theDothikkarrather than tucked away in the quiet archives, spouting off her evening lectures to whomever would listen.

Sora huffed out a sharp breath through her nostrils, her tail flicking. “Don’t lose that,” she commanded, her eyes sweeping to the book clutched against my chest.

I felt a twist of discomfort when she turned her back, stalking to the bets maker in the center, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the crowd while fishing out gold from her pocket, waving it over her head.

For a moment, I stood perfectly still, observing the growing crowd. Listening to the cacophony of hundreds of voices enclosed in the marketplace, bouncing off buildings and funneling down the road.

In that moment, in a moment that nearly stole my breath, I felt incredibly lonely.

Someone jostled my shoulder, a drunk staggering into me, a slurred curse on his lips. The movement shoved me into a tall, imposing figure, and I felt my chest seize in panic when the book tumbled out of my grasp.

The drunk’s boots kicked the book—one of the archives’ most cherished tomes—when he stumbled off, and I gasped out my alarm as it skidded across the filthy road.

Before I had a chance to react, it was retrieved by the male I’d run into, his large figure bending low to snag it off the worn cobblestones.

When he turned toward me, my eyes latched onto the book. Quickly taking stock of its condition, I was relieved to see it had no significant damage on the leather-bound cover, at least from what I could see.

Then I watched the stranger flip open the pages. Curiosity, perhaps, but I nearly cried out in protest, my feet carrying me closer without a second thought. My love of books was perhaps the only thing I had in common with Queen Kara. This washerbook. The one she’d painstakingly hand copied from the original text, of Bekkar’s history. It was priceless.

And his hands are filthy,I thought in alarm, my gaze catching on a black chalky dust coating the male’s palms. He turned a page, and I saw a black smudge linger on the delicate parchment.

Sora wouldkillme.

“Don’t,” I said quickly. “Please don’t?—”

For the first time, our eyes met. Whatever words I’d been about to utter died pathetically in my throat.

The male in front of me reminded me of the horde kings of old, of their imposing statues that had been erected in every outpost, in every village throughout Dakkar, even in the priestesses’ temple in the North Lands and here in the districts of Dothik.

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