Page 30 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Chapter eleven
Keera
M y mind drifted as my gaze homed in on the two sabers laid on the table in front of me: one incredibly long, and the other shorter, but equally familiar, with a strange piece of stained cloth tied around the handle.
I recognized the weapon as the one I had carried in the desert with Erix, although the fabric was a new addition.
Tentatively, I reached out a finger to stroke the tattered strip.
A throat clearing broke me from my contemplation.
I jerked my gaze up to find several expectant sets of eyes on me. I cringed back in my seat, the hard chair digging into my lower back. It was made to seat somebody a few inches shorter than me, and I didn’t quite fit.
“Excuse me,” I apologized. “It’s been a long day.”
Dravis, the Archon of Agriculture sitting across the table from me, looked sympathetic, although Malachi, the Archon of Coin, looked far less understanding.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I admitted to him that I didn’t see the purpose of money, brought to Kelvadan from the countries beyond the mountains, the first time we had met.
The idea that the small metal discs couldn’t buy me food or safety when I was in exile seemed as incomprehensible to him as basing decisions on hoarding them had been to me .
“I understand that this… transition… has been sudden. But we need to make plans for continuity. The people of Kelvadan need reassurance that you will be able to protect them,” the Archon of Coin insisted as if he were talking to a small child.
The treatment grated as I glanced down at the sabers in front of me again.
“Was single-handedly forcing the surrender of an attacking army not enough to reassure them of that?” I bit out.
Uneasy shifting around the table told me that wasn’t the way the ministers of Kelvadan were used to being spoken to by their queen. I sighed internally.
“I doubt we will find a way to feed the people of Kelvadan tonight,” Dravis admitted.
My stomach twisted at the words. More than the status of Kelvadan’s coffers or the repairs on the gates, the issue of food plucked at my heart.
I knew what it was to be hungry to my bones, and I would do anything to save the people of Kelvadan from that fate.
But tonight, my attention was perpetually pulled back to the tether in my core, more alive than it had been in months.
It was equal parts disconcerting and comforting to feel him so clearly, and every time it jerked or shivered, I lost track of what I was saying.
“Speaking of the clans surrender,” Dravis began again, speaking slowly as if he were picking his words with great care, “there is the matter of the surrendering lord.”
I looked up uneasily. “What of him?”
All the ministers exchanged uneasy glances. “He is Prince Erix, the former queen’s son, is he not?” the Archon of Justice asked hesitantly.
“He is,” I admitted, sitting back in my chair and folding my arms.
“There are those who will believe he is the rightful heir to the throne of Kelvadan,” he continued.
“Are you one of those people?” Aderyn’s voice came from beside me, low and deadly enough to raise the hairs on my arms.
“No!” He held up his hands placatingly and shook his head.
“I wouldn’t wish to defy the wishes of our late Queen Ginevra, or to support the man who just this morning attacked our people.
But there are those who might rally behind his cause.
After all, you were only recently named heir, and some might think he should rule in your place. ”
“What are you saying?” I sighed heavily, already weary from the way these ministers danced around every point.
This time, the Archon of Coin spoke. “As long as he lives, he will be a threat to the stability of Kelvadan.”
Wood scraped harshly on stone as I shot to my feet, my chair sliding back to hit the wall behind me. “You want me to execute a prisoner?”
“The clans do not take prisoners,” the Archon of Coin pointed out.
“This is Kelvadan. This city defies the traditions of the clans,” I grit out through my teeth.
Aderyn also pushed to her feet beside me.
“I doubt that Queen Ginevra would feel that executing her only son was an appropriate way to honor her memory.” Her voice was as sharp as the sickle blades still strapped to her hips.
She folded her arms. “Go home, and we will reconvene in the morning. Enough has happened in Kelvadan for one day, and we are unlikely to come to any more decisions at this late an hour.”
The archons filed quietly from the room, each tapping their knuckles to their brow as they went, although some infused the action with more respect than others.
