Page 74 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Chapter thirty
Erix
F or years, I had relentlessly pursued the Heart of the Desert.
The purpose of finding it and restoring it had been the whetstone that sharpened me into a lethal weapon.
Now, I was steps away from the goal that had driven me single mindedly to fight and kill, but my feet were as heavy as if I marched to my own funeral.
Once I held the Heart of the Desert in my hands, I would have to leave Keera.
I watched her braid swing as she marched up the stairs before me, trying to memorize the way the light of the afternoon sun streaming in through the high, narrow windows shone off her dark hair.
I had promised her I would return once the Heart was restored, but I had no idea how long my journey would take me.
Even worse, fear grasped at my lungs, telling me I might not be able to return to her.
The first time I had crossed the desert to the ocean with Lord Alasdar, the sands had brought me terrible visions that drove me to the brink of insanity—the entire desert bathed in blood, hundreds dead by my hand.
With Kelvar’s madness closing in on me, I began to doubt my mind would survive the journey to the ocean and back intact .
Still, I had pledged myself to the desert, and to healing what my ancestors had broken. And if I couldn’t do it for them, then I would do it for Keera, who deserved to be queen of a desert that was whole and healthy.
After climbing until my thighs began to ache, we crested the final landing. I stepped up beside her, and together, we stood in the tower that marked the highest spire in Kelvadan. Here lay Alyx’s tomb, and the Heart of the Desert lay with her.
We stood in silence, and I almost felt like the hammering of my heart reverberated through the soles of my boots and through the stone of the tower. Perhaps the Heart within the room beat with us.
Keera let out a shuddering breath and apprehension tinged the air.
“Should we maybe get help?” she breathed, speaking quietly as if not to disturb the heavy silence.
“We’re the only ones with the power to break the blood glass,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but”—she hesitated—“last time…”
“Last time, my mother died,” I finished for her.
The words tasted heavy and bitter on my tongue.
I now faced the pang in my heart as I saw it for what it was—grief.
I had been angry with my mother. So angry that at times I did think I wished her dead.
But faced with the reality of her being gone from this world cut deep into my soul.
Bitterness of things left unsaid filled my throat—words I might have said to my mother, but now she would never hear.
Keera shuddered beside me, and I lay a hand on her shoulder. Queen Ginevra’s death weighed on her, having saddled her with a heavy crown and a palpable sense of guilt.
“I am stronger than she was, and we have both used our power regularly. Like a horse that is let out to exercise often, the magic of the desert within us is healthy,” I assured her.
“What if one of us loses control?” she asked.
A brief vision of the stone cell at the base of the palace flitted through my head—accompanied by a memory of the hollow emptiness that had taken the place of the tether between us when she had been locked away.
“We have each other,” I assured. My voice sounded more sure than I felt.
She nodded grimly, before looking down at the bundle in her arms. Carefully, she began to unwrap the length of red cloth, now stained with thick dark blood, like tar.
As the fabric fell away, she gingerly grasped the severed tail of the tricrith.
Keera pinched it behind the stinger, like one might grasp a snake behind the jaw to keep it from biting.
I didn’t blame her for her caution. The lethal stinger gleamed in the light, looking oily and wet with venom.
“Do I just…” She motioned between the tail and the panes of blood glass, which looked black, almost like obsidian in the evening light.
I almost shrugged, telling her that she knew as much as I did, but the whispers in my mind shifted in tone, almost sounding affirmative.
“Yes,” I encouraged. “Scrape some of the venom on each of the panes of glass.”
Keera stepped forward and did as I directed. A harsh scrape, like a knife across bone, echoed through the room as she dragged the point of the stinger across the glass, followed by a hissing sound.
As she moved to the second piece of glass, the hissing was replaced by a sizzling and popping, like that of meat over the fire. The sound grew, and Keera jumped back, the armored tail tip in her hand clattering to the floor.
I stepped closer to inspect, and a waft of a hot, metallic stench engulfed me. My stomach threatened to turn itself inside out—something in me screaming that this was a smell I wasn’t supposed to encounter. I swallowed around the feeling as I took in the results of the venom on the blood glass.
Each pane had a divot carved in it, growing deeper and turning the dark crimson closer to the red of freshly spilled blood. Even as I watched though, the progress of the gash began to slow, as if the venom were quickly losing potency. But we were not counting on the venom alone to break the glass.
I glanced over at Keera and found all doubt chased from her face, instead replaced with grim determination. Her jaw was squared and her golden eyes glimmered. Wordlessly, we exchanged a nod before reaching out our hands in unison .
