Page 65 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Chapter twenty-five
Keera
T he seat of the throne felt softer beneath my thighs today. The hollow faces of the petitioners waiting patiently before me still twisted my gut uncomfortably. But today, I had hope. Tomorrow, I could tell them that the grain would be saved.
I smiled at the next person waiting in line—a pregnant woman with a toddler propped on her hip. The lines of worry on her face softened, and I wondered if I had finally mastered the expression.
Before I could ask her what she needed, a loud bang echoed through the hall.
The large double doors at the opposite end swung open so forcefully, I feared they would fall off their hinges.
The engineer that had informed me this morning that the irrigation systems were almost fixed strode into the hall.
My heart skipped in anticipation, but as he approached, I caught the utter despair on his face. The wooden arms of the throne creaked as my fingers tightened around them in a death grip.
He stopped a few feet before me. I opened my mouth to ask him for his update, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, suddenly as dry as it had been when I was dying of thirst. Luckily, he didn’t wait for me to find my voice.
“The crops are dead. ”
Titters echoed through the hall, growing from whispers to mutters and then cries of distress. I barely processed it as my brain struggled to comprehend how quickly the prospects had switched from hopeful to disastrous.
Aderyn stepped forward from her station on my right, asking the question I hadn’t been able to utter: “How?”
“During the earthquake, some fault in the earth must have been split open. The mountain spring that feeds the irrigation system is now foul with ash. We didn’t realize until it was too late, and the fields are now choked with the foulness. No plants will grow there,” he explained.
Blood rushed in my ears, drowning out any further explanation. I mentally reached for the tether in my mind, begging for the reassurance of Erix’s presence, but I found none. Instead, I found my own despair echoed back at me.
The well of anger in my gut began to boil, and I fell headfirst into it. It poured down my nose and throat, threatening to drown me, and I did not fight it.
I had failed. Many times in exile, I had faced down the realities of a failed hunt: a black tailed jackrabbit scared off by a poorly placed step, or an escaped oryx after a missed shot.
But now, I was not the only one who would face the consequences.
The people of Kelvadan had believed me to be their Champion, but I led them only further into disaster. I was good for war and not much more.
A hand on my forearm dragged me from the miasma of rage. I blinked, finding Aderyn’s hard gaze.
“That will be all for today,” she announced loudly.
Then, she was pulling me to my feet. With no explanation, she dragged me through the waiting petitioners who scattered out of the way. Once we were out of the throne room, I found my voice.
“Where are we going?”
“For a ride,” she responded.
A rational part of me wanted to argue that now wasn’t the time.
We had problems that needed solving and people counting on us.
But that voice was quiet in comparison to the one that wanted nothing more than for the hot wind in my hair and scorching sun on my face to burn away all the despair and failure clouding my mind.
Nobody interrupted us as I grabbed Daiti from his stall and Aderyn fetched her roan mare. In a matter of minutes, we were mounted up, and the sharp clop of hooves on stone cut through the air as we passed under the arch from the courtyard.
We rode through the city in silence, descending the stacked layers down through the stone streets until we finally reached the gates. Aderyn signaled to the guards standing there with a flick of her wrist, and they opened the heavy wooden gate so we could ride out onto the plains.
As soon as Daiti’s hooves hit baked earth, I spurred him into action.
He took no urging, surging under me with incredible strength.
As he accelerated, I leaned forward over his neck, and he lengthened his stride until it felt as if we were flying, hooves barely touching the earth as he galloped full tilt toward the horizon.
His mane whipped me in the face and the wind burned my eyes forcefully enough that I could pretend it was the cause of the tears leaking from their corners and trailing over my temples. Still, Daiti’s wildness was enough to pull me from the well of anger and despair I had been drowning in.
After too short a time, I sat back, and Daiti slowed to a trot, then a walk.
Foam smattered his sides from the force of his exertion, but he still tossed his head happily, as if he wanted nothing more than to do it again.
Still, I nudged him to stop. I let my head fall back, tipping my head up to the sun and taking long breaths.
Hoofbeats approached, but I didn’t look, taking a long moment to enjoy the increased clarity in my head.
