Page 26 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter nine

Keera

A cool gust of air swept across my face, and I sucked in a rattling breath. I gulped down the air like it was water and I hadn’t drunk in days. It burned my throat, like I had recently swallowed a mouthful of fire, but I couldn’t remember why.

My eyelids fluttered at the touch of a callused hand on my forehead, pushing tendrils of hair away from my face. They stuck like they had been crusted on by sweat or tears, and I groaned.

“Keera,” a familiar voice, calming in its firmness, called me from unconsciousness.

It was nearly drowned out by another shouting, this one from deep inside, inaudible but overwhelmingly loud. Emotion poured down the bond with Erix like a wall of fire. It burned in my flesh despite the cold sweat coating my skin.

My eyes snapped open, half expecting to meet a molten silver gaze. Instead, I found Aderyn crouching before me, surrounded by stone walls with concern etched into her face.

Realizing where I was, I shivered despite the heat of Erix’s rage roiling down the bond.

The weight of the mountain was palpable around me, and nausea rose in my throat at the idea of being crushed beneath it.

At least the door to the hall was open, and the hazy light drifting in painted the room in dull, dusty colors.

“Keera,” Aderyn repeated.

My gaze refocused on her, having glazed over momentarily.

“Are you all right?”

“All right?” I asked, my voice coming out scratchy as I sat up from where I was crumpled on the floor.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she clarified.

I frowned and looked down at my hands, finding my nails broken and torn as if I had been clawing at a hard surface.

The legs of my pants were ripped and bloody at the knees, and an odd heaviness throbbed behind my eyes.

I didn’t remember doing it, but I must have pounded at the walls before falling on the floor.

I flexed my wrists and rolled my neck. None of my bones seemed to be broken, and I could move all my limbs. I had certainly woken up in worse shape back at my oasis.

I nodded. “I’m all right. What time is it?”

Aderyn returned my nod with a sharp jerk of her own chin. “Just past dawn. You’ve only been down here overnight. Can you fight?” she asked.

“Of course.” The words were out before I processed her question, as if my body were urging me to spring into action before my mind had even caught up with what was happening.

Fight. Fight, a voice in my head that I didn’t recognize urged incessantly. It was different from voices I had sensed before—almost like Erix’s presence in my mind, but darker and more primal.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Who am I supposed to be fighting?”

Aderyn’s mouth was a hard line, and my gaze settled on the sickle blades clutched in her hands. “The clans are at the gate. They took us by surprise, and the riders are not ready for this fight. They need to see their queen—to know there is still hope.”

“Their queen…” The word ripped something loose in my head as I repeated it. My stomach dropped in horror. “The queen. She’s—Is she really… ”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish my sentence, the words rising up to choke me, but Aderyn’s grim face said it all.

“You are the queen now.” Her words were grim. “If you’re not there to show them you can lead, The Viper—Erix—will find it all too easy to claim that he is the rightful king of Kelvadan.”

I struggled to my feet. Dread and adrenaline mixed in a heady cocktail in my blood. I had pushed down my yearning for Erix’s presence, but at the mention of his name, it roared to life like a blazing fire. Still, a dark anger fed those flames with feelings of abandonment and betrayal.

“He’s here?”

“He rode at the head of the clans, spotted approaching the gates when I came to get you.” Aderyn’s expression was guarded.

Magic rippled through me anew, too full of feeling to be teased apart. Erix was here. After abandoning me. And he came with an army at his back instead of an offer of peace. He came to destroy the people the queen had just died to protect.

I had let her die to get the Heart, hoping it would help me bring Erix home. I had been so desperate to stop the coming war that I had grasped the queen’s power and shoved it at the blood glass until it broke her.

Now he was home, but I did not have the Heart, so I would greet him with a sword instead.

“Let’s go,” I commanded Aderyn, already striding past her out of the room.

As I struck off down the corridor toward the palace proper, the consciousness of the desert started seeping back in to fill the empty pit in my belly.

With it, the bond with Erix brightened. Instead of being a subtle presence, easily ignored, now it shuddered and roared.

Instead of a single tether, it was a series of pulsating fibers, hopelessly tangled and knotted.

I could barely feel Erix on the other end, just a storm of emotions.