When the door closed behind them, I sank into my chair and let my face fall into my hands.
My right leg ached, and blood still crusted under my fingernails, as I hadn’t even had the chance to wash them since Aderyn pulled me from the room under the mountain at dawn.
The sun had long since crossed the sky and dipped back below the horizon. Every muscle in my body ached.
“You should get some sleep,” Aderyn commented.
I tiredly lifted my head from my fingers to look up at her. She too sagged in her chair, looking as if she had propped her eyelids up with sheer force of will. The hypocrisy of her statement startled a snort out of me, completely at odds with the heaviness of the general mood.
The sound startled the barest smile out of her—just a crinkle around the corners of her eyes—and I clapped her on the shoulder.
The movement shocked me; I was rarely the one to initiate touch, but it felt natural.
I was glad to have her beside me in this moment.
I wasn’t sure I would have even made it this far without her unwavering presence by my side.
She was the one who had called the advisors together.
When I had stood in the courtyard, feeling lost and heavy at the same time as riders had led Erix away, she had ushered me into the palace and set in motion the plans for a funeral and a coronation, things that hadn’t even occurred to me, as I was so distracted by the fire of battle in my veins.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be queen?” I asked her now.
She shook her head. “I don’t have the desert in my blood that makes the people want to follow me. And your right to the title of Champion gives you the strongest claim, as it is a mark of the power that runs in your veins.”
I slumped back in my chair. “I’m not sure that power is a good reason to give me the crown.”
“You won’t be ruling alone.” It was Aderyn’s turn to clap me on the arm. “I’ll be by your side. You just need to keep giving the people hope, like you did today, or when you stopped the avalanche. And for now, you just need to get some sleep.”
I nodded, but as we both pushed to our feet, I said, “I’ll be heading to my room, but I need to do one thing first.”
The riders’ quarters were quiet as I padded through the maze of stacked buildings that housed armories and stables. It was hard to believe this city had been the site of a battle not a full day ago, but all the wounded had been moved to the infirmary and a hush had fallen over the palace now.
It wasn’t the complete silence of isolation though, and the distant nickering of sleepy horses calmed my nerves as I slipped toward the building that held the few cells in the city.
The guards stationed outside the door looked at me curiously as I approached, and I half expected them to stop me from entering .
Instead, they stepped aside to let me open the door and enter the quiet room. My skin prickled, and a nauseating mix of nerves and anticipation whirled beneath my sternum.
Instantly, my gaze snapped to Erix as the door thudded shut behind me. He sat cross legged in the center of the farthest wooden cell, hunched over so that his hair fell forward, obscuring his face. The moment I saw him, the bond between us, which had been pulsing and twisting all day, pulled taut.
His head snapped up, and as I was fixed with luminous silver eyes, I knew he felt it too.
My heart pounded, as if it were trying to escape my ribcage to get closer to him. But my boots stuck to the ground just as my voice stuck in my throat.
He broke the silence first, rising to his feet with a deadly grace that I had almost forgotten.
“What happened to you?” he demanded.
I blinked. It was not the greeting I’d expected from him. “What do you mean?”
“The night before I attacked the city. You were there and then you were gone. I couldn’t feel you anymore.
I was afraid…” He trailed off, his gaze raking me up and down.
It caught on my broken and bloody fingernails, and I didn’t miss the way it took stock of the scars littering the bare skin of my right arm and the exposed side of my scalp.
I wondered if he saw his own burn scars when he looked at them.
His eyes on me scalded like a physical touch, and I had to wrench my focus back to his words with a concerted effort.
“The room under the palace,” I thought out loud. “When I was in there, I couldn’t feel you either.”
In an instant, Erix was standing at the edge of the cell, his hands gripping the slats so hard I thought they would snap. “Who put you in there? Tell me their names, and I’ll make sure they never lock you away again.”
The part of me that had watched the horizon for him every day bloomed like a larrea flower during the rainy season at his words. But another part of me, the pit of anger in my gut he had introduced me to, boiled over .