Aderyn stopped next to me, her own roan panting loudly after attempting to keep up with Daiti.
“Better?” she asked.
I offered a small nod, still staring up at the sky. At this time in the afternoon, it was barely blue as the intensity of the sun nearly burned all the color from it. There were no clouds in sight, and the sky stretched on so endlessly, I imagined I could fall into it and never be seen again .
“You know, there were so many times when I was an exile that I could swear it was the end,” I admitted.
Aderyn didn’t interrupt. While she knew I had been an exile, I had rarely spoken to her of that time.
She had seen my sorry state when I arrived in Kelvadan—knew intimately the way I flinched at the touch of another for months after rejoining civilization and would eat until my stomach hurt for fear of never seeing food again.
“I would run out of food and be unable to find a herd, or fall ill and be delirious with fever, and I would know it in my bones that my time had come. I’d lain down at my oasis and waited for the elements to take me, and sometimes I’d even be glad of it.
But then, I would wake up, and my eyes would open, and somehow, I found myself pushing to my feet and trying again.
Even when I willed myself to quit, I couldn’t. ”
Aderyn reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder. Finally, I lowered my gaze to meet hers.
“You were a fighter long before I handed you a saber,” she said.
My lips twisted wryly. “I don’t know any other way.”
“That’s why Ginevra made you her heir. She knew you would not put down the task she gave you, even if you wished you could.”
Some bitterness worked its way into my tone, but it couldn’t burn away the sadness that lingered there as well. “It was a cruel trick she played on me.”
“She once told me being a good person and a good queen are two different jobs. We both know she chose to be a good queen.”
I sighed and scrubbed my sleeve over my face, finally dashing away the tear tracks that stained my skin.
“Come on.” Aderyn removed her hand from my shoulder and wheeled her horse around. “Why don’t we get you cleaned up. Tonight, it can be the end, and tomorrow, we will get on our feet and fight again.”
Aderyn glanced up from the scroll she was reading and frowned at me where I sat sprawled at the foot of my bed. The dirk I had been trying to balance tip first on my finger fell to the mattress, crinkling the pile of papers strewn there.
“As captain of the Kelvadan riders, it’s my job to protect the queen,” she observed. “That is infinitely more difficult when the queen is the one who seems intent on cutting off her own fingers.”
I shrugged, but I put the knife aside. “I saw a clansman do it once, and I was always jealous.”
She sighed in exasperation before handing me the scroll she was holding. “This one needs your signature.”
I took it, although I wrinkled my nose in distaste.
It was just for show, though. In reality, I was grateful that she had agreed to sit with me in my room.
After the disaster in the throne room this afternoon, I was not ready to face the archons and the people again.
Neither was I ready to sit alone with my thoughts.
Neither of us had addressed the dark storm clouds that hung over us; tomorrow, I would have to tell the archons I would accept Prince Calix’s proposal of marriage.
At the thought, a deep ache of sadness settled over me, punctuated by sparks of anger that it had come to this—that I had no other alternatives.
We still didn’t know how to get to the Heart, and I could not let Kelvadan starve.
The only balm to my pain was that Calix would send word of my agreement to his father, and our people would have grain.
My gaze jumped involuntarily to the small table next to my bed, the light of the lamp Aderyn read by shining off the scarred metal lying there—Erix’s mask. After we had returned from our trip to the clans, he had left it here. Now, it stared at me in judgement, its gaze unavoidable.
Aderyn followed my gaze, and her eyes darkened.
She had never mentioned Erix’s nightly visits to me, but it was clear she knew about them.
Her brows had only risen a fraction of an inch when she saw the mask, although I hadn’t fully been able to meet her eyes as she spied the dark tunic thrown over the back of a chair that I had been sleeping in.
The shoulders were clearly too broad for it to be one of mine, but I couldn’t give up the comforting scent of salt and sandalwood that lulled me to sleep.
Finally, she put the scroll aside and looked at me grimly. “I sent for Neven to join us. I figured we could use the company, and he is going to want to get your opinion on an outfit for the wedding.”
I tried to swallow around the shards of glass lodged in my throat. “I’ll be happy to see him,” I admitted, although my voice was hoarse.