Page 109 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

Revenge is a path lined with thorns, it tears your skin to shreds with every step forward.

Sometimes I wonder if forgiveness would be easier. Perhaps it would.

But not for my soul.

I have become the stuff of nightmares.

Unstoppable, lethal.

I will have my revenge.

Tabitha Wysteria

Alina no longer felt.

Alina no longer cared.

She had tried to keep count at first of the days bleeding into nights, hours slipping through her fingers like grains of sand.

But by the third sunrise, or perhaps it was the fourth, the days had begun to blur.

Time folded into itself, weightless and irrelevant.

The desert, ever shifting, ever cruel, reshaped its skin beneath her feet, laughing in cruel mirth, whispering taunts in a tongue only she could hear.

You’re not one of us , it said. And it was right.

A true Dunayan, a child of the sands, would not lose her way. Would not stumble.

But perhaps the desert hadn’t realised the girl drifting through its golden bones chose to be lost.

Alina wandered with neither purpose nor destination, guided only by the emptiness hollowing out her chest. She had not forgotten the things Hessa had taught her.

No, those lessons clung to her with the same devotion she once gave to the woman who shared them.

She knew where to find water in the dunes’ embrace, how to tuck herself into the cool folds of night when the winds threatened to flay her to bone.

She knew how to hunt, how to split a scorpion with practised precision, savouring its meat, even raw.

She moved like a ghost dressed in human skin.

Her pack was light, but just enough. Hessa had made sure of it.

Desert folk were never caught unprepared.

Even sleep was a discipline, not a surrender.

One never knew when a storm might tear through, shredding tents and scattering souls.

Alina’s body was a weapon, her garments an arsenal: daggers sewn into secret seams, tools to summon water from beneath the parched earth, cloth that shielded her face from the wrath of sand and wind.

She was a lone storm, moving through a wasteland that once called her sister.

Alina no longer felt the pangs of hunger.

By the eighth day, even thirst ceased to matter.

She moved with the wind now, an aimless phantom in the sands, her heart weeping silently into the desert’s endless grains.

Her footsteps were carved in sorrow, and still she wandered, trying, failing, to unearth reason in Saren’s betrayal.

What thread connected the Dunayan warrior to Hagan?

Alina had unravelled every theory until her mind splintered under the weight of it, pouring thoughts like water from a cracked vessel.

But none of it fit. None of it made sense.

She had thought, once or twice, about returning. To Hessa’s region. To King Siroc. She might fall to her knees and bare the truth, let her voice tremble as she begged them to believe her. But why would they? Why would they take the word of a foreigner, a farahi, over one of their own?

So she kept walking.

The city of Madari was a memory now, a mirage lost behind her. Whether days or weeks had passed, she could not say. Whether someone followed, she no longer cared. By now, surely not. No one would bother looking for a ghost lost in the dunes.

She could lie down and let the desert claim her.

Let the wind swallow her bones and the sand cradle her in silence.

There was nothing left to tether her to the world.

No warmth, no laughter, no light. Hagan had taken it all.

Every time she fought to crawl forward, he reached from the shadows and dragged her back into the dark.

Alina drifted through the desert as though walking not upon sand, but through the corridors of memory.

With each step, the past unfurled like a dream half-remembered, carrying her back to a time when she had been nothing more than a princess fretting over silks and braided hair.

A girl who had once believed love was shy glances and stolen kisses, soft and sweet as a lullaby.

She remembered falling for her brother’s best friend.

The dangerous, charming shadow that had always lingered on the edge of her world.

Perhaps she had loved Hagan because he was the one her mother would have forbidden, the one no one would ever deem worthy of her crown.

But whatever the reason, she knew, truly knew, that she had loved him. Fiercely. Naively.

Not until Kai Blackburn had swept into her life did she understand what love could be.

He had shown her the edge she never knew she possessed, taught her to raise her voice, to stand tall, to say no when the world tried to bend her.

She often wondered what path might have unfurled had she climbed atop that wyvern with him the day he flew home.

How strange to think that had been the last time she had seen him. That quiet, aching farewell. She hadn’t known it was final. Hope had clung to her, foolish and tender, whispering that there would be a next time. That he would return.

In the beginning, she dreamt of rescue. Of Kai’s great beast soaring across the skies to find her. Of his arms wrapping around her, lifting her out of this broken land and into something safe.

But then, Hessa.

Then came the sun.

And everything she thought she knew was set alight.

Alina walked. She marched, stumbled, and slid through dunes that whispered ancient secrets with every gust of wind.

She ate in silence, curled beneath the brittle veil of night, and slept in shallow intervals, her dreams fading into the shifting sands like ghosts.

She studied the stars not for beauty, but for survival, tracing their quiet language across the heavens, hoping their silent story would lead her somewhere safe.

Alina walked.

Alina ate.

Alina slept.

And Alina wandered.

The ghulas came, as they always did. Spectral things born from death and sun-dazed delirium.

They slithered out of the heat like mirages, donning familiar faces.

Sometimes Ash, her brother, eyes sad and burning with words never spoken.

Sometimes Kai, cruel and disappointed, scolding her not for choosing another, but for choosing herself.

