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.”