Page 63 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter twenty-four

Erix

“ M arriage.”

The word was spoken in my own voice, but it sounded like it was being shouted at from the end of a very long tunnel.

Much closer and more immediate was the screaming in my head.

I reached up and covered my ears, like that might help, but the voices were inside my skull, and try as I might, I couldn’t rip them out.

Cool fingers closed around my wrists and pulled my hands away from my head.

The overwhelming chattering abated enough for me to focus on Keera’s eyes, which shone overbright in the evening light as we stood on her balcony.

A cool breeze lifted the night air, but I could barely feel its gentle caress as my blood boiled.

“It’s how his people secure alliances,” she said.

“What…” I started to choke on my words, and I forced myself to take a long, deep breath through my nose.

As I did, I pulled on the tangled web of power at the base of my skull, trying to let it flow away from me like I did when I meditated.

However, it was as if somebody had coated the fibers with honey, and they stuck together. I only managed to pull the knot taut.

“What did you tell him?” I managed to grit out.

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Keera said .

“So, you’re not going to marry him?” I wanted to feel relief, but tension and uncertainty still shivered down the tether in my head.

Keera’s silence was too long. I tried to pull my wrists from her grasp, but she resisted.

“I don’t want to,” she finally said. Her voice was raw, but the truth there was unmistakable. “The archons think I should consider it, though.”

“Damn the archons and their opinions to the fiery sands,” I spat. “What do you think?”

Keera stared at me, her eyes glittering and every line in her face written with pain.

Even as the deepening dusk cast the shadows of her doubt darker, I saw a steely strength behind her gaze.

It was the strength of the exile that had challenged me— dared me to take her life, bringing me to my knees even when I was the one holding a sword to her throat.

“I think that I promised I would do everything in my power to help the people of Kelvadan. Queen Ginevra”—Keera’s voice wavered, but she soldiered on—“once told me that to be queen was to murder the woman inside you again and again. I didn’t understand how she did it at the time, but I see now what she meant. ”

My heart sank, and the voices in my head chattered, but I was able to pull away from them in favor of focusing on the way Keera’s strong visage cracked—just like the deep crack I had found rent into the floor of the palace throne room by her passion.

Her voice was quiet, but somehow every word hit me like a punch in the gut as she murmured, “I can’t let them starve. I know what it is to watch yourself waste away, and I can’t do that to these people.”

And there it was. Just the day before, I had promised her I would never let her go hungry, and already I wanted her to turn away from the path to bring her people the food they needed. But I had also already given everything to be by her side.

“There is more than one way to feed your people,” I said. “What of restoring the Heart? Or if the irrigation system is repaired, the grain fields may once again be salvaged.”

“We don’t have much time,” she admitted .

“How little time?” I asked, my brain already whirring. Even today, I had been out in the field, the skin on the back of my neck blistering with sunburn as I pulled at the threads that held the desert together to push and pull the boulders that had fallen in the avalanche.

Keera screwed up her face in despair. “A few weeks at most,” she admitted. “Not enough time to restore the Heart, even if we did get to it in time.”

“Give me two weeks,” I begged. “Two weeks to fix the irrigation before you give Prince Calix your answer.”

Finally, she released my wrists from her grasp and laid her palms flat on my chest. “I promise. I’ll give you as long as I possibly can.”

She stepped closer to me, and despite the magic still dancing under my skin, I wrapped my arms around her. I tightened my grasp, as if I could pull her close enough to me that I could never be parted from her again.

“I will do what I must to save the people of Kelvadan, but I refuse to lose you,” she admitted. “We were nearly torn apart once, and even now we can only be together behind closed doors, yet we have still held on to each other. We can find a way through this.”

I prayed to the sands that she was right, but as I set my chin on the top of her head and stared at the moon hanging low in the sky, a newfound dread settled deep in my bones.

The splash of cold water on my face made me gasp as it contrasted with the heat of my skin.

After nearly twelve hours laboring away under the beating sun, I felt like a dried-out husk, ready to collapse where I stood.

My only consolation was that the heavy ache in my muscles and the blistering of my sunburn were small balms against the growing chattering in my head.

