Page 33 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter twelve

Erix

A pounding on the door to my sparse chambers startled me from my pacing.

Twelve steps from the window to the door, eight steps to the foot of the bed, ten steps back to the window.

Over and over, I had walked the route in the past two days.

My mind had traversed the same paths over and over again as well.

It bounced between the mind-numbing need to see Keera—whom I could feel nearby but hadn’t seen in two days—and melancholy wondering about what came next.

Just like Keera, the Heart was so close yet so far away—in the palace but behind an impenetrable wall.

I could have neither of the things I wanted while I was a prisoner.

And I was a prisoner because I had surrendered.

And I had surrendered so I could be close to Keera.

So, my brain turned in circles, and I paced.

I was surprised I hadn’t worn a path in the floor.

The pristine stone of Kelvadan never changed. Not like the ever-shifting sands of the dunes, the landscape remaking itself for each traveler that passed.

The pounding came again, and I made a sound of frustration in my throat.

“You know I can’t open it,” I called through the wooden door .

It wasn’t entirely true. I could probably kick it down if I tried, but I didn’t want to give the archons more reasons to want me executed. Keera was likely struggling with them enough as it was.

A key turned in the lock with a metallic scrape. The door swung open with enough force to slam into the wall behind it.

“I was just making sure you were decent. Or have you forgotten all your manners during your time with the clans?” Aderyn stood on the threshold, arms folded across her chest, and her gaze piercing as the line of daggers strapped across her chest.

A moment of shock overtook me before the accusation in her tone made me curl my upper lip to show her my teeth. “Just because the clans’ code of honor is different than the city’s doesn’t mean we don’t have one.”

“I don’t hold with any ‘code’ that condones going to war against your own family,” Aderyn hissed.

“Well then it’s a good thing I didn’t, because the queen was dead by the time I got here.”

Aderyn’s gaze grew so cold, I imagined I could hear the cracking of ice behind her eyes. I breathed heavily, as if I had been fighting her physically instead of just exchanging a few barbs.

The voices in my head chattered at me excitedly, as if they were hoping it would come to blows after so many hours of inactivity.

Instead, I raised a hand to my chest and raked my fingers across the scarred handprint on my chest, using my nails to try to draw forth enough pain to ground me.

It was too well healed and my fingernails too short to do much good, but I leashed my magic through sheer force of will.

“Did you come here just to yell at me?” I asked.

Aderyn did very few things without purpose, but something of the steadfast demeanor I remembered from her seemed to be missing.

We had only exchanged a handful of sentences and already seemed ready to tear each other’s throats out.

As one of the few people in the city I had any sort of prior relationship with, it did not bode well for my continued stay in Kelvadan .

“I didn’t.” The anger had drained from Aderyn’s tone, which was now clipped and businesslike. “You’re coming with me.” She unfolded her arms, revealing a pair of manacles clutched in her hands.

I eyed them warily as I asked, “Where?”

Aderyn’s lips twisted for a moment. “Today is your mother’s funeral. She would want you to be there.”

The floor tilted under me, and my mind reeled sickeningly.

I squeezed my eyes shut, only opening them when the world stopped spinning to find that I still stood in the middle of the room.

Aderyn stared at me, her gaze heavy on my expression as I tried to school it back into some amount of neutrality.

Not for the first time, I wondered what had become of my mask.

“No.” I turned away from Aderyn and walked over to the window, staring out over the city to the desert beyond. It blurred in my vision into a vast golden haze, and the chattering in my mind urged me to lose myself in it.

“It wasn’t a request.”

I spun around, ready to snap at Aderyn, but she spoke before I could.

“Keera wants you to be there.”

I hesitated. I hadn’t seen Keera outside of my dreams since she visited me in my cell, but she would be there. I ground my teeth.

“I have one condition.”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to make demands,” Aderyn pointed out, but I ignored her.

My mind was already fraying from spending several days in Kelvadan. I could not keep my sanity together with the entirety of the city staring at my naked face.

“I want my mask back.”

