I hit a rut in the ruined old road and had to jockey to keep my rig on course. When I was able, I stared at him again, incredulous. “If you haven’t assumed your father’s place in all this time, who has?”
“I was twelve years old when I relinquished my power to his court. I believed our kind would be better served by someone other than me.” He grunted then — a soft, wry exhalation. “Apparently someone in my homeland felt the need to make certain I could never change my mind. I suspect it was a member of the court who betrayed me to the person who hired you.”
I was outraged — not only by the thought of Drakor being sold out by a traitor, but also by the notion that he would have so readily accepted it. “So, you are willing to let yourself die rather than risk failing as king?”
He looked at me for a very long moment, a storm seeming to brew beneath the burnished gold of his gaze. “I was willing.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Much has changed since I was shackled inside that box and shipped across the ocean to this place, Nisha. Now I find myself questioning quite a lot of things.”
Although he was contemplative and hard to read, I sensed the flicker of determination beneath his calm demeanour. He would make a dangerous adversary, I had no doubt. His kindness and intellect would make him a formidable but fair ruler.
“It seems to me that you could better serve your people by being a leader, Drakor, not a martyr.”
“Indeed?” He smiled at that, only the subtlest curving of his sensual mouth. “I think you may be wiser than any of my long-lived counsellors and advisors, Nisha the Heartless.”
For some reason I didn’t care to examine, it bit somehow to hear him refer to the cold reputation I’d prided myself on for so long. I wasn’t heartless — not when it came to him. I looked at Drakor and felt as though my entire being was made of awakening emotion and sensation, not the logic and fear and mistrust that had been drummed into me from a very young age.
I cared for him.
If I didn’t watch my step, I worried that I might very easily find myself in love with him.
“Do you have somewhere that you can go?” I asked him, needing to steer my thoughts back to the situation at hand. “It won’t be safe for either one of us to be on the road any longer than we have to be.”
He nodded, grim. “There is a hidden enclave of my kind in this region of the new continent. They haven’t yet been discovered by man. No human has been near their settlement, but if I asked it of them, they would provide us shelter.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready to rely on the Strange for any form of protection, but I didn’t tell him that. “Do you know specifically where they are?”
“The place was once called Colorado.”
“It’s not far from here,” I said, recognizing the old name from the time long before I’d been born, when most of this land had comprised unseen borders hemming in and uniting areas known as states. “I can take you there.”
Drakor seemed to consider for a moment. “In the southwest region of that place, there are ancient dwellings built into the side of a cliff. Tribes of humans once lived there, before their modern brothers drove them out and used the dwellings as parkland. Now the Strange hold it.”
I nodded and looked back out to the road. Even though I wanted to put another couple of hours behind us before we stopped to rest, my arms were heavy and my eyes were burning from staring into the darkness.
“I have some old maps in the back,” I said. “Maybe we should pull over and have a look.”
Drakor gave me a silent nod of agreement. I slowed the truck and detoured off the empty highway, taking us toward a thicket of woodlands several hundred yards from the road.
I lit a candle lamp and brought it over to where Drakor was studying one of the dozen or so historical maps I kept on hand in my rig. I sat down next to him on the floor.
“This is about where we are right now,” I said, pointing to the area above a ghost town known, a couple hundred years ago, as Flagstaff. I moved my finger across the map and his sharp gaze followed the northeasterly, diagonal path I indicated on the worn and brittle swatch of paper. “This is the old state border of Colorado. The area you told me about would be roughly around this corner. The roads between here and there aren’t the greatest. It will probably take me a couple of days to get you there.”
When he looked up at me, I felt a question burning in his unsettling eyes.
I slowly shook my head, answering before he could ask me. “I won’t be staying once we arrive there. I can’t. I’m human and I wouldn’t belong.”
His black brows lowered. “What if I said I wanted you to stay? What if I demanded it?”
I smiled, unwillingly pleased by his possessive, imperial tone. “I would remind you that you may be King of the Strange but I’m not one of your subjects.”
He reached over and cupped my cheek. “What if I told you that I don’t think I’ll be ready to let you go in a couple more days?”
I barely resisted the urge to turn my face into the warm cradle of his palm. With a strength I didn’t realize I had, I drew away from his touch and put my focus back on the open map. “We’ll need to stop for fuel sooner than later. Usually someone in the villages has a tank or two that can be bartered for—”
“Nisha.” He cast aside the map, forcing me to look at him. “If you don’t accept my help, then where will you go? You can’t go back to your home. Your old life is gone now.”
“I know,” I said. “I can’t go back to anything I knew before. Word of what happened tonight will travel fast. All I can do is keep moving now, figure out how to make my way. And I will. I’m not afraid of the unknown, Drakor. I know there’s bad in the world. I’ve survived the worst. I won’t run and hide from anything ever again.”
My eyes stung with memories from my past. I tried to blink away the tears, but he saw them. He stared at me, his strikingly handsome face tender. “What did you lose, dear Nisha?”
I shook my head, ready to dismiss the question before it could tear my heart wide open. But Drakor’s eyes were warm and caring, his hands comforting as he stroked my hair. The memories swelled inside me until I couldn’t hold them in.
“My mother,” I began, then took a steadying breath. “She was killed when I was four years old. She and my father and I were living in the country at the time. One day hellhounds broke into our home and chased us out to the woods.”
“Hellhounds.” Drakor’s expression hardened. “Ah, God, Nisha. They are vicious creatures, the worst of our kind.”
I knew all about them, of course, as did most of mankind. Hellhounds lived for blood sport and were most commonly employed as trackers. With their hideous double-heads, razor-sharp claws and incredible speed, there were few that could escape them — human or Strange.
“My father ran with me in one arm, his other hand wrapped around my mother’s wrist.” I blew out a quiet sob. “One moment she was with us, the next, she was gone. She turned back and tried to lead the hellhounds away from us. I can still hear her screams in my nightmares.”
Drakor gathered me to him and I didn’t have any strength to resist. I leaned against his chest, listening to the steady drum of his heartbeat. His arms were strong around me, his lips gentle as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
“My father was destroyed over the loss of my mother. I think seeing me only made it worse because I reminded him too much of her. My father blamed himself for putting her in danger, but he never really told me what he meant. We lived in fear of all the Strange after that. He drilled into me that I could trust no one. That no matter what, I should always only look out for myself.”