“Sleeping,” he answered. Without asking—the high-handed male—he dragged my ankle toward him, securing the leather cuff. This cordage was shorter than the one he’d used at the citadel and on the clifftops the last two nights—though I hadn’t slept once on our journey.

The other cuff he attached to his ankle, and he tugged on the strength of the cord, testing it.

When he was satisfied, he let out a deep sigh and fell back beside me. And I fought with everything in me not to inspect his body with hungry curiosity, my skin practically buzzing with the need. I’d seen statues of naked men before…but none had ever quite looked like Sarkin. I’d also seen plenty of naked bodies in my lifetime. Most Dakkari were not shy about nudity, but I’d grown up more sheltered than most, even when we’d lived on the wildlands.

“Shy’rissa,” came the tired word. “Sleep,” he translated.

I felt the heat of his body, making me even warmer. The tug at my ankle was oddly…comforting.

Yet it felt like a grip too. It was impossible to ignore.

“You’re…you’re…”

“Naked?” he asked, voice groggy. “This time tomorrow night, you’ll be my wife. You will get used to it. Shy’rissa.”

Well, when he put it like that…

There was a swooping sensation in my belly when he murmured those words, like I was falling off the edge of the cliff all over again.

“Veekor,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Veekor. It means sleep in the old Dakkari language.”

Sarkin shifted. Above us, I watched the flames from the fire in the hearth flicker along the walls. If only to keep my gaze off him.

“Veekor, then,” he rasped.

I hid my smile when I turned my head.

“Shy’rissa,” I said.

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Chapter 16SARKIN

“Today?” Mazra asked, her eyes nearly bulging out of her sockets. “Karath, surely you can’t mean⁠—”

“Today,” I said, my tone final. “She begins her rider instruction this week. I want Lishara’s blessing before that happens.”

Mazra wrung a dirtied towel in her hand. “I—I⁠—”

Behind her, her kitchens were already bustling, the Karag under her command obeying her like they would me. Mazra was a force of nature when she wanted to be.

“There doesn’t need to be a grand feast, Mazra,” I told her, reaching forward to squeeze her arm. The older cook took great pride in her ability to throw celebrations for the horde. She had been slowly preparing for one, to celebrate our return to the Arsadia…but she hadn’t expected to throw a wedding feast with little notice. “A simple meal would suffice.”

“Of course there needs to be a feast!” Mazra said, her head snapping up, frowning in her confusion. “Oh, on Muron, Karath, there will be a feast.”

Feranos had been watching this exchange with a raised brow, but he kept his tongue firmly behind his teeth.

“We don’t have any decorations though. No banners, no spark showers,” she lamented.

I placed my hand over hers when it began to wring the towel too tightly. I wondered if she wished it were my neck, for giving her such little notice that I would take a wife today.

“This is an outlier circumstance, Mazra,” I told her. “I’m sure you understand.”

She blinked. Her lips were pursed, and I studied the lines that extended from the corners of her mouth. Mazra had two emotions that I’d seen: displeased or jovially happy. Never anything in between.

“I’ll do my best, Karath. But…you will not even allow witnesses?”

“No,” I said firmly. Impatience cut through me, and I tried to tamp it down. Of course the horde would want to be involved. Of course they would be curious, I reasoned. I would only marry once, after all, and it was a rare thing indeed for an Elthika—especially one such as Zaridan—to give her blessing to a rider’s mate so swiftly. My people wanted to know why. They wanted to know everything they could possibly glean about Klara, this strange hybrid Dakkari human from across the sea.

I left Mazra shortly after, hearing her bark orders at her cooks, given she had to prepare an entire wedding feast for the horde by tonight and it was already late morning.

“Do you not think it an insult to your bride to not allow witnesses? To throw together a quick ceremony like this? Your horde wants to celebrate you, Sarkin. This will be a new age for us all,” Feranos reasoned. “Perhaps you should put this off until⁠—”

“I only need you as a witness so that I can send the confirmation to Elysom,” I told him. “Everyone else will simply be a distraction. It is not meant to be an insult to her. I just want this done.”

Feranos blew out a sharp breath as we walked toward the field.

“I will send the Dakkar scouting report alongside your letter of confirmation that we received Lishara’s blessing from the temple,” I told him, seeing Zaridan waiting for us, her black scales gleaming in the warm afternoon sunlight. I turned to Feranos. “Two mysar commands fulfilled. Then we will be rid of Elysom’s influence. For good. Free of…”

The shame, I almost said. Or perhaps free of my father’s complicated legacy, which had almost cost me my future.

But Feranos was an old friend and he knew what I meant.

He inclined his head. Understanding and acceptance were in the line of his shoulders, in the glint of his eyes. “Karath.”

My title, falling from his lips was an agreement. A reminder of who I was to him, despite our longstanding friendship.

Tracking the sun in the sky, I was eager to leave. It would be long hours until we reached the temple of Lishara, though the weather was on our side. A surprisingly bright and warm day, warm enough to dissipate much of the moisture in the air from the falls.

“I’ll scout ahead,” Feranos told me, walking toward his Elthika, Vorna, on the other side of Zaridan. “Meet you there.”

When I approached Zaridan, I placed my wide palm on her snout, running it up until my fingers encountered the long notch of a nearly invisible scar. Zaridan seemed on edge this afternoon, her head constantly raising into the sky, searching, her ears perking and twitching with something unheard. She only did that when her sibling was near.

“Do you sense him here?” I asked quietly. Lygath. Another Vyrin, another descendant of Muron, and Zaridan’s hatchling brother. “He must feel you’re near.”

Zaridan’s eyes burned into mine, and I patted the side of her wide jaw, feeling her hot huff of air rustle through my hair. Her pupils shifted over my shoulder, and I turned.

There, Klara approached, led by the two females—Bezeth and Yar’la—I’d put in charge of her earlier this morning.

My nostrils flared, and I turned to fully regard her, Zaridan straightening at my side, standing proud and tall. My heart quickened in my chest.

Adorned in the ceremonial hatchling-scale dress, Klara was a sight to behold. The material flowed over her body like a gentle waterfall, skimming and caressing her lovely, soft curves. Hatchling scales were sheer but nearly indestructible, shed from young Elthika as they grew and a valuable resource among the Karag. They reflected in the late-morning light, shimmering with iridescence with every step Klara took, going from soft blues to bright silvers to gentle purples.

Half of her hair was pulled back, secured with an intricate braid and interwoven with dragon scales and silver clips. The rest of it ran down her back, a dark tumble of wild waves that made me want to bury my hands in it.

She was so unlike every Karag beauty I’d ever seen. The Sarrothian valued physical strength in their women, all hard lines and striking forms. Yet Klara was small, weak, and…soft. There was not a single hard edge on her body, save for the harshness of the scar on her face, but it made me squeeze my fists together at my sides, trying to fight the urge to explore every pleasing inch.