Although, that was what Erix was. Just like Kelvar was described, when the magic of the desert took him, Erix was just a storm in human skin.

I took a sharp turn when I reached the top of the stairs to the main floor of the palace. Aderyn sucked in a harsh breath behind me .

“I need my sword,” I explained before she could ask why I headed toward my rooms instead of out toward the city where the riders would be readying to hold the clans at bay.

As much as my hands shook with apprehension and rage, my fingers itched to wield my blade.

This is what I had struggled and bled to recover from my injuries for—to protect Kelvadan and truly earn the home it had offered me.

She didn’t try to speak again while we made our way to the room I had been granted here. Without prelude, I dropped down to the stone floor on my belly, reaching under the bed. My fingers met a smooth metal pommel, and I wrapped my hand around a familiar corded grip.

I drew the saber out from under the bed and unsheathed it.

The blade was so long that the tip almost scraped the ceiling as I held it pointed straight up. My eyes met Aderyn’s over the curved quillons, and I knew she recognized the weapon.

Kelvar’s saber, given to Erix on his sixteenth name day. Now I would use it to defend this city from its former wielder.

With a sharp nod, I put it back into its scabbard and strapped it around my torso so the blade rested across my back with the handle sticking up over my right shoulder.

I briefly considered changing into clothes more suitable for fighting, but the hum of approaching battle sang in my blood, pulling me toward the gates of the palace.

My embroidered vest and loose pants might be rumpled and covered with specks of blood, but Neven had made them for a queen. And a queen was what Kelvadan needed right now.

“What’s the plan?” I asked Aderyn, tone clipped as we marched side by side down the wide stone hallway to the palace doors.

“I sent out the first wave of riders to meet the clans at the city entrance. Hopefully the new gates will hold them long enough for our forces to get there. Meanwhile, we need to evacuate all the civilians we can and bring them into the palace or at least within the top tier of walls.” Aderyn’s mouth twisted.

“I wish I had had a chance to change the gate there to a solid door, but Queen”—her voice stuck in her throat at the name—“Queen Ginevra liked to be able to see her people.”

My eyes burned, and I bared my teeth at the grief that coursed through me. There would be a time for tears, but now was the time for blood. However, the reminder of how Ginevra had ruled gave me an idea.

“I’ll help with the evacuation.” I volunteered. “That way the people can see me and know that they have not been abandoned. The riders trust you to lead.”

Aderyn glanced at me out of the corner of her eye before nodding her assent.

We pushed through the double doors into the courtyard. The growing brightness of the dawn sun streamed straight at the city, making me squint after the dimness of the stone halls. Hoofs clopped on the hard ground and people shouted everywhere.

Immediately, a familiar mount approached, accompanied by a grim face. Kaius’s eyes were rimmed with red, and shadows haunted the hollows of his cheeks—as if the life had fled his face.

“Thank you, Kaius,” I said as he brought me Cail, only sparing her a quick pat on the nose and a murmur of encouragement before jumping onto her back. Aderyn mounted her horse beside me.

“Every rider that is ready to fight, form columns and follow me to the city gates! We must hold the clans at bay while Queen Keera helps evacuate our families.” Immediately, every one of the warriors in the courtyard hurried to follow her orders.

I sat stricken for a moment, the sense of being outside my body washing over me at the use of the title “queen” before my name.

A hand on my shin drew me out of my stupor.

I looked down to find Kaius looking up at me, eyes overbright.

With his normally jovial and mischievous demeanor, I sometimes forgot his age.

Now it lay heavy in the lines around his eyes and the sag of his shoulders.

“I lost my wife today. I know he’s not my son anymore—not really—but I’m still not sure I can bear to lose them both in one day.”

His words rent a chasm in my heart, deep and dark and full of bottomless hurt .

“We won’t be losing anything else today if I have anything to say about it,” I promised.

I kicked Cail into a trot to follow the others out of the courtyard, even as doubt clung to me.

I had vowed to protect this city—even from Erix—but the thought of uprooting the tether at the base of my spine made me want to retch.

If I had to end his life to stop his attack…

my brain refused to continue processing the thought.

I shook myself, turning right once I passed under the gate into the palace’s tier of the city. For now, there were citizens that needed to get to safety.