Page 71 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Carefully, I brushed the hair away from one side of her face. Tear tracks of pleasure painted her cheeks, and I kissed them away. Her mouth curled in a gentle smile, and she went boneless and pliant beneath me.

I kissed her cheek again, and traced her skin with my nose, unable to help myself. Despite the warmth of her skin against mine, a shiver ran up my spine as I watched her relax. The noise of revelry in the courtyard many stories below drifted in through the open archway.

The city celebrated her engagement to somebody else, and I had not had the strength to watch her share one dance with the man without tearing her away to claim her in every way I knew how.

I peeled myself away from her, the whispers of the desert in my mind returning in full force as I stopped touching her, their tone derisive and mocking. Among their chattering, I thought I heard words I had said to Keera at an oasis once as I held her in my arms.

The world will not survive the way I feel about you.

I waited in the stables, running a brush through Alza’s mane. There were no tangles in sight, but I did it anyway just for something to do with my hands. From her slack lower jaw and partially closed eyes, I could tell that Alza enjoyed the attention as well.

The stable door opened with a creak, and I stilled my brush.

Alza’s eyes opened, and her ears flicked forward too, but I did not need to listen to the quiet footsteps to know that it was Keera who approached.

I could tell simply from the way fibers of magic in the air around us shivered, even as I wished I couldn’t .

This would be easier if I couldn’t sense her presence and know where she was at almost all times. It made it impossible to put her from my mind, but I knew I must if I were to do what needed to be done.

We had never been able to figure out what the odd connection between us was, although I had theories I did not like to examine too closely.

Everything in the desert was connected in a vibrating web of life and death—and both Keera and I were nexuses in that tangled net.

Like two stones dropped on a taught canvas, we constantly collided, drawn together by the gravity of the other’s power.

Of course, the part that burrowed under my skin and ate me from the inside out was the way Kelvar and Alyx’s connection had been described—as if the magic of the desert had linked them together.

I had briefly flipped through Kelvar’s journal, coming across sections where he referred to sensing his wife’s presence and emotions.

Nausea bubbling up in my gut, I snapped the journal closed and put it aside. I couldn’t bring myself to face the evidence that I followed in his footsteps. And his failures. I must undo what his love for Alyx had wrought. There was no alternative.

A shadow darkened the entrance to Alza’s stall, and I looked up.

Keera stood there, not as the queen I had become accustomed to, but the rider who had accompanied me on a long journey to face a lava wyrm.

She wore loose tan pants and a brown tunic and vest, bound by a cream-colored sash.

The hood that lay draped around her shoulders looked almost black in the dim light of the stable at night, but a small swath of moonlight showed it to be a deep crimson.

Damn the color red.

“Ready?” I asked.

She nodded, heading to fetch Daiti from his stall. As she did, I loaded a small amount of packs onto Alza’s back. I did not expect this to be a long journey, but with the state of the desert these days, I could not guarantee that what I had been a few hours ride a few days ago would remain so.

Once Keera had done the same with her small bundles, we walked our mounts out of the stable and down through the city. As we passed through the arched opening in the stone wall, I held my breath, waiting for the lifting of weight that came with leaving the city behind for the open desert.

It didn’t come.

The chittering in my mind did not abate. I ground my teeth against it, so hard I thought Keera might be able to hear them creak. Even the occasional odd flickers at the edge of my vision that had started in the past few weeks remained.

It seemed Keera was my only peace, and she was about to be lost to me.

Burying my frustration deep in my gut, I jerked my head to the left, indicating we should ride parallel to the city walls until we reached the point at which they joined the mountains.

As we rode, the peeked above the horizon, lighting the landscape a dusty gray that gradually warmed until everything in sight had a gilded quality.

I squinted out toward the sunrise, away from the mountains. Hopefully soon, I would be setting off in that direction every morning, carrying the Heart toward the temple at the edge of the sea. I patted Alza’s neck as it bobbed, taking comfort in the warmth of her flesh under my palm.

It would be a long journey for her and me both. She had never been to the ocean, but I had. Dread crawled up my spine at the memory of the horrors I had faced on that first long journey with Lord Alasdar. Alza snorted in response to the sudden tension in my limbs, and I shook myself.

There was no use worrying about the journey until I had the Heart anyway.

I tore my gaze away from the horizon to find Keera considering me.

“You’ve been quiet,” she said.

“We normally are,” I pointed out. It was generally a pleasant truth of our rides together.

We did not need words to understand each other, and I had enjoyed the soothing presence of her company even when there was no conversation between us.

Even our morning katas that we did together when traveling were done in silence, the matching of our breaths and the tandem flow of magic around us joining us in a way words never could.

Keera’s eyes narrowed, but I just shrugged.

This silence between us was different—heavier.

I hadn’t seen her since I had left her sleeping in her room after her engagement party.

There was just so much I couldn’t say, because at the end of the day, she was marrying somebody else.

