Page 39 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Chapter fourteen
Erix
I tried to stifle my disappointment as Keera pulled on her pants and a loose tunic, hiding her sun-kissed skin from my view.
Even with most of her right side bearing the shadows of burn marks, faded enough that you could only see them when you were close enough to touch, it was still the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
It stretched out endlessly like the golden sand under the sun, full of promise and peace.
Now, with the faint scars, the ripples even mimicked the way dunes formed waves under the shifting winds.
I wished I could spend the hours from now until dawn tracing my fingers over it, inspecting every inch to make sure she really had healed.
I wanted to run my hands over the leg that had been broken, to satisfy myself that it was whole.
I hadn’t missed the way it had given out under the force of the tricrith’s blow this afternoon.
But for now, there were more pressing matters.
I had made my sacrifices to get my heart back. Now we had to help the desert get hers.
I pulled my own shirt back on and draped my leather tabards over my shoulders before tying my sash back around my waist to hold them in place.
Keera had traded out the ornate gold and green wrap from the funeral for a plain tan tunic, reminiscent of what she wore when we traveled together.
After lacing on her brown leather boots, she tiptoed toward the door from the bedroom.
I raised a brow. “I don’t think you have to sneak out of your own rooms.”
“You’re the one who climbed the balcony to avoid being seen,” she shot back.
The chattering in my head turned bitter at the reminder.
Keera couldn’t really be mine. We could only pretend behind closed doors that my existence didn’t threaten her rule.
Even after this, I knew I would creep back to my cell and lock myself in.
Even if it couldn’t truly hold me, I wouldn’t let myself be seen walking free, letting myself become a symbol for those who opposed Keera’s rule.
“The guards will be on the stairs below us, keeping people from getting up to your chambers. There shouldn’t be anybody between us and the top of the spire,” I observed, distracting myself from that painful train of thought.
Keera nodded and eased open the door to her chamber, motioning for me to follow her into the hallway and up the spiraling stair.
I clenched my teeth as I stepped past the threshold, as the stairs were situated in the inner part of the tower here, and I had to momentarily endure being completely surrounded by stone as we padded quietly up the steps.
We passed the library, and I pointedly avoided looking through the open archway as I did, afraid of the memories that long table and musty shelves would illicit.
That room, smelling of dust and betrayal, was where I had decided to leave Kelvadan forever.
But I couldn’t think about that now; we had a task to accomplish.
As we climbed, I felt almost outside of my body, my consciousness floating just above the crown of my head. After a decade of blood and pain, I would finally have the Heart and atone for Kelvar’s sins.
Cresting the top of the stairs, we entered a round room, and I came face-to-face with the double doors that had been my goal for too long.
My gaze drifted up to the exquisite tapestry draped above them: an expanse of golden fabric flanked by the gray of the mountains on one side, and the sparkling cerulean of the ocean on the other.
And in the middle, a red gemstone, picked out in metallic thread that shimmered in the moonlight streaming through the window behind me.
It was that gemstone that held the fate of the desert—a source of power so many had died and bled for
Keera stood beside me, staring up at the tapestry too. Her warmth next to me, the soft cadence of her breath, brought me back to the reality of this moment.
For so many years, I had pictured this moment with Lord Alasdar, still his loyal sword and nothing more than an instrument. A battering ram good for forcing down these doors and little else.
The reality of this moment couldn’t be more different.
Her usually fierce golden eyes held concern, her strong brow furrowed as she stared at the depiction of the Heart.
Lord Alasdar wouldn’t have thought twice about sacrificing my life to gain the Heart, but Keera feared losing me more than she feared failing to retrieve the source of the desert’s power.
I understood the feeling.
“I worried it wouldn’t really be in there at first,” she murmured, as if she didn’t want to disturb the heavy silence by speaking too loudly. “But when we tried to open it, I felt something. Something alive .”
As she said it, I reached out to the web of magic around me and in me, finding it to be almost pulsing. Breathing. The fibers pulled taut between Keera and I and whatever laid behind those doors.
My feet carried me forward of their own accord, drawn inexorably to the power that whispered to me from beyond those doors.
