Page 6 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

The desert can become your enemy if you don’t know how to navigate it.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand the beauty of these dunes.

My closest friends are desert folk. Harsh and unyielding at times, yet the kindest and most loving people you could ever meet.

When my time comes, I wouldn’t mind walking out into the desert, lying down, and waiting for death to greet me like an old friend.

To die in such a breathtaking place, its silence wrapping around me like a blanket…

reminding me just how small and insignificant we truly are.

Yes, the desert really is a magical place.

Tabitha Wysteria

Alina Acheron had been travelling for days astride a colossal desert serpent, its sinuous body gliding over the endless sands with an ease that defied its size.

With her rode Princess Hessa and her attendants, silent and swift beneath the oppressive sun.

They had reached the outer fringes of the Kingdom of Light a few hours earlier and had since made camp beneath a canopy of stars.

Yet no matter how many times Alina washed, she could not rid herself of the imagined weight of dried blood clinging to her skin.

Nor could she banish Hagan’s twisted face from her dreams. Night after night, it came, a cruel spectre lodged deep within the shadows of her sleep.

Thus far, Alina held little opinion of the fabled Kingdom of Light.

All she had glimpsed was an ocean of golden dunes stretching into oblivion.

The stories she’d heard over the years painted it as a land of splendour.

Towering palm trees, sun-kissed sandstone temples, and crystalline rivers meandering through cities like veins of silver.

They spoke of phoenixes in hues of flame and ice, soaring across sun-drenched skies, their feathered sparks lighting the night like drifting stars.

But none of that beauty could touch her now.

Not when the thought of the royal family, nestled safely in their palace just hours away, filled her with dread.

Did they know? Did they feel the silence stretching across the desert, whispering of tragedy?

Their son, Prince Zahian Noor, lay cold and lifeless in the Kingdom of Fire.

Hagan had left his body discarded upon the stone floor of the dining chamber where Alina and Zahian had waited to join the court for their engagement celebration.

The desert folk were efficient travellers, swift in their rituals and seasoned in hardship.

Within an hour, camp had risen like magic from the dust. Tents unfurled, a fire coaxed to life, and some strange, sinewy creature roasting over the flames.

Princess Hessa handed Alina a cup of vhina, the desert’s infamous spiced bloodwine, fermented with herbs and boiled for days until it seared both throat and soul.

It could heal wounds. Or keep one dancing on the edge of sleep until dawn.

‘Drink,’ Hessa said, lowering herself beside Alina with feline grace. ‘You look like… what is the word? Those things that frighten drakonian children at night? A ghula, perhaps, though I doubt you call them that.’

Alina reached for the serpent-skin cup. ‘A ghost?’

‘Yes!’ Hessa laughed, the sound as sharp and sudden as breaking glass. ‘That’s it. A ghost. You look as pale as one.’

The princess’s white eyes roamed Alina’s form until they settled atop her head, and lingered.

The others had tried not to stare, but in their restraint, their horror became all the more palpable.

Alina said nothing. She downed the vhina in a single burning swallow, welcoming the fire as it slid down her throat. Let it scald the memory.

A part of her was gone now. Taken, torn away by the hands of someone she had once loved beyond reason. Trusted beyond doubt. Hagan .

Her jaw tightened as fury bloomed in her chest like a star exploding.

She swore, once more, as she had each night since her escape, that she would find a way to end his life. Even if it cost her her own. She would make him pay for what he had done. And when that day came, it would not be a clean death. No. It would be slow. And it would burn.

A servant approached as dusk fell, offering food upon a polished stone plate. Alina left it untouched, pushing it aside with a quiet clatter, choosing instead to sip her wine and stare into the flickering flames. The fire’s dance was mesmerising, but it brought her no warmth.

Even now, after countless days on the road, the wounds on her scalp still wept in the night.

In the mornings, Hessa would tend to her in the hushed darkness of the tent, her fingers gentle as she dabbed oils and salves onto Alina’s mutilated horns.

Alina had refused everyone else’s touch, only the desert princess was permitted to see her break.

‘You need to eat,’ Hessa said, chewing with the deliberate grace of someone savouring every bite. ‘You’ll waste away and fall ill. We’re still a week from the heart of the Desert Kingdom.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Starving yourself won’t bring back the dead, amira.’

