Page 22 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter seven

Keera

M y skin tingled from scrubbing by the time I stepped out from under the trickling water in my rooms at the palace.

The dust had crusted onto every inch of my skin and hair, dried on by sweat as I scrubbed the painted words from Kelvadan’s outer wall, but I could still see the shadow of where they had been painted, cutting a rift in the city more easily than a sharpened blade.

The Viper is the true heir to Kelvadan .

The words haunted my waking hours, while visions of Erix on the throne plagued my dreams. Although he hadn’t been Erix—he was the Viper, mask firmly in place and gloves on, until I peeled them off his scarred fingers.

I didn’t know yet who had written them, but I had taken it upon myself to remove them.

Now, I had rubbed at my skin with a bar of lightly fragrant soap for long minutes, making this the longest I had stared at my own skin since the fight with the lava wyrm.

I had only bathed perfunctorily since I left the infirmary. Now, as the suds rinsed clean to reveal the subtle texture of scars and rippled flesh, I was forced to confront how much of my skin had been charred away by the lava wyrm.

How close I had come to death .

Bile burned the back of my throat, and I screwed my eyes shut as I stood naked and dripping water in my empty bedroom.

Erix had taken me back to Clan Katal while I was burned and delirious, which still stung of a betrayal, but he also must have gone to incredible lengths to keep me alive.

Such thoughts swirled endlessly in my mind: the conflict between my desire to protect Kelvadan at all costs and the endless yearning to hear his voice, to let him hold me like he had crushed me to him in my dreams. I wanted to rage at him—to be angry that he had left me in this city after I told him I loved him in all his brokenness—but as he clutched me to his chest like I was the only thing solid in his world, I had melted.

I had belonged the way I ached to belong to this city.

But even though Erix had moved mountains to save me, he was all but lost to me right now.

Of course, Queen Ginevra had nearly lost her life trying to save me as well.

I sighed heavily as I grabbed a clean cloth to scrub myself dry, my newly healed skin still itching and burning at the touch.

Tossing it aside once I was dry, I reached for the soft pants and cropped vest laying on my bed—one of the new outfits that kept appearing in my rooms. Whenever I asked Neven about them, he would just shrug and comment on how it was important to “look the part”.

As I tied the vest shut with a beautifully embroidered sash, sporting a pattern of golden larrea flowers, I contemplated what it meant to be the heir to Kelvadan.

Inside me, the emaciated, lonely exile salivated at the idea, just as she had at the food at Neven and Aderyn’s table when she first arrived. Nothing could possibly signal that I belonged more. That I had found a home .

I shoved away the voice inside me that whispered in the dead of night that I wouldn’t be able to do it.

That Erix had run away from this responsibility for a reason.

I tossed my hair back with a huff before braiding it down the side of my head in the style of the clans as I had taken to doing.

I had survived every near scrape in exile with little guidance as to why I kept persisting, only for my purpose to be dropped into my lap when I raced to warn Kelvadan of the rising clans.

Now, I had escaped death at the claws of the lava wyrm by the breadth of a hair because the desert had a plan for me.

I had to be the leader Kelvadan needed in these trying times.

With that final thought, I marched out of my rooms and up the stairs to the queen’s rooms. I could make it up the stairs without limping these days, and if my right leg still ached by the time I made it to the top, I simply didn’t mention it to the healers.

Stepping through the stone archway into the library-like room where Queen Ginevra took most of her meetings, I schooled my face from the pained grimace it wore, only to find I needn’t have bothered.

Nobody in the room was looking at me. The queen, Aderyn, and the Archon of Agriculture, Dravis, all bent over papers and scrolls strewn across the large table in the center of the room.

All wore matching looks of consternation, none more severe than the queen’s, accentuated by the deep lines of her face.

There were certainly more lines on her complexion than I remembered.

“We will have to supplement the remaining grains with game. I can draw up a hunting schedule for the riders,” Aderyn said, jabbing her finger at a line of numbers on the paper before her.

“They would have to go far from the city with the herds as thin as they are. I’m not sure it’s wise to have them go far afield with threats lurking around every corner.” Queen Ginevra’s voice was weary.

