Page 40 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
When the sun streamed through the high, narrow window in the room where I spent my days, I could almost close my eyes and pretend I sat in the shade of a date palm at an oasis.
But as the shadows grew longer, the stone walls grew nearer.
The chattering in my head grew more anxious and desperate as the sun neared the horizon, and I balled my fists until my fingernails bit into my palms as I watched the setting sun.
For the millionth time, I wished for my sword to sharpen, or some scrap of pain to distract me. Already, bruises littered my knuckles from punching the stone, trying to quiet the voices that made me want to scream with no activity available to me with which to let out their frenetic energy.
My only outlet lay in pouring over the tomes Keera had had delivered from the library in the tower, looking for some hidden secret about blood glass that had been lost to time.
I had already been through the dozen or so books and scrolls she had brought me several times with nothing to show for it, only worsening my frustration.
I had surrendered to be close to Keera, but to keep her rule secure, I had to be a prisoner. I couldn’t risk being seen as an alternative if the people of Kelvadan grew discontent—something they would be wont to do in a time of famine and war.
The only way I could be close to her was in my mind.
With a swelling feeling of guilt leaving a bitter taste on my tongue, I let my eyes drift shut and reached down the tether that led from the base of my skull straight to the center of her being.
I hated doing this when she was likely busy with some important matter.
I knew how hard it was to try to hold a coherent conversation while trying to ignore voices invading your consciousness.
But I needed to feel Keera for just a moment.
As soon as the threads of my magic touched against the wild flow of her power, it jolted, as if she hadn’t expected me.
It didn’t immediately part to let me tangle in her consciousness as I wished it would, the cooling current of her magic washing over me to quiet the rising storm that was making my clenched fists begin to shake.
I prodded again at the tether—a phenomenon I had also looked for other descriptions of in the tomes I read to no avail—and finally a lick of her power jumped against mine, giving me a sense of where she was and what she was doing.
She wasn’t alone.
She was speaking to somebody, and I sensed a warm flush of embarrassed pride wash through her magic.
Keera was talking to a man. As I pushed against her consciousness with no regard for how distracting it must be, I got the vaguest sense of easy charm and windswept hair. He was flirting with her.
Mine.
The thought came with such vehemence that it almost brought me to my knees. I needed everybody to know in no uncertain terms that Keera belonged to me. But nobody could know, and there lay the crux of my anger.
My eyes snapped open to the sight of impenetrable gray stone just a foot from my nose, and my rage boiled over at the sight of familiar walls—of my cage. With a roar that cracked in my dry throat, I lashed out, driving my fist into the wall.
The wall shook with the force of my blow, causing a deep rumbling sound. But it did not abate after a few seconds, morphing into the roll of thunder in the distance and growing closer by the second. The hairs on my arm lifted as sparks danced across my skin, warning of incoming lightning.
I had been in the city less than a fortnight, and already the uncontrolled storms of my youth overwhelmed me. A grunt of desperate frustration escaped me as I fell to my knees, the bruising force of them on the unforgiving floor grounding me enough to keep the lightning in check.
But it wasn’t enough.
I needed Keera’s touch. I needed wind in my hair and Alza beneath me. I needed Lord Alasdar to burn another brand into my back.
The last semblance of my control frayed in my grip at the last thought as the door banged open. Cool hands landed on my face, and I blinked away the red haze of rage to see Keera’s concerned eyes set deep beneath her furrowed brows.
“Erix,” she said, her voice clear and exquisitely real, solid enough to overcome the constant chattering that died in my skull at her touch.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, panting as if I had run a long distance.
“You didn’t hurt anybody,” she said, shaking her head in reassurance. She knew what it was like to fear the consequences of feeling anything too strongly.
It was my turn to shake my head, my cheeks brushing against her callused palms as I did. “You shouldn’t have to run off to keep your prisoner from tearing the palace from the mountainside like this.”
She sat back on her heels, kneeling before me and finally letting her hands drop into her lap.
I was no longer at risk of destroying anything, but I still wished she would keep touching me.
Still, I was sure guards lingered around the corner, and it would be better for them to not see us act so intimately.
“Well, what set it off?” Keera twisted the end of her embroidered purple sash tightly between her fingers.
I swallowed and shut my eyes. “These walls. The mountain,” I started before hesitating. “And when I reached out I… felt you talking to somebody.”
Keera bit her lips, and I couldn’t decipher her expression. “Prince Calix,” she said. “He’s the ambassador from Viltov. He’s a friend.”
My upper lip started to pull back in a snarl, and it took every ounce of control I had earned through years of training to school my face back to neutrality.
As she said the word “friend”, I heard how her tone softened with something akin to reverence.
To somebody who had nobody for so long, friendship was sacred, and I could not take that from her .
I just wished the friend were not a handsome prince.
“I—Kelvadan needs friends right now,” she echoed my sentiment.
I squeezed my eyes more tightly closed to avoid seeing the age-old loneliness in her eyes, so deep and bottomless that it cracked my heart. I felt it anyway down the tether between us and echoed my own back to her.
“I can keep myself under control,” I promised, finally opening my eyes to take her in.
In her finely crafted sash and loose pants, she looked so far from the grubby exile I had found in the desert.
She even wore a golden band on her arm and a bangle on one wrist. But the determined set of her jaw and the challenging furrow between her brows was the same as ever—my feral little fighter.
“I know how you would control yourself,” Keera responded, her voice quiet but hard, “And I won’t have it.”
My jaw clenched. She was right—I had planned to turn to pain to keep myself from hurting others.
“You can’t stay in this cell,” she said. “Getting outside will help. And horses. You can help in the stables,” Keera thought out loud.
I shook my head, even as just the thought of brushing Alza soothed something within me. I had once confided in her that helping my father with his duties as horse master had been one of the only things to bring me peace as a child.
“I can’t let myself be a cause for people to rally around,” I insisted.
Keera lifted her chin. “And you won’t be. Your mother often told me that what people think is more important than what is true. And we will make them think that you are no threat to me, and I am letting you walk around more freely because you support my rule.”
“I do support you,” I said automatically.
“Then it won’t be an issue.” She nodded sharply, as if that settled the matter, before her eyes darted to the precarious pile of books and scrolls on the small table in the corner.
“And… it will give you more time to figure out how to get the Heart. We’re running out of time.”
My own heart stuttered as her words. “What do you mean? ”
“That’s why I was speaking to Prince Calix,” she admitted, and I grit my teeth against another flare of jealousy.
“I was asking if he had heard back from his father yet about getting our people grain. We’re already rationing tightly and…
” She trailed off, but not before I sensed the tremor in her voice.
“Every night. I’ll spend every night searching the library for a way past the blood glass,” I promised.
“Thank you.”
She got to her feet, and I followed suit. As much as I wanted to beg her to stay or crush her to my chest and never let go, I knew I couldn’t, so I simply inclined my head. Keera lingered for a long moment, before turning and heading out the door.
The room instantly seemed dim and lifeless without her presence, but it brightened infinitesimally as I heard her command the riders who had been standing guard down the hall “He is to be able to move freely within the palace. Queen’s orders.”