But it was worst when they wore Hessa’s face. That was when Alina broke. She’d scream, hurling sand and spit and rage. She would claw at the apparition, sobbing as if grief itself could bleed.

Only one face she welcomed.

Only one she waited for.

Hagan.

He always came, smirking with that wicked twist of a smile, lips curved as if mocking the very world.

She’d gouge out his eyes some days, flay that familiar face until the ghula shrieked and dissolved into dust. Other days, she’d simply sit and talk, asking questions it could never answer.

The ghula only mirrored her torment, incapable of offering what it did not possess.

Yet still, she tilted her head and listened, even as it cackled and pointed at her hornless head in cruel delight.

She knew it was wrong.

She knew Hessa would have wept to see her like this.

No one dared to torment a ghula, none but Alina.

And Alina revelled in it.

Until they stopped coming altogether.

Until word must have spread among their kind: stay away from the mad girl in the dunes.

So Alina walked.

And she ate.

And she slept.

And she wandered on.

Time had long since unravelled for the girl who wandered the desert, its threads slipping like sand through her fingers.

Alina might have said she was lost, only she wasn’t, not truly.

The desert knew her, and she knew it, for her heart had once belonged to the one shaped by its very grains. No, Alina was not lost.

She was merely adrift .

In all the days that bled into one another, she met no soul, save for one fleeting encounter.

A band of travellers, sun-worn and weathered, crossed her path and offered her the kindness of a shared fire, food, and water.

Alina, dulled by solitude, allowed it. The quiet ache of loneliness begged her to linger, if only for a night.

But kindness soured in the dark. One man sought more than her silence.

His hands crept in the night like vipers, and Alina's blade met the soft flesh of his throat. His blood painted her face in warm ribbons. She didn’t flinch.

She didn’t speak. She simply rose and walked away, leaving the others behind in mercy she could no longer explain.

Alina walked.

Alina ate.

Alina slept.

Until time itself disintegrated, until even memory loosened its grip.

And then, she simply fell.

Her knees buckled first, followed by the rest of her, sinking into the warm embrace of the earth.

She closed her eyes and surrendered, offering herself to the desert like a votive gift.

If it wished to kill her, she would not resist. Death, at last, would be an old friend come to collect her.

But if it chose to swallow her whole and spit her back out, then she would claw her way from its throat like something reborn.

She waited.

Her rasghita was discarded, her karash tugged down. No cloth veiled her face now. The sun had free reign to sear her skin, blister her lips, and burn the tears from her eyes. Her throat cracked, her muscles wilted into the sand, and yet still, she did not stir.

Alina no longer wandered .

She merely waited.

Hessa lay beside her in spirit, conjured by a half-mad mind that refused to forget. Alina welcomed the illusion, listened to the soft voice whisper against her sunburnt skin. But not even Hessa’s ghost could rouse her.

She waited.

For the world to take her.

For the pain to finally leave.

She had long lost count of the days. Time slipped by like sand through her fingers—unnoticed, uncared for.

Her body had grown frail, hollowed by the sun’s wrath and the desert’s indifference.

On more than one occasion, the dunes tried to claim her, swallowing her whole in silence, only to spit her back out like something undesired. Still, Alina did not move.

She waited, for a sign.

A reason to rise. A reason to keep fighting.

All she had ever done was struggle, only to be cast down time and time again. Perhaps that was life, she thought bitterly. A war of attrition. And she had grown so very, very tired.

Perhaps life had won.

Just one signal, one spark, and she would rise once more. She would crawl, if she had to, without Ash. Without Hessa. She would reclaim her kingdom. She would find Hagan and end him.

But first, she needed a sign.

Her body stiffened with time. Even the act of swallowing became a memory. Her eyelids, crusted and sealed, refused to part. So she let go.

Alina slept.

She drifted through the endless hours, through moonlight and sunlight alike. She lay still, entombed in silence, waiting for death’s gentle fingers to cradle her into nothingness .

Until.

Something landed on her nose, something small.

A shadow stirred above her, brushing across her skin like a whisper from a dream.

A sound broke the stillness. A cry, both fierce and familiar, slicing through the silence like a blade of fire.

She fought, just barely, against the prison of her own body.

Her lashes trembled. A moan escaped cracked lips.

She forced her eyes open with sheer will.

Brown eyes, dim but alive, met the sky.

The delicate creature resting on her nose stirred, wings trembling before it lifted into the air.

A tiny insect, a whisper of joy from a time now lost. What had it been called again?

Ah, yes. A narshara. A firefly. Said to be a sacred gift from the dead, sent to guide the living across the shifting sands of the desert.

And in that fleeting, breath-held moment, Alina understood. Hessa had sent it. To lead her. To light the path. To offer the sign she had so desperately begged the world to give.

The narshara ascended, rising higher and higher, glinting like an ember against the pale sky.

And then, as Alina’s eyes followed its glow, she realised what the soft sound had been, the thing it had come to reveal.

For there, hovering above her head, shimmering like a promise born of grief and hope, was her sign.

Alina Acheron smiled. A dry, broken smile that tasted of salt and sun as the phoenix soared above her, trailing flame and hope. Its cry a song not of sorrow, but of triumph.

Of endurance.

And of life.