Page 64 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
I stiffened as he turned the corner and was lost to my sight. A vision of ripped flesh—a wound of the type that would be inflicted by such a weapon—flickered in my mind. Archon Dravis’s slit throat.
Bile rose in my throat. With the dark clouds of famine looming on the horizon, and the Heart of the Desert trapped at the top of the palace never far from my mind, I had not had many thoughts to spare for Dravis’s murder.
Carrying a similar weapon was far from evidence, but combined with Warrick’s words about my claim to the throne, it was enough to send a shiver up my spine. I needed to tell Aderyn of my suspicions.
I strode purposefully down the hallway and out of the palace.
Once in the courtyard, I hesitated. At this hour, Aderyn was likely no longer in the room in the barracks that served as her office but had headed to her home in the city for the day.
Based on what Keera had told me about her time staying with Aderyn, it seemed she now lived in the home that had belonged to her parents.
After a moment’s hesitation, I turned toward the arch leading out of the palace courtyard. Half expecting the riders standing guard there to try and stop me, I lifted my chin, but they didn’t say a word as I stepped out onto the city streets.
The walk to the modest dwelling I remembered as belonging to Aderyn’s parents was short and went even quicker given the swirling of thoughts and suspicions in my brain.
Keera had said she encountered Warrick while dancing at the coronation.
Would he have had time both to taunt her and to murder Dravis?
Had he manipulated Archon Dravis into making his protest at the coronation, only to eliminate him afterwards so he could not be exposed ?
I blinked, finding myself standing in front of a wooden door. My fist hovered uncertainly for a moment before I forced myself to knock. A shuffling sounded behind the door, followed by a masculine call of “One moment!”
The door swung open to reveal a man. His eyes widened in surprise at the sight of me, and I was taken aback.
“This must be the wrong house. I was looking for Aderyn.”
The man’s eyes brightened, glittering against his dark skin. “No, no. You’re in the right place.” He shook his head, making the golden beads adorning his braids jangle cheerfully. “She’s just cleaning up. Come in.”
As he stood aside, and I stepped into his home, it occurred to me that I recognized the man, having seen him around the palace a few times.
The second thing that struck me was that Aderyn’s entire home was covered in brightly colored fabrics.
Not just the decorative wall hangings and cushions scattered about to use as seating—long swaths were draped out over the furniture while bolts of embroidered silk were piled high on the table, nearly toppling over in their precarious stack.
“Sorry for my mess,” the man apologized. “I’m Neven, Aderyn’s husband.”
I turned toward him, eyebrows raising in surprise.
Somehow, I hadn’t realized Aderyn had gotten married.
It had never occurred to me that there could be the type of man who could burrow under her prickly exterior.
While Keera had managed to befriend her, it seemed their friendship had formed much the way ours had: over a sword.
This man didn’t strike me as one familiar with a sword, instead looking at home among the colorful lengths of linen and silk he began gathering up and sorting into neat piles.
“I’ve been trying to expand Keera’s wardrobe into one fit for a queen,” he chattered at me as he worked, ignoring the way I stood awkwardly in the center of the room, fists clenching and unclenching at my sides in discomfort.
“When I heard she might have need for a wedding gown, I got a little overexcited. ”
A strangled noise escaped me involuntarily, somewhere between a cough and a growl. Neven’s head shot up from his task, the movement making the golden beads in his braids catch the light.
I clenched my jaw, trying to school my face to neutrality, although I was sure he could hear my teeth grinding. Regardless, Neven’s gaze was knowing.
“You know, I always love designing wedding gowns,” he started slowly, his tone so casual it betrayed him as he returned to folding his cloth, “but I had hoped I wouldn’t be crafting one for Keera so soon.
She reminds me of my Aderyn, you know—feisty and incredibly hard to land, but worth the work.
I pictured her with… a different kind of prince. ”
He glanced up at me through his lashes, and despite the war going on in my heart, it warmed to him.
“Plus, if I am not busy crafting a wedding dress worthy of a goddess, then perhaps I can find time to make you something new,” Neven continued. “You know, we do make fabric in colors other than gray and black.”
A grunt of surprised laughter escaped me, and Neven smiled slyly. All at once, I understood how a weaver had wormed his way under Aderyn’s tough shell. As if summoned by the thought of her, Aderyn’s voice drifted into the room.
“Neven, my love, who are you talking to?”
A moment later, she rounded the corner, and I caught an instant of soft fondness on her face before she saw me. Then, her expression hardened back into a surly mask.
“You’re out of the palace,” she observed.
“If you wanted the riders to try and stop me, then you should have told them that,” I pointed out.
She let out a long breath through her nose. “No, I told them you could come and go as you pleased. I was hoping to give you as much time as possible to save the crops. I just didn’t think you’d use the freedom to visit my home unannounced.”
“It’s not a social call, I assure you. There’s something you should know.” Quickly, I filled her in on my suspicions about General Warrick .
As I finished, a muscle in her jaw began to tick, but she didn’t speak. Neven looked back and forth between the both of us in concern.
“Keera has been suspicious of the ambassador from Doran as well,” Neven eventually chimed in.
“As am I.” Aderyn sighed. “In fact, I’m suspicious of both the ambassadors—from Doran and Viltov.
They’ve been sniffing around Kelvadan like scent hounds since they arrived, and I’m afraid they have caught a whiff of blood.
