Page 75 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Chapter thirty-one
Keera
T he Heart was broken.
The desert’s pain radiated through my own chest as I stared down at the fractured gem.
Despite the horrid truth of it, it was still breathtakingly beautiful, the late afternoon light streaming in through the tall, lancet window refracting through the two halves as if they burned with an unquenchable fire.
The sight was just as beautiful and heart wrenching as the queen, lying on the bed beside me.
My gaze drifted up to her face. When I first entered the room, I had watched her chest for breath, as she looked so perfectly preserved that I could swear she must be alive.
Now, I stared at her face and frowned as I saw the furrow between her brows, written there for eternity as if she were concerned.
A thud sounded behind me as Erix fell to his knees. I turned to look at him, finding his eyes fixed on the broken Heart cupped to my chest. Waves of despair rolled off him, making tears well in my eyes.
With my free hand, I reached out to cup his cheek. “We can fix it.”
“How?” he asked, his tone hopeless.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But if we figured out how to break the unbreakable blood glass, we can work this out too. ”
He tore his gaze from the broken gem, instead looking over my shoulder at the hunched skeleton of Kelvar. A myriad of emotions flicked over his face in quick succession—pain, fear, despair, anger. The echoed in my own chest.
Then, he stood and stormed from the room without a backward glance, and then the echoing sounds of his footsteps descending the stairs quickly retreated.
I swallowed around a heavy lump in my throat, before taking in the scene around me once more. There was simply too much about what had happened to the former king and queen that I didn’t understand.
“What happened to you?” I asked Alyx, reaching out to her face. Gently, I brushed the pad of my finger over the crease between her brows, as if I could uncover the source of her worry. Her skin was cool and stiff under my touch, like she had been turned into a perfect statue.
My question rang out in the lifeless room, but the dead had no answers for me.
The tether in my belly shuddered with anger, pulling me toward Erix who I could sense paced in the bedroom below me. I stood, keeping the Heart cradled to my chest. The dead kept their secrets, but the living still had questions.
I turned and left Alyx and Kelvar to their eternal rest, passing back through the heavy double doors. I paused for just a moment, before easing them shut behind me. Then, I headed down the stairs to my bedchamber two stories below.
Pushing through the door, I found Erix, standing on the balcony, looking out over the desert.
The breeze rustled his curls, but otherwise he was preternaturally still.
If not for the lines of tension in his exposed forearm and the tendons of his neck, I might have thought he was relaxed and enjoying the beauty of the desert—the sands stained various shades of dusty lilac by the shadows cast by the dunes as the sun journeyed toward the horizon.
Carefully, I laid the two pieces of the Heart on the dressing table and stared down on them.
There was a weight, like a horse standing on my chest, as I watched them as if I could will the Heart into wholeness.
Disappointment made my eyes burn, and a sense of impending doom crawled up my spine.
I needed to feel like I could do something—anything to fix this situation.
But I was as helpless as I had been alone at my oasis, even though I now commanded the whole city.
“What now?” Erix asked without looking at me.
I jerked my head up, his voice pulling me from my spiraling thoughts, and considered him.
Dust was caked into his dark hair and coated his skin.
His complexion wasn’t as pale as it had once been, getting more sunlight as he spent more and more days without the barrier of his mask.
We had headed straight to the tower after returning to the city, and black blood still splattered my clothing after the confrontation with the tricrith.
I would weather this defeat like every defeat I had endured in exile—by continuing to survive. By continuing to do what I must to keep going when the world kept ending around me.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I said.
Erix’s mask of despair was cracked by a look of confusion. “A bath?”
I shrugged, the practicality of the thought finally tearing me from my feelings of despair. “It may not fix the Heart, but it will at least get me clean.”
“How can you focus on being clean right now?” he asked.
My lips quirked in a sad smile. “It’s survival. When the future weighed too heavily on me at my oasis, the only way I made it through was by focusing on the task immediately before me: my next hunt or finding shelter.”
