Page 72 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Chapter twenty-nine
Keera
I dragged in breaths through my lips with shuddering gasps. Panic fought against me as I tried to regain the air that had been knocked out of me with my unexpected fall, but darkness pressed in on me from all sides, adrenaline pumping in my veins.
My magic shivered, but didn’t burst out in full panic, as if it recognized that it was still surrounded by the desert instead of encased in a mountain.
A thud sounded next to me and a soft familiar grunt. From the scraping sound, I guessed that Erix had broken his fall with a roll, where as I had plummeted to the ground gracelessly.
“Keera,” his voice was raw and panicked as I heard shuffling.
I tried to respond, but with my lungs still heaving in shock, I only managed a quiet groan. A hand patted my leg frantically, as if Erix had been casting around for me in the darkness. He followed it up to my chest and then my face.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
I took stock, and found that miraculously, I seemed to be intact. Apart from having the wind knocked from me and the strange shakiness that gripped my limbs after a sudden fall, nothing seemed amiss.
“I’m fine,” I gasped. “It’s just… very dark. ”
It was a silly thing to say, but it was not untrue. I had never minded night in the desert. In fact, I had generally enjoyed the peacefulness of the cooler air and the sounds of sleepy animals—looked forward to looking up at the velvety sky filled with too many stars to count.
This was nothing like that. The blackness was oppressive, as if a wet blanket had been laid over all my senses. Erix grunted, and his hands disappeared from my face, stealing away the only sensation I had to ground myself in the endless miasma.
I squinted as fire flared to life. Erix held it in his palm, and it lit his features eerily, casting long shadows that accentuated his proud nose and angular jaw.
“I can’t hold it for long,” he said, gritting his teeth.
I felt the tumult of power pouring down the bond in my gut—he had the power to sustain the flame but struggled with the control of containing it in his hand.
Quickly, I sat up and cast around, trying to get a sense of where we were. The tunnel we sat in seemed similar to the one above, but this one forked off in many directions, making it seem like we sat at the middle of a labyrinthian maze.
My stomach leaped into my throat, threatening to spill its contents when I spotted misshapen piles in small alcoves and recognized the bleached white of bones. Erix clearly spotted them too and grimaced.
“Quick, grab me a long, thick bone,” he said.
Scrabbling to my hands and knees, I crawled toward one of the piles.
I tried to focus on his request and not the mangled mixture of skeletons I sorted through.
The clacking and scraping seemed inordinately loud in the oppressive quiet as I tried—and failed—not to recognize the skull of a fox and a human spine far too small to belong to a full-grown adult.
Finally, I grasped what must have been a horse’s femur.
Pulling it free of the tangled mess, I hurried back to where Erix waited.
Guessing what he intended, I ripped a piece of cloth from the loose end of my hood and wrapped it around the bulbous end of the bone. Then, he took it from me and dipped it into the flame dancing in his palm, which threatened to spill over. After a long, tense moment, the make-shift torch lit .
Erix grunted and the fire in his hand guttered out, leaving us with just the bone torch.
“Their tunnel network is more complex than we thought,” I said, looking around us.
He held up the torch to illuminate the channel we sat in stretching beyond the circle of light in both directions, and at least three branches leading away into the darkness.
“I thought the den was small enough that we wouldn’t have difficulty coming across a tricrith. Now, I’m not so sure. They might not even be nearby.” His voice was rough with anger.
I reached out to lay a hand on his arm in reassurance, but he pulled away.
A hollow feeling formed in my throat, and I let it drop into my lap.
He had been distant ever since I accepted Viltov’s alliance, and the engagement to Calix.
But when he had pinned me to my bed and thoroughly marked me as his, I had found hope that all was not lost between us.
Perhaps my marriage could hold an alliance for Kelvadan, while my heart and body belonged to another.
After all, Calix himself had said that the marriage was a political one, despite his promises that he would try to make me happy.
A more insidious hope burrowed in my chest as well—that we had been wrong, and getting the Heart might mean I wouldn’t need to marry Calix. I did my best to squash those feelings though. I knew it was too late, but dread and uncertainty gnawed at me all the same.