I felt naked as I marched down through the city without a saber on my back and my dirk at my hip.

My gloves creaked as I flexed my hands, which were manacled before me, with the other end of the chain attached to the wrist of the rider that walked in front of me.

At least my gloves and my mask shielded me from the skittering whispers and sidelong glances of all who gathered in the streets as the funeral procession passed.

Despite my lack of weapons, all the guards around me carried so many knives that they jangled when they walked.

Glancing up, I squinted against the midday sun to find archers stationed on roofs and walls throughout the city.

With how close Aderyn walked behind me, practically breathing down my neck, I was half surprised they didn’t have their bows drawn with arrows trained on me.

With the potential for so much violence around me, the threads of magic in my skull began to shudder and twist. I tried to clamp down on the growing voices in my head and instead found myself grabbing onto a different string of magic.

Keera, walking near the front of the procession, just behind my father, twitched infinitesimally in reaction.

My eyes remained fixed on the muscles between her shoulder blades, visible above the edge of her red cropped top.

A green length of fabric with gold trim draped over one shoulder and was held by a belt at her waist before the tasseled ends flowed down over loose tan pants.

A coordinating length of gold cloth was woven into her braid, the end swinging back and forth to brush her back as she walked.

I watched that golden strip sway and tried to time my breathing to its motion. If I could narrow my world to Keera and the bond between us, then I wouldn’t have to focus on the litter carried at the front of the procession, or the chains around my wrists.

With a thick swallow, I stared harder at Keera’s braid and walked in time with her steps.

By now, the procession had reached the main courtyard of the city.

A shadow fell over me as I passed under the walls, momentarily shielding me from the burning light of the desert sun.

As those piercing rays hit my mask once more, and the harsh clomp of my boots on stone transitioned to the soft scrape of baked earth, I let out a shuddering breath.

The knot of magic in my skull loosened infinitesimally, simultaneously freer and more controlled.

Drummers pounded a sedate rhythm, spaced at even intervals along the procession, but out here in the open, the noise could escape and drift away into the endless sky.

Even the chains on my wrists felt lighter.

Slowly, the long line of people creeped toward an already constructed pyre, which stood out like a dark scab on the otherwise sweeping landscape. As the litter-bearers reached it, they laid their burden down atop it, and the rest of the procession filed into a wide circle around it.

I stepped up on Keera’s left side, my father on her right. The guard I was cuffed to stood on my other side, the chains clanking harshly as he stopped beside me, and I winced.

Not able to avoid it any longer, I finally looked at the lifeless form of my mother, laying atop her funeral pyre.

The cold nothingness that had overcome me when my father told me of her death swept through me again.

As I stared at her face, smooth and serene—she might just have been sleeping—something began to crackle and spark around the edges of that deep emptiness.

It was as if another emotion were trying to break through the numbness, but I shied away from it, too scared to find out what it was.

It could be anger, still festering from my childhood. I feared that it was dark satisfaction, which would only drive home that I had been irreparably molded into the cruel image of a sword by Lord Alasdar.

Even worse, it could just be grief.

So, I tunneled into my numbness, just as I tunneled into the dark tangle of my anger, hoping it would keep me safe.

My sleeve rustled; Keera brushed her arm against mine. She didn’t look at me, but I felt her intention just the same. She was not one to touch another accidentally or casually. I nodded infinitesimally as she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

As the drums ceased and the procession finally came to a halt, thick silence fell like a blanket.

Normally in the desert, I could hear the flap of an owl’s wings or the scurrying of creatures under the sand, but it was as if they too had gone silent out of respect for a fallen leader—one who had loomed larger than life in my consciousness, even when I despised her.

The dull scraping of wood against sand came from my other side, and I glanced over to find Aderyn scooping sand into a shallow bowl.

Slowly, she straightened and walked forward with measured steps.

Her hand was steady as she placed the bowl on my mother’s chest—so steady I could tell it took a concerted effort to keep it that way.

She murmured something I couldn’t hear before backing away.