House of Darakai by K.L. Kolarich

Author:K.L. Kolarich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rogue Kite Publishing
Published: 2022-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

Luscia

Luscia hauled her gear off with surly vigor, cursing the muggy Andwele drizzle as crossly as her own trifling thoughts.

The rain pecked her forehead. She ignored Kasim as she departed from him on the bluff, just like the lycran and najjani guard at the edge of the thicket. Distractedly, Luscia thrust the bundle of luxiron straight into Declan’s barreled chest and trudged through the tangle of mossy trees by her lonesome.

Luscia rattled her head in walking, as if she could dislodge the sound of his voice where it still lingered provocatively in her ear.

The sun had risen and set, but Kasim’s whisper remained. He’d said her name.

Hushed and unhurried, he’d permitted those willfully unspoken syllables to leave his barbarous tongue. It opposed the compilation of monikers the Darakaian haidren so often preferred, a rather tender anomaly she might have imagined, for Kasim hadn’t said it since.

Thus, marching through the sodden muck, she was saddled with a more vexing anomaly altogether, felt in the heaviness of her limbs when she smacked aside the fat waterlogged leaves curtaining her path. The desire was so intrinsically preposterous, it defied every ounce of logic she harbored.

Hers was just a name. And Luscia longed to hear him say it again.

She traipsed down the slippery unmarked trail leading to the City Nest, irked that something as trivial as that could muddy her already questionable association with the haidren to Darakai. How uttered in his rich, smoky tenor, one name had summoned a taste that ought to have dissipated with the contest it won.

Even now, soaked in sweet rain, his remnant flavor tingled Luscia’s lips with maddening ease. Well into their training that stormy morning, that lingering taste dragged Luscia’s reflex and stalled her defense. This was the counterproductive consequence of her finally besting him, exhibited in the shredded seem of her borrowed gunjas where the fabric flapped miserably off her scraped thigh.

Submit emotion to reason. Luscia recited Alora’s consistent advice. Emotion is capricious, but reason secure.

It was reason that cautioned Luscia to remember how precarious her ties to Kasim already were.

How scathingly the rest of her men would respond if they ever learned that she’d aligned with an agent of Darakai… She had jeopardized the integrity of their sacred luxiron to sharpen him for some territorial challenge. She’d leaned on him, confided in him… all to hone the deficient skillset fostered from her najjan’s overprotection.

It was reason that declared a haidren’s primary pursuit was the insurance of her people, not her emotion. The pursuit demanded her stridence, above any personal want, for the honor of Boreal.

For devotion to Aniell.

Besides, Luscia considered, grabbing onto the knobby branches in her slick descent, it was a fragment of personal wanting that had hindered her all evening. Were she to creak ajar the gate to these misplaced attractions, it was Luscia who would become the mediocre opponent, while Kasim evolved into a greatness all his own at her expense.

Luscia was called to be many things in her lifetime… but not a single one was mediocre.

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