The archon scrubbed at his close-cropped black beard.

“Perhaps it would be a better use of the riders’ strength to have them help fix the irrigation systems that were destroyed in the earthquake.

It requires a lot of heavy lifting.” Where every time I had heard him speak before, his tone had struck me as monotone and pedantic, now every syllable was dripped with worry.

“If we don’t get those fixed, we will eventually have to trade with one of the ambassadors for their country’s grain. ”

“That will take too long. It doesn’t fix the immediate problem of food for the city,” Aderyn pointed out.

I shuffled toward the table awkwardly, the bravado with which I had left my room all but evaporated in the face of the situation’s direness.

While I had saved the farmer’s lives, I couldn’t help but think I might have done something differently in the face of the avalanche—diverted the rockslide more carefully so it wouldn’t destroy so many crops.

Maybe I hadn’t prevented the farmers’ deaths but just delayed them.

I let out a shuddering breath, and the queen looked up at the sound. Her eyes widened and an unreadable expression flickered over them before her face hardened in determination, her lips a hard line.

“Dravis, if you could excuse us,” she murmured, cutting Aderyn off as she tried to concoct a way for the riders to both hunt and rebuild the irrigation systems.

The advisor glanced up to see me, and curiosity crossed his face briefly before he tapped his temple and swept out of the room. I tapped my temple in return as he left.

I cocked my head in curiosity, fully expecting us to be working with the archon on the food shortage until the early hours of the morning. By this time, the moon was already high in the sky, and I expected my bed to go undisturbed for many hours yet.

Instead, the queen pinned me with her serious gray eyes. Staring closely, I caught the barest hint of Erix’s silver around the edges of her irises.

“It’s time.”

Her words snapped me from that train of thought.

“What…” I started, brows furrowed, before my expression went slack and my mouth fell open. “The Heart?”

The queen nodded gravely, her silky braids reflecting the moonlight streaming in the windows with the movement.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my voice breathless. My own heart accelerated in my chest.

Queen Ginevra spread her hands. “If we wait any longer, it may be too late. Even if we do find a way to feed our people now, it is only a matter of time before another disaster strikes. The words painted outside the city just show that our enemies are growing closer by the day, and we can’t afford to wait any longer.

The Heart must be restored, or there will never be even a hope for peace. ”

I nodded. Nerves and hope fluttered inside my ribcage in equal measure, making it difficult to draw breath.

Ginevra was still weak, and breaking into the tower would be no easy feat in her feeble state.

Erix may still be planning to march on Kelvadan, but the Heart might change his mind.

If I retrieved it, I might still be able to convince him to help me restore it to the temple at the sea and abandon his plot for war.

It was an idea I had all but discarded after weeks with no word from Erix, but it had resurfaced again today.

After all, during the avalanche, I had pulled on the tether to him and Erix had pulled back.

The connection between us—whatever it was—lived, and soon I would have the thing he had searched for his whole life in my hands.

“I’m ready,” I said with another sharp nod.

The queen braced her hands on the arms of her chair, wood creaking as she levered herself to standing. Aderyn reached for her arm to help, but Queen Ginevra batted her away.

“If I’m well enough to call on the magic of the desert to break down doors that have resisted opening for over a hundred years, then I am well enough to walk up a flight of stairs to get to them,” she declared imperiously.

Despite my nerves, a smile tugged at my lips.

“At least you two waited until you both could walk to do this,” Aderyn muttered under her breath. She crossed her arms over her chest, as if that were the only way she could keep herself from trying to help as the queen rounded the table.

I stepped aside to let her pass through the archway and then followed her up the curving stairway to the top of the highest spire in Kelvadan.

As we reached the highest landing, my gaze drifted to the narrow window on one side of the circular space.

The desert sky was velvety, spangled with stars I still found it difficult to sleep without staring up at.

I wondered if Erix had gone back to sleeping in a tent or if he stared up at the sky at night still, the way we had when we traveled together.

I dragged my gaze away from the window—from those thoughts—to focus on the task at hand .