The voices in my head grew to shouts, deafening in their intensity, as if they too could tell that I was mere feet away from the goal I had chased for so long. That I had spilled so much blood for.
The tether at the nape of my neck pulled so hard as to be painful as I reached out to touch one of the panels of blood glass, but it was too late. Just as my fingers brushed the smooth, dark surface, magic dancing between them like lightning, something hit me like a punch to the stomach .
I flew through the air, landing on my back with enough force that stars danced behind my closed eyes. My diaphragm spasmed as I desperately tried to gasp for air, feeling like I had been kicked in the stomach by a horse.
The sensation was drowned out by a bolt of panic, paralyzing in its intensity.
A nearby scream made my ears ring as a fear so visceral I almost retched hit me with the force of an avalanche.
I snapped my eyes open, looking for the source of danger, only to find Keera kneeling over me.
Her eyes were wide, and she gripped me by the shoulders hard enough to bruise.
Finally, I sucked in a breath and reached to cover one of her hands with mine.
“Thank the sands,” she breathed shakily. “I just thought—last time…”
She didn’t need to finish her thought for me to know what she was thinking.
“I’m fine,” I assured, sitting up and blinking to dispel the dizziness of my sudden flight. “But I don’t think this is going to be as simple as I always assumed.”
Keera sighed, sitting back on her heels.
Through our bond, I could feel the panic slowly abating only to be replaced with frustration.
I couldn’t blame her as we stared at the impenetrable fortress before us, so close yet so far from what we needed to be able to restore the desert and save our home.
We were mere feet from freeing myself from my bloodline’s failures.
“What do you know of blood glass?” Keera asked, as she considered the black-red surface, flawlessly glossy despite the passage of decades.
“Only what the legends say,” I admitted, disappointment and anger lacing my racing thoughts. “That it enhances power, but only responds to the one whose blood was used to make it. And it’s nearly unbreakable.”
“Nearly or completely?” Keera huffed, annoyance clear in her tone. “Has anybody ever seen blood glass break?”
I bared my teeth, wondering just how much my former master had told me—and kept from me. “Lord Alasdar seemed confident that it could be done and that it would take two of us as well as great power.”
“Did he ever tell you how he planned to do it? ”
I sighed, and let my head fall forward onto my chest. Shame crawled up my spine. “I didn’t ask. I just did as he commanded.”
Keera rested her hand on my back, her thumb rubbing gentle circles.
I could only partially feel it as it passed over the ridges where my nerves had been burned away, but it was still enough to quiet the chittering of guilt in my mind.
The guilt bit especially deep as I momentarily wished Lord Alasdar were not dead, as he always had the answers, and I had none.
I shuddered at the thought and lifted my head once more to meet Keera’s gaze.
“I hated him for even longer than I could admit to myself. But now that he’s gone, it’s as if I’m wandering in the dark.” The words burned in my throat as I said them.
Where I expected anger and hurt, Keera’s face only held sadness.
“It seems we’ve both been left to find our own path forward, when nothing is quite as simple as we once thought.
But Lord Alasdar seemed to always have a plan.
He knew about the Heart and the altar at the ocean when nobody else did.
Certainly, he must have known something about the blood glass. ”
I clung to the logic in her words. “He had to have gained the knowledge somewhere.”
Keera’s mouth fell open as if a realization had dawned on her. “Before the Trials, I was reading Kelvar’s texts in the library downstairs. Surely, there must be some information on blood glass there if he and Alyx crafted their doors with it.”
“It could be a start,” I admitted, even as bile burned in my throat. There were certainly all sorts of texts and legends in that library, some I wished to burn to ash.
“I’ll start looking there when I have a chance,” she declared with a sharp nod. “Will you help?”
I hesitated. “I’m supposed to be a prisoner locked in a cell. Not shuffling through sacred archives.”
My throat tightened at the thought of spending hours in the library .
“As a prisoner, your schedule will be less busy than mine,” Keera pointed out. “And you clearly can get out of the room where you are being held. You could come at night when nobody knows you are here.”
Sands, I had already come this far.
“I will find a way through the blood glass,” I promised.
The claustrophobia always grew worse as dusk fell.