Erix had only seemed to withdraw more since our anza nectar-fueled tryst. I pulled my mind away from the way he had pinned me down and spread me open—making me feel alive and untamed, free of all the restraints of expectation and desired just as I was.
It would all be meaningless anyway if we died here in the dark, leaving our bones to join the macabre piles.
“We may still be able to find them,” I encouraged.
As if summoned by my words, a rumbling and shaking started in the distance. Erix’s eyes widened as we listened.
“More accurately, they might be able to find us ,” he said. “We haven’t exactly been quiet.”
“So much for sneaking up on them,” I grimaced, thinking of the piercing scream I had let out as I fell, and the way the vibrations of the tunnel collapsing must have echoed through the interconnected web.
Both of us scrabbled to our feet, reaching for our weapons. Thankfully, Erix’s saber remained strapped to his back, and I had not impaled myself on the sword on my hip as I fell. Now we both drew them, finding ourselves back-to-back as we both cast around, searching for the direction of the noise.
The rumbling grew into clacking and skittering as it grew close enough to make out the horrible clicking of pincers and exoskeletons. Still, it seemed like it came from every direction, echoing and refracting through the tight space.
“We might have drawn the attention of more than one tricrith,” Erix said, holding the bone torch over his head to try and illuminate as much of our surroundings as possible. I grimaced, realizing he was right.
“You told me once you wouldn’t want the desert to make herself easier,” I shot over my shoulder.
“I may be rethinking that sentiment,” he admitted.
It was all he had time to say before a glossy black pincer emerged out of one of the branching tunnels. I had barely a second to react before it reached for me. Raising my saber, I deflected the blow with an echoing clang.
A roar behind me and a satisfying crunch marked that Erix had his own opponent.
I couldn’t spare him more than a thought for luck as the tricrith skittered fully out of the side passage and fixed me with its beady eyes.
Its three tails curled forward menacingly as it advanced on me, and my eyes darted between them, trying to predict which would strike first.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over the tricrith as Erix moved behind me, the light of his torch disappearing as he swung it.
In the sudden blackness, the only warning I had was an interruption in the flow of magic around me.
I ducked to the side, the wind of the tricrith’s attack brushing my face, missing by mere inches.
“Erix!” I shouted, hoping for him to raise the torch again so I could see my opponent. The light flared again, reflecting iridescently off the glossy black coating. Already, a pincer shot out. I swerved, but I wasn’t quite quick enough.
The pincer snapped on thin air, but the blow glanced off me, knocking me to the ground. Dirt filled my mouth as I slammed into the ground. Pain shot up through my elbows and knees. I didn’t have time to register as eight armored legs pounded the ground around me, trying to pin me down.
I started crawling, weaving this way and that to avoid the tricrith’s legs as I moved under it where it could not see me.
A rattling hiss of anger filled the body above me, loud enough to rattle my teeth.
Distracted by the blood-chilling sound, I didn’t see one of the thrashing limbs until it was nearly upon me.
I threw myself aside, crashing down onto my stomach, but the hooked tip slashed my arm.
I shouted in pain and the hissing grew louder, as if the tricrith was pleased.
Still, I gritted my teeth and advanced, pulling myself forward on my elbows.
The sleeve of my tunic ripped free, and I made it to the back of the tricrith, looking up to see its tails waving above my head, silhouetted by the flickering light of the torch Erix still wielded.
Pulling my legs under me, I crouched behind the monster, spinning around.
The tricrith skittered, its claws and legs gouging into the side of the tunnel as it tried to turn and face me, but the passage was too narrow.
“Erix!” I yelled. “Get behind them!”
On the far side of the tricrith I had engaged, he fought another, dodging flailing claws and striking tails. A pincer shot out to grab him, and he blocked with his saber. The claw closed around the blade, yanking Erix forward as he tried to wrest back his weapon.
A metallic snapping sound echoed through the tunnel.
My mouth fell open in horror as the tricrith closed its claw, splitting Erix’s saber in two—Kelvar’s saber.
The top half of the blade fell to the ground, embedding itself into the ground tip first, leaving Erix holding a broken hilt with half a jagged blade.