Page 50 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter twenty

Erix

K eera murmured in her sleep, and I loosened my hold around her waist, relaxing my fingers that had twisted the tunic over her belly into a tight fist. The moon was full tonight, and beams of light drifted ethereally through the gauzy gold curtains around the bed, which swayed gently in the evening breeze.

My knuckles were still bruised and cracked, but I didn’t seem to be able to keep myself from clutching Keera to me so tightly that they throbbed.

I needed to peel myself away from her, but my traitorous body refused.

Just as my madness worsened by the day, so did my weakness.

Since arriving in Kelvadan, the voices bouncing around in my head had taken on an insistent tone, driving me to distraction as I tried to pick out words in the nonsensical chattering—as I tried to figure out what it was they wanted from me.

But I already knew what they desired. The desert wanted her Heart restored, and her magic insisted in every way possible that I see it done.

Working on horses with Kaius and holding Keera every night granted me a modicum of peace.

The last week I had spent beyond the stone walls moving boulders from the irrigation canals under the direction of Kelvadan’s engineers had given me a chance to stretch my magic, but it wasn’t enough—far from it .

Kelvar’s madness had destroyed him with time, just like his love for Alyx had led him to destroy the desert. Now, my magic threatened my own sanity, and my desire to stay by Keera’s side was preventing me from doing what I should be to restore the desert.

That thought gave my muscles the impetus they needed to move away from Keera, like a horse spooked into action by the sudden movement of a snake. Careful not to disturb her, I eased myself from the bed and padded toward the door.

At night, while the castle slept, was the perfect time to rifle through the ancient tomes in the library above Keera’s chambers.

This had been my nighttime routine since I had been allowed to traverse the palace freely.

Nobody would interrupt me and wonder what a traitor was doing looking through Kelvar and Alyx’s own collection.

Even better, the lack of activity of the day lessened the claustrophobic feeling of the city around me, something I desperately needed in a room that brought back so many unpleasant memories.

Easing the bedroom door closed behind me, I climbed the stairs and crept into the library before taking my seat at the small wooden table in the center of the room.

The books and scrolls I had been searching through last night still lay where I had left them, ready for me to resume my desperate search for any information that might help Keera and I break blood glass.

I pushed aside the book on the top of the stack, certain after last night’s perusal that it would not hold the information I sought.

While I had been hopeful that a volume on crafting weapons would have information on blood glass—many weapons carried by riders in the desert had some worked into the hilt—this one had just focused on forging steel blades.

I ran my fingers across the pebbled leather of the next tome in the pile, curious to find no title embossed on the cover. I thumbed it open, and my heart jumped to find it was not a book at all. It was a diary.

I leaned in closer, trying to make out the words in the barely legible handwriting in the dim light of a single lantern.

My nose nearly brushed the yellowed pages, trying to make out the cramped, angled letters cut so harshly into the paper that it was as if the writer was wielding a knife, not a quill .

What I could make out was the date in the top corner of the page: just over two hundred years ago. My heart began to hammer frantically against my ribcage as I skimmed down the page. Then nearly stopped altogether when it caught on a familiar name.

Alyx.

My eyes widened as I read the rest of the sentence containing the word.

Alyx insists I start keeping a journal to record all that happens in this new city of ours. While I prefer a sword to a pen, she is much wiser than I, so I’ll do as she asks. She is already making a lovely queen, and I hope she can teach me how to be as good of a king.

Kelvar. This was Kelvar’s journal.

My hands trembled as I rifled through the pages. He had crafted the blood glass. If anybody would know how to undo it, it would be him. My fingers skipped as I fanned the pages out, and the book fell suddenly flat open on its spine.

My brows knit together at the sight that greeted me: ripped paper marking a large gap in the book. Somebody had torn pages from this journal. I thumbed quickly through the rest, apprehension rising in my throat, suffocating me as I found several more gaps, including a large one at the end.