My palm landed on the smooth surface of blood glass, right next to the gash made by the venom, the same instant Keera touched the panel beside it. I hissed through my teeth, finding it surprisingly hot, almost burning to the touch, but I could not pull away.
I was rooted to the spot, unable to move, as if the fibers of magic that normally connected me to every rock and grain of sand in the desert now bound me in place. Staring at Keera, I could tell that she too was bound in place, the tendons in her neck standing out harshly.
Power pulsed through me, and I recognized the inexorable pull of Keera’s magic at the base of my skull. Over the force of the strange sensations coursing through my body, I remembered our purpose and pushed.
The magic that pulsed through me roared, louder than any voices that had overcome my mind before.
I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that could block out the sound, but it was everywhere—under my skin and burrowing into my bones.
It was like standing in the center of a mighty sandstorm or lying beneath the hooves of stampeding horses.
Above it all, came an almighty cracking, like a rent in the very universe.
Then, silence. Even louder than all that had come before.
I peeled my eyes open to find myself staring into Keera’s own disbelieving gaze.
Slowly, full of equal parts hope and dread, we turned our heads to look at the double doors.
Where our hands had laid on dark panels of blood glass, now there were open spaces—lancet windows leading to the shadowy space beyond.
Despite the heaviness of the doors—carved from the same stone as the rest of Kelvadan and so tightly jointed they almost appeared to be a wall—they swung open on silent hinges.
A rush of air ruffled my hair as Kelvar and Alyx’s tomb opened to us.
Where I expected the must of a tomb untouched, it was the gentle breeze of the desert.
The chattering in my head returned, driving out the silence and urging me to go inside. For once, I ignored them, transfixed by the sight that lay before me. Keera moved first, drifting forward into the room as if in a trance.
She took several steps toward the large, canopied bed that lay within, dominating most of the wall opposite the door.
It strangely seemed like any other beautiful room, where I had expected something eerie and otherworldly.
An ornately carved wooden headboard climbed the stone wall nearly reaching the ceiling, as purple curtains trimmed with gold billowed in the ephemeral breeze that drifted through the chamber.
Laying in the center of the bed, was Alyx.
Where I had expected to find a skeleton, or a mummified corpse, lay a beautiful woman who might have been sleeping.
Long white hair fanned out over amethyst pillows.
She wore a nightgown, looking like it was made of pure molton gold spread in rippling puddles.
Her head was tilted to the side, showing off a long, elegant neck and impossibly high cheekbones.
It was as if she were looking off to the side, and her arm stretched in that direction too.
My gaze followed the trail of her long, elegant fingers to the edge of the bed, a strange feeling of apprehension bubbling up in my chest. The tension burst, and the air all rushed out of me as I saw what she reached for.
Hunched over in a chair at the edge of the bed, was a skeleton.
The bones were bleached, and dark robes hung from them like a tattered flag, but I knew without a doubt to whom it belonged. Kelvar himself had indeed joined Alyx in her tomb.
I couldn’t fathom why he had decayed with time and Alyx hadn’t—another mystery for my mind to grapple with in the long nights ahead.
Keera’s footsteps scraped along the floor as she approached the haunting scene, and I found myself trailing after her. As she approached the bed, she fell to her knees next to Kelvar’s chair, and I stopped just behind her .
My gaze skated over what remained of the ancestor that had haunted my every step—the whispers that I was Kelvar come again a constant reminder of the fate I drifted inexorably toward. But under that impossibly large legacy, were bones like any other man’s.
One of his hands lay on the bed, as if he had been reaching out to Alyx as well.
My gaze caught on a bulge in the bone of his forearm, as if it had once been broken.
Then I fixated on the scant inches between the tips of Alyx’s and Kelvar’s fingers—her unmarred flesh a sharp contrast to his bare bones.
A lump rose in my throat at the thought that they had died so close but not touching.
A movement at the edge of my vision caught my attention, and I tore my gaze from the tragic sight to see Keera reaching out toward Kelvar’s lap. His other hand was cradled there, and in the depths of the shadows came a glimmer of red.
My heart leapt into my throat, realizing I was mere feet away from the Heart of the Desert. Keera’s fingers closed around that red glimmer, and she made a choking sound in her throat.
I lurched forward, fear pulsing in my veins as I expected a rush of power through the tether between us, but none came. Keera pulled her hand to her chest, and I held my breath as I peered over her shoulder. Then, she opened her fingers to reveal what lay in her palm.
A red gemstone, as deep and radiant as all the legends suggested.
It was cloven in two.