With a glare, Alina snatched up a chunk of the strange meat and shoved it into her mouth. She chewed with deliberate volume, grinding the meat as though punishing it. Mouth full, jaw clenched, she rammed more down until she could barely breathe, refusing to meet Hessa’s gaze.

And then came Hessa’s snort.

The flavour hit Alina all at once—ferocious, fiery, and completely unforgiving.

Her mouth burnt, her eyes watered, and her throat felt as though it had been set alight.

Choking, she spat the meat into the sand and fumbled for her wine, gulping it down in desperation.

Heat flooded her sinuses and poured from her eyes, making her nose run and her vision blur.

Spinning round, she glared at Hessa, who was doubled over with laughter. ‘You could’ve warned me!’

‘Then I would’ve missed your face,’ Hessa replied with a shrug, laughter still dancing in her voice.

‘That wasn’t funny,’ Alina wheezed, wiping her eyes. ‘I could’ve died.’

At the mention of death, Alina’s shoulders fell. Her voice faltered. She turned away, unable to stop the tears from blurring her sight again. This time not from spice, but sorrow.

‘You shouldn’t cry for the dead, amira,’ Hessa said, her voice quiet now, puzzled by the grief she witnessed but did not seem to share.

Alina had noticed it before, how the desert princess had not once wept for her sister.

She had ridden with them through wind and sun, offering no visible sign of mourning, no tear shed.

‘How can I not?’ Alina whispered, her voice trembling. ‘I will never see them again. My parents… my brother. Every day I wake, I will wake without them. And the day after that. And the one after that.’

Hessa gave a soft sigh, brushing her fingers through the sand until they disappeared beneath it. ‘Drakonians have curious ways of seeing mhaarta,’ she said. ‘Death is not an end, not to us. It is a door, one that opens to the next part of our journey.’

‘But your sister,’ Alina said softly. ‘She’s gone.’

Hessa tilted her head. ‘She is not here, no. But she is not gone.’ Her fingers emerged from the sand and let it pour through her palm like a river of gold.

‘In the desert, we believe that when we die, we enter a great house. The first thing you hear are the voices of those you loved, calling your name. You follow the sound, and there, around a great table, your ancestors sit waiting. You embrace again. You laugh again. Death is not a goodbye, amira. It is a return. To our true home.’ Hessa stared into the fire, eyes soft with something more than sorrow.

‘So, no. I do not cry for my sister. She is in that house, among our blood, and one day I will sit beside her once more. It is the living who suffer. It is us who must carry the ache.’

Alina tried to hold on to the image Hessa offered, of a house beyond this life filled with warm light and waiting arms. But still, her tears slipped free.

The ache for her brother was too sharp, too fresh.

If she could believe that Ash was laughing somewhere, drinking drakonian wine with the dead, perhaps it would ease the burden.

But she didn’t want Ash anywhere else. She wanted him here. Alive. And she didn’t want to wait a lifetime to see him again.

‘Do the desert folk not believe in the Underworld?’ Alina asked, curious. From the three southern kingdoms, the Desert Kingdom was the only one to believe in more than one god.

Hessa shook her head. ‘No, we consider that a northern belief.’

‘My kingdom is not a northern land and we believe in it.’

Hessa snorted. ‘Anything beyond those dunes is northern to us, amira.’

A sudden sound stirred the air, drawing both princesses’ gazes skyward.

Above them, the night stretched vast and infinite, scattered with stars.

Alina’s breath caught in her throat as a crimson phoenix soared overhead, its colossal wings igniting the dark with trails of shimmering sparks as it glided, almost weightless, through the heavens.

‘I never imagined they’d be so enormous,’ Alina murmured, awe softening the sharp lines of her expression.

‘It may be an omen,’ Hessa replied, equally entranced by the creature’s silent majesty. ‘We’re close now,only a day’s journey from the palace. Perhaps we ought to stop there, to inform them of Zahian Noor’s fate. I doubt they yet know he’s fallen.’

Alina bit her lower lip. ‘Are you sure?’ The mere thought of entering the phoenixian court without Zahian twisted something deep inside her.

A marriage had been pledged. Had the witches not come, she would be there now at his side, dancing beneath lanterns and fire-lit skies.

To walk into their halls without him, to tell them he was gone, was unbearable.

‘It is the right thing to do,’ Hessa said gently. ‘And they must be warned about the brahas.’