Page 47 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter eighteen

Erix

T he evening breeze cooled my skin—sweaty from the climb up the outside of the palace—as I took in Keera’s empty chambers.

Most nights, she was already preparing for sleep as I crested the edge of the balcony, but tonight, all that greeted me was the gently billowing curtains around her bed and a haphazard pile of scrolls on her dressing table.

I exhaled heavily through my nose before grabbing one of the scrolls and sitting down on her bed to look through it for clues to breaking blood glass—a pursuit that took up every spare moment I could find.

After half an hour, the door to Keera’s chambers slammed open, and I looked up from the scroll in my hands to find her striding into the room, shoulders slumped and expression bleak.

“How was your day?” I asked, raising a brow as I took in her appearance.

She walked toward the bed and collapsed on it face first with a quiet oomph.

“Nobody died.” The words were muffled as she spoke them straight into the mattress.

I carefully set the scroll aside, knowing that it was unlikely to hold the information I sought anyway. “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

She rolled over and frowned up at me, upside down as she laid at the foot of the bed, and I sat near the head. Her only response was a scowl. I remembered a time when I chased that scowl, as I admired the lines of her face, but hadn’t yet known the beauty of her smile.

“Because if somebody needs to die,” I continued, “that is something I might be able to help with.”

She wrinkled her nose at me. “Nobody dying today was a good thing. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only good thing I can say about today.”

Sitting up, she hunched over and put her face in her hands. I stared at her rounded back, and my heart twisted. Keera belonged sitting proudly on the back of a horse or swinging a saber with fire in her eyes. Something dark twisted within me at seeing her like this.

I had run from the impossible weight of ruling Kelvadan in my youth. Now, my actions had inadvertently shifted that burden to Keera. She faced the task more bravely than I had, but my skin prickled with anger at the way it already appeared to wear her down.

Reaching out, I gently placed one hand between her shoulder blades. She took a deep breath, her ribs expanding and contracting under my fingers.

“Kelvadan is supposed to welcome everybody, but trying to uphold that is only dividing the people more,” Keera said into her hands.

The peace of Kelvadan is a lie.

I had said the words many times in the past, but I bit my tongue, knowing they would not be useful now. And Keera was always so brimming with hope that things could be better, it felt sacrilegious to take away her belief in what this city could be. That hope drew me to her like a moth to a flame.

“I spent hours trying to figure out how to feed the refugees from the desert, and we still haven’t come to a solution,” Keera continued.

“We need the riders’ strength to move the fallen rocks and fix the irrigation system for the grain fields.

But now that clansmen are living within the walls, the archons are concerned about taking the riders away from the city’s defense.

They’re worried the new clansmen are spies and would exploit the lower defenses. ”

I chewed my lips, weighing her words.

“I can’t—” She took a shuddering breath, the tremor palpable beneath my fingers. “I can’t let the people starve. ”

Her muscles were strong under my touch, a healthy layer of flesh between her skin and bones. But I remembered viscerally a time that it had not been so—a time when she was a wraith in my arms, barely weighing more than a child as I tossed her across Alza’s back.

Bile rose in my throat. I could not make her face the demon of hunger again.

“Could you convince the archons to let me venture outside the city walls?” I asked.

Keera lifted her head from her hands and twisted to look at me. “Possibly. After your support at the coronation, I could likely convince them you’ve earned a higher degree of trust.”

“I can help with the irrigation systems if I’m allowed to go to the fields,” I said. “After all, you know moving rocks is my specialty.”

A spark of that mesmerizing hope appeared in Keera’s golden eyes. “You wouldn’t get to throw these rocks at people, you know.”

“I’ll do my best to refrain,” I promised. I itched for the chance to get beyond the city walls, the weeks within the stone barrier making me want to claw at my skin. Already, the skin around my nails was picked raw and bloody.

“Thank you,” Keera murmured, scooting up the bed and reaching out to rest a hand on my cheek.

I closed my eyes and leaned into her touch. This was why I had chosen to stay in this prison of a city.