“You’re stronger than I,” Erix admitted.
“Maybe not,” I considered. “You’ve come this far carrying the weight of the whole desert on your back, never putting it down.”
Erix huffed and looked back out over the desert. With a heavy sigh, I turned away and walked to the door, quickly, I descended a flight of stairs to find the small room where Adette lived. As soon as I knocked, it swung open.
“Yes?” Adette looked hopeful as she answered the door. I rarely had requests for her, and I got the sense this made the times I asked her for assistance an exciting occasion.
“Do you think you could fill a bath for me?” I asked.
She looked me up and down, taking in the utter mess of my appearance. “Of course.” She nodded but hesitated .
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
She bit her lip, worrying it with her teeth. “The General from Doran,” she started. “He came to find you while you were out.”
I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to rub my temples with my fingers.
“Did he say anything?”
Adette shook her head, toying with the frayed edge of her sash. “I found him on the stairs. I don’t know how he got there, but he told me to tell you that he needed to speak with you… something about needing to hear him out before you proceeded with the wedding.”
I peeled my eyes open and steeled myself with a deep breath in through my nose. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow morning.”
General Warrick and I knew where we stood with each other. Allying with Prince Calix would make an enemy of his nation, but hunger was a foe that had already breached the walls of Kelvadan. He would not change my mind. He was likely just trying to intimidate me into backing out, one last time.
Adette nodded. “Then I’ll prepare your bath.” She hurried past me toward the stairs.
I followed her up and back into my room.
If she was surprised to see Erix still standing on the balcony, she didn’t say anything.
After tending to my rooms for weeks—finding leftover articles of clothing and sleeping just a story below me—his regular presence was no longer a secret to her.
Until now, though, I had maintained some level of pretense, dismissing her for the night before he arrived so they never crossed paths.
Completely ignoring his presence, Adette dragged a tub from the side of the room to the center.
Then she scurried from the room before returning with a bucket of gently steaming water.
While I had always chosen to bathe in the stone room with the cool waterfall on the same level as the room where she stayed, it had appeared that Queen Ginevra had occasionally liked to indulge in a soak and had a hearth where water could be heated for a bath.
As Adette worked, slowly filling the tub, I rejoined Erix on the balcony.
“The temple at the edge of the ocean,” he started without preamble. “The altar was cracked—blackened as if it had been struck by lightning. Did stealing the Heart break it? ”
I chewed my lips, considering. As I did, the sound of fluttering wings drifted on the air.
Zephyr appeared, gliding over the roofs of the city toward the top of the palace.
He landed on the railing between us and let out a light caw.
Absently, Erix reached out to stroke the smooth feathers on his head.
Someone cleared their throat behind us, and I turned. Adette stood next to a steaming tub, her hands folded before her. “Do you need anything else?”
I managed a small smile. “No. Thank you.”
Adette tapped her knuckles to her temple before shuffling from the room.
As Erix continued to pet Zephyr, a contemplative look on his face and a downturn to the corners of his lips, I approached the bath.
A fragrant, herbal scent laced the steam, and I breathed deeply before raising my brows in appreciation.
Adette must have added some concoction to it to make it smell so luxurious.
My fingers moved to my sash, picking at the tie until it released, letting my vest fall open.
I groaned as I peeled the fabric off, so dirty I feared it might take my skin with it.
Once my pants and tunic joined my vest in a dusty pile on the floor, I stepped over the edge of the tub.
With a deep sigh of relief, I sank into the water, sliding down until it was almost up to my chin.
At the sloshing noise, Erix turned away from the edge of the balcony. Seeing me in the bath he drifted back into the room toward the foot of the bed. As he did, I rubbed at my arms, finding my skin becoming remarkably itchy as the dust sloughed off.
Erix stopped, cocking his head as his gaze caught on something behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see the broken Heart laying on the vanity. He stepped over to it before hesitantly reaching out to the glimmering red stone.