The Ballan Desert is nothing more to them than another venue for their eternal war.
The problem is that accusing either of them of any wrongdoing without evidence would be to hand them an excuse to declare war on us.
We can’t afford to alienate any potential allies when we are in desperate need of food, and the time for military aid might not yet be past either. ”
“We can’t let General Warrick get away with a murder,” I growled. I wanted to say that I wouldn’t let Prince Calix steal away Keera either, but I swallowed those words down. The glint in Aderyn’s eye told me she understood them nonetheless.
“And we won’t,” she assured. “You were the one who taught me your favorite way to duel. We’ll beat him using your favorite method.”
My lips quirked, even as worry boiled in my chest. “We’ll keep our guard up and wait for our opponent to make a mistake.”
The rumbling grew to a deafening volume, and I gritted my teeth.
I clenched my fist tighter, imagining gripping the threads of magic I pulled into a knot in my mind.
Slowly the cracked gray rock slid sideways, out of the carved path the water from the mountain spring should flow down to irrigate crops.
Sweat dripped down my brow and into my eyes where it stung and burned.
I blinked against it, although the sensation was more welcome than the chattering echoing inside my skull.
After nearly two weeks of this, I wanted to take a hammer to my own head, wondering if I split it open, the voices would be set free and scatter to the winds, finally leaving me in peace.
With a grunt, I opened my fist and let the boulder drop to the ground with a thud that reverberated through the soles of my boots. Despite the effort it took to pull myself free of the tangle of magic at the end of every day for the past two weeks, it was worth it.
Today was the day.
The engineers of Kelvadan’s irrigation systems had told me there was just one more large rock to move, and the flow of water would be functional again.
I would be able to appear on Keera’s balcony tonight and tell her she did not need to marry Prince Calix for his country’s grain.
I closed my eyes against the beating sun and pictured her smile.
Already, I ached to kiss that smile off her lips.
Then I would bend her over that railing again and mark her so thoroughly that there could be no doubt she was mine.
I ached to pump into her until my seed dripped down her thighs.
Then I would shove it back inside her with my fingers and my tongue, just to reassure me that I had been able to keep her.
That she wasn’t marrying Prince Calix of Viltov and never would.
The man who had been directing my work for the past weeks jogged up to me with a smile. I stared at him in puzzlement for a moment, wondering if he had mistaken me for somebody else.
“Just one more,” he panted. “Just need to move the pile of earth clogging the mouth of the spring and this should be in working order again.”
He motioned for me to follow, and I fell into step beside him up the increasing slope at the base of the mountain, following the trail the water would follow to reach the fields.
“Why didn’t we unclog the spring first?” I asked. “Surely the crops could have benefited from having the water all this time?”
The man shook his head. “Without fixing the channels for it to flow in, the water simply would have flooded the fields. The earth is so dry at this point that it wouldn’t be able to absorb the rush of water anyway, and they plants would just be washed away.
Too much water would be as harmful as too little. ”
I grunted in understanding. I knew the dangers of too much as well as too little. We stopped beside a small mountain of fallen shale and dirt. The last remnants of the devastating rockslide.
“If you would do the honors, Prince Erix.” He gestured to the last barrier between Kelvadan’s crops and the water they so desperately needed.
I breathed in deeply through my nose, trying to slip gently into the flow of the desert’s magic around me, even when it rushed past me like a riptide threatening to toss me out to sea.
The nearby farmers all stopped in their work, looking up and venturing closer in their anticipation.
Their eyes on me were heavy, pushing me farther away from myself and into the consciousness of the desert.
I let it happen.
I needed this to be done, so the people of Kelvadan would have food. So Keera would not have to stare into the skeletal face of starvation again.
The rumble started slowly before becoming deafening all at once. The ground trembled beneath my boots, but I planted my feet, holding on to the sensation as I grabbed a thread of power and yanked.
Cheers erupted and my eyes snapped open, although I hadn’t remembered closing them. The hill of shale and pebbles collapsed, letting a fountain and water burst forth. Instantly, it began filling the channels carved into the earth, branching out to feed the fields of arrowgrass and sorghum.
My heart leapt, soaring like Zephyr in flight. It soared for just a moment, before the overpowering smell hit me. Sulphur and ash filled my nose, choking me like it had when I faced the lava wyrm. As more water belched forth from the spring, it ran dark and thick.
Before I could think to undo what I had done, the dirty water, nearly black with ash and minerals filled the channels and rushed out across the fields. Cheers turned to gasps of horror as it became clear the water was putrid.
A strangled cry of frustration tore from my lips, and my knees hit the ground so hard they rattled my teeth in my head.
“—contaminated the spring. Must have happened in the earthquake,” the man next to me reasoned in a panicked tone, but I barely heard it. All I could see in my mind’s eye was withering crops and Keera’s gaunt face when she had been on the brink of starvation.
One thought echoed in my head with maddening clarity: This was always going to happen. I had asked Keera to wait, but this was never going to work. My efforts to help here were doomed before I had even begun.
I raised my head to the sky and screamed at the injustice of it, uncaring of the reaction of those around me. My cries were meant for the desert, a desperate plea to understand why she would do this.
Even when my breath ran out and my scream tapered off, the shouts in my own head continued, but they gave me no answers.