My feet were heavy as I trudged across the dry earth toward the city.

Heat lingered on my face, telling me I had a sunburn after hours in the grain fields near Kelvadan—an odd sensation after protecting my face with a mask every time I was outside for a decade.

My limbs ached with exhaustion, and the lingering sparks of magic danced under my skin from hours using both my power and my muscles to clear fallen rocks from the irrigation systems .

Despite the fatigue in my body, I hadn’t been ready to stop.

The engineers and the farmers had eventually insisted it was time to go home for the night, and I was forced to follow them back toward the prison of the city walls.

After weeks separated from the wildness of the desert by thick layers of stone, I reveled in being out under the open sky stretching endlessly in every direction.

In the purple light of dusk, the air cooled rapidly, and shivers of activity ran through the web of life that was the desert as her nocturnal creatures awoke to take advantage of the respite from burning heat. Fennec foxes poked their noses from their burrows and Omani owls took to the air.

I wished I could join them.

Instead, a shiver ran up my spine as the gates of Kelvadan creaked open to allow the returning workers to enter, and I stepped onto the unnaturally smooth stone ground of the city.

I stood rooted in the courtyard, and all the farmers hurried around me back to their homes, like I was a boulder interrupting the flow of a stream.

Looking up the winding road that would lead me up through the stacked layers of the city, I told myself that I should follow their lead and head home for the night. But my mind skipped and skittered over the word home.

The palace was not my home. My home might live there, but I could only visit her in the secret of the night, and the other hours of the day, I was haunted by the ghosts that walked the winding stone hallways.

The palace of Kelvadan was now equal parts home and prison, and I was loathe to return so soon.

Keera would likely not be in her room for many hours yet, returning later every night as she gave more and more of her time to the archons and ambassadors who looked to her to save the city.

As I contemplated the stretch of time between now and when I could climb into Keera’s bed and hold her to my chest, the sounds of chattering and laughter met my ear.

I looked toward where they came from, finding warm light streaming out of a nearby doorway.

The sounds of comradery from within were what I would expect to hear around an encampment fire as food and stories were shared—although I had never partaken, only eating alone in my tent where I could remove my mask without being seen.

Now I drifted toward the open door curiously, ducking inside to find what appeared to be a gathering place for people in the city after their hard day’s work.

I hovered in the doorway, undecided if I should turn and leave, but somehow unable to persuade myself to walk further into the room.

As I hesitated, a young girl, barely a woman, approached me.

I reared back at the warm smile on her face, but apparently she did not recognize me.

“Can I get you some laka ?” She asked kindly. The smile on her face faltered as she continued. “I am afraid I can’t offer you a warm meal. We seem to have run out for the night already.”

My sore muscles throbbed, and I almost spun on my heel and marched back out to the grain fields to continue working. Instead, I just nodded.

“ Laka is fine.”

She hurried away, and I convinced myself to walk further inside, finding an empty spot at a shadowed table in one corner and sitting cross legged on one of the cushions scattered around it. In a few moments, the girl returned and set an earthenware cup before me with a smile before hurrying off.

I brought it to my lips and took the smallest sip of the nutty liquid, blinking rapidly. I had clearly not inherited either of my parents’ resistance to liquor. Still, the warm smell of it was comforting. I cradled the cup in two hands and took in the hustle and bustle in the room before me.

It was odd to be ignored, and I took the opportunity to watch the way the farmers and traders greeted each other and exchanged gossip.

When I lived in Kelvadan in my youth, none chattered easily around me, instead tapping their fingers to their brows and falling silent in respect.

As the Viper, I had not been welcomed around fires either, and many would give me a wide berth.

Now though, nobody seemed to know who I was, and I let myself sink back into the shadowy corner.

While the chatter seemed lively, looking closer, I saw hollows beneath many eyes. It didn’t escape my notice how many of the workers grimaced when asked how their day had gone. These people were not untouched by the conflict and hunger here in the desert .