She had to, for Kelvadan’s sake. Just like I had to do many of the awful things I had done for the sake of the desert whose Heart I had sworn to return.

“The entrance to the tricrith lair was near the base of the mountains,” I said, instead of mentioning any of that.

Keera nodded. “What’s the plan?”

“Don’t die.”

“That’s rather ambitious.”

Despite the gravity of the situation and the dead weight of my heart in my chest, heavy as a stone, my lips twitched.

“We know their weak spots are in the gaps between the armor and their mouth,” I pointed out.

“We’ll do what we’ve always done. We take turns distracting it while the other aims for its vulnerabilities. ”

“Distracting it will be more dangerous this time,” Keera argued. “One scratch from their stingers and it’s over. And in case you don’t remember, they have three tails, and there are only two of us.”

“Then I’ll handle two, and you handle the other one, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Keera shot me a hard look that indicated she didn’t appreciate my flippancy. “Considering I’ve landed the killing blow on the last three terrors of the desert we’ve faced, maybe I should take two of them.”

“You’ve only been able to take those killing shots because I’ve been such a thorough distraction,” I argued.

I could sense the way she prickled, her shoulders drawing up toward her ears, and I reveled in it.

It was like peeling back the layers of the veneer she had painted herself with during the months in the city to get to the wild and untamed woman beneath.

I closed my eyes, stopping myself and clenching my fists.

She was a queen now, and I had sworn to her I would not let her fail at it.

“All I’m saying,” Keera continued, “is that we don’t need to take any unnecessary risks. We don’t need to kill a tricrith. We just need its venom. If we manage to cut off one of its tails, it will have a stinger and venom in it, which should be all we need.”

I tilted my head. The idea had merit.

“All right. Once we find one, we will try to sneak around behind it and relieve it of its stinger.”

She squared her shoulders and nodded, before we continued the ride in silence, plodding along in the shadow of the mountains.

Finally, a dark spot became visible on the ground in the distance.

I recognized the burrowing hole that I had identified from the bestiary as being an entrance to the tricrith’s lair.

It grew from a small dark splotch to a gash in the earth as we approached.

We stopped before it, dismounting from our horses and standing with our toes brushing the point where the ground began sloping down into the shadowed abyss.

The air shifted beside me, and I glanced over to see a shudder pass over Keera’s body.

I echoed the sentiment. The open sky, stretching endlessly in every direction, barely even interrupted by clouds, was one of my favorite parts of the desert.

Staring up at it was often my greatest comfort—the exact opposite of the stone cell that plagued my nightmares.

But the idea of descending below ground went against every instinct I had.

“I brought torches,” I said, turning to Alza and retrieving one pack from her back. “That should help us navigate in the darkness.”

Keera chewed her lips and nodded. “We’ll get in, we will get what we need, and we’ll get out.”

I hummed my agreement. “I’m ready when you are.”

Keera spared a glance over her shoulder at Alza and Daiti, who hovered just behind us. Daiti’s nostrils flared, and he pawed at the ground nervously, kicking up dust. He clearly liked the look of the tunnel as little as we did.

“Stay,” Keera ordered. Then she squared her shoulders and marched forward into the darkness. I steeled myself against the cold dread slithering up my spine, insidious and quiet as a snake, and I followed.

The air grew cool as the earth sloped down.

The sand underfoot only slipped slightly, packed tightly by the tricriths’ burrowing bodies.

In the increasingly dim light, I could just make out Keera pushing her hood back from her face before me.

She tilted her head up, and I followed her gaze, taking in the round passage that had been cut into the earth.

After just a few minutes of walking, the sun from the entrance could no longer penetrate the blackness, so thick it was nearly tangible. I fished a torch from the pack in my hand. Holding it before me, I found a thread of magic and pulled.

The torch flared to life with so much force, I almost dropped it, and it nearly exploded in my hand. Keera looked over her shoulder at the bright flash of light, and I grimaced as I breathed out slowly through my nose, forcing the flame to settle into a small, steady light.

With my control leashed once more, I held up the torch to light our way, and we continued walking.

“How deep do these tunnels go?” she wondered aloud.

“They might connect the whole desert, for all we know,” I admitted. “They could allow the tricriths to traverse long distances and only burst through the ground when they have found their prey, like they did at the funeral.”

Keera shuddered. We took a few more steps in silence, before Keera froze, holding her fist up to signal me to stop too.

I did, holding the torch up to illuminate what it was she saw.

I could see no change in the tunnel, but a quiet scraping, like the swish of sand sliding down a dune began, growing louder.

“Erix,” Keera said, her voice laced with fear, looking down. I followed her gaze, and horror flooded my veins as I saw her boots sinking into the sand. I took a step toward her, but she threw out her hands.

“No!” she cried, but it was too late.

The ground where she stood collapsed, and her scream pierced both the air and my heart as she plummeted into blackness. Her terrified shriek cut off with a thud. All I could think of was Keera alone in the darkness, and I took a running leap down into the hole that had swallowed her.