Using my magic to aid the Kelvadan engineers in fixing the irrigation systems stretched and exercised the power that paced under my skin like a caged animal. But every night, I had a harder time stuffing it back into the confines of my skull .

I looked up from the basin, grasping the sides of the small stand it stood on with each hand as I met my own eyes in the mirror. They seemed hollow and angry, and I worked to soften the clench of my jaw.

For weeks after arriving in Kelvadan, I had avoided looking at myself in the small mirror on the wall of the room assigned to me.

Even when I had stopped wearing the mask so others might see my face, a strange apprehension had made my breath come quicker at the thought of facing myself in such a way.

Finally, I had caught a glimpse of myself in Keera’s mirror over her shoulder as I braided her hair, and some of the uneasiness at my own reflection started to fade.

Now, I was struck with a strange notion as I inspected my face.

The slight arch to my nose and the set of my cheekbones looked like a face I had almost forgotten but still saw in my dreams—and nightmares.

They belonged to my mother.

My knuckles whitened in their grip on the wish stand as I leaned so close to the glass that the tip of my nose nearly touched its smooth surface. The mirror fogged with the heat of my breath.

Then, my reflection smiled.

I lurched, my thighs banging into the washstand before me. It rammed into the wall and the mirror crashed to the floor, shattering on the stone.

My ragged breaths cut through the silence as I stared down at it.

Slowly, I bent and picked up one of the dagger-like shards.

Carefully, not to cut my fingers on its jagged edges, I held it before my face.

With my other hand, I gently prodded at my cheek, trying to figure out how my reflection had made an expression I hadn’t felt myself make.

Something had been odd in my appearance when I smiled too, but as I tried to remember, it slipped through my fingers like grains of sand through an hourglass. Maybe it had just been the fog of my breath distorting my appearance or a trick of the light.

Or maybe my madness was growing.

I tossed the shard of mirror on the ground with the rest, wincing at the clatter. I would have to clean it up later, but for now, I craved Keera’s company. She was likely in her room, waiting for me to appear on the balcony .

I shouldered open the door to my room and stalked down the hallway.

My mind still on the odd flicker of my reflection, I didn’t see the man turn the corner until it was too late.

My shoulder slammed into his, and I stepped back in surprise.

Encountering anybody in this section of the palace had been rare, as Aderyn and the riders seemed to have intentionally placed me out of the way.

“Sorry,” I grumbled, already sliding past him, when he cocked his head at me interestedly.

“Prince Erix,” he greeted.

I stared at his scarred face and copper hair—not a common color here in the Ballan Desert.

“General Warrick.” I inclined my head at him.

While I hadn’t spoken to the man, Keera had griped about the ambassador’s presence on several occasions.

Where Prince Calix didn’t seem to raise her hackles, General Warrick from Doran set her teeth on edge—I could tell from the way her fingers plucked at her clothes when she mentioned him, and how she described him as always seeming to be lurking around corners, as if he wanted to ambush her.

I seemed to be the one ambushed today.

“It’s just Erix,” I corrected him.

He grunted, and although his tone was neutral, I got the feeling he was judging my response. Leaning back on his heels, he rested his left hand on his hip and his right on the handle of the knife he wore on his waist.

“I must admit, I’m disappointed you gave up your title so easily,” he observed.

My gaze snapped up to meet his, but his expression gave away nothing.

“Not everybody needs to throw their title about, General, ” I countered through gritted teeth. “Here in the Ballan Desert, we value strength above heritage.”

“But I hear you have both.” General Warrick shrugged, seemingly unfazed by my hostility.

“As a man of war, I respect that strength. With things going poorly for Kelvadan, I would have thought you would want to remind people they have another option for strong leadership. But there is clearly much about your ways I don’t understand. ”

Before I could think of a response beyond the beginnings of a snarl in my chest, he turned and walked away. Once again, my gaze caught on the way he rested his hand on his knife, but at this angle, the dim light of the corridor caught on the blade at his hip.

It was a serrated blade, large and curved in a way that would rip flesh open.