Somebody had raided this diary for information—for the most intimate secrets of Kelvadan’s founding. And there was one man who had known more than any other about Kelvar’s past. The explanation for the desert’s rage.

The handprint on my chest burned as if freshly branded.

I shot to my feet so fast the stool I sat on nearly toppled to the floor. As it teetered precariously on two legs, I snatched up Kelvar’s journal, ready to rush down to where Keera slept and show her my discovery.

Instead, my feet rooted themselves to the floor as my gaze fell on a scroll that had been hidden beneath the journal in the pile.

It lay open, curled and tattered at the edges with immense age.

The swooping green script and sketched diagrams still stood out starkly though.

I had tried to banish them from my brain, but the words written there had come back to me in the dark and lonely hours of the night many times .

The horrible ritual they described.

This was the same scroll I had found open in front of my mother’s chair the last day I had spent in Kelvadan before running out into the sands.

I had come here to ask the queen some inane question of youth.

Finding the room empty, I had looked curiously at what she had been researching, still left open at her place.

As my eyes skimmed the ancient scroll, the knots of my magic had twisted and tangled as understanding dawned. It was a ritual of blood and pain designed for one purpose—to sever a person’s connection to the magic of the desert.

My parents had reached their limit with my outbursts—just the night before I had caved in the roof of my bedroom as I lashed out in the grip of a nightmare.

The choking lyra tea and the claustrophobic rooms of stone were no longer enough.

They would strip me of my connection to the desert completely.

The horrible silence, crushing in on me from all sides in a suffocating weight—what I experienced when closed off beneath the mountains—would be permanent.

What happened next was blurred and hazy in my memory, clouded by adrenaline and fear.

Shouted voices and a whirl of action all blended together.

The chattering in my head now grew to match the overwhelming crush of that day, and my fingers tightened on Kelvar’s journal until the pages began to crumple.

My next clear memory was kneeling alone in the sand, the mountains no longer in sight, and only golden horizons stretching on forever in every direction.

Just the memory of that moment was enough to make my eyes burn and despair rise in my chest.

I had known I wouldn’t survive alone there, but it would be better to die in the beautiful landscape that had cursed me than to rip out a piece of my soul and live a half-life.

Of course, Lord Alasdar had found me there, and I had left the idea of dying behind, instead pledging myself to his purpose of finding the Heart and restoring what my great-grandfather broke.

Since then, I had tried to put the ritual from my mind, but now it stared me in the face.

I strained to wrench my gaze away, but my muscles refused to respond to my commands.

Just like that day years ago, the fibers of the desert’s magic pulled taut, and the knot of rage at the base of my skull pulsed.

It had grown since then—fed by the Viper with pain and blood.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, reminiscent of the lightning storms I called down in my youth.

I needed to stop it, but I had neither Lord Alasdar’s torture nor my mother’s poisonous tea.

I grasped desperately for sanity as the voices in my head rose to screams that writhed with pain.

Instead, I found the bond between me and Keera, quiet as she slept.

Pouring myself down it, I searched for the peace her touch brought me.

A real scream cut through my mental cacophony, and I jumped. My awareness snapped back into my body like a drawn bowstring releasing. My locked muscles allowed me to move again, and I looked up, finally pulling my gaze away from the scroll.

The noise came again, this time a hoarse cry.

“Come back. Please .”

The voice was Keera’s, slurred with sleep and drifting up the stairs from below me. I crashed from the room, taking the stairs two at a time back down to her bedroom. Shouldering the door open, I was struck by the sight of Keera on the bed.

She twisted and moaned, her legs tangled in the blankets. An escaped strand of dark hair clung to her face with sweat and tears. As I crossed the room to her bed in two large strides, another cry escaped her. At the same moment, the flame in the one lantern we had left burning on the table flared.

I threw up my hands as the glass containing it shattered. A sharp pain lanced through one of my fingers, but I paid it no mind, instead sitting on the bed and placing my other hand on Keera’s cheek.

“It’s a dream,” I murmured. “Keera, wake up. It’s not real.”