Page 9 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

“Don’t call him that,” I gritted out between my teeth.

Sadness creeped into the queen’s eyes, but her posture did not soften.

“I call him that because that’s what he is choosing to be.

I failed my son. I will not fail my people.

I will not leave this city vulnerable because I can’t face the fact that I shattered my son so thoroughly that he wants to watch his home crumble to the ground. ”

“He doesn’t want that,” I said, but my voice was thin and reedy.

Even as I said it, a sickening doubt twisted in my stomach.

There were things about Erix I knew for certain—that he cared for the desert.

That he would destroy himself to set things right.

That he was a man with a living, beating heart under the impenetrable metal mask.

But even as I had come to believe that we fought on the same side—that we could turn away from Lord Alasdar and restore the Heart ourselves—he had remained adamant in his hatred of Kelvadan.

“If he had wanted to make peace, he would have sent word by now. You don’t know him like I do,” the queen insisted, although her tone was gentle.

I wanted to argue. I did. That his magic had flowed so certainly inside mine that I was sure we were one and the same. But looking into Queen Ginevra’s regal gaze, doubt overcame me.

It wasn’t doubt that what Erix and I had shared was real, but a horrid realization that it might not be enough to stop the enmity between Kelvadan and the clans.

Even worse was the insidious uncertainty that what Erix and I had shared would be enough to bring him back to me.

This conflict was bigger than both of us—as vast and complicated as the desert herself, with every player intertwined in an incomprehensible web of life and death.

I bared my teeth, frustrated .

“Maybe you don’t know him.” A growl worked its way into my tone as my anger started to bubble past the stopper in my throat.

A shutter came down in the queen’s eyes. “Even if that were true, it wouldn’t stop me from doing whatever it takes to protect this city from the man my son has chosen to become.”

I was on my feet, a sudden surge in the flow of my magic driving me to stand, despite the weakness in my muscles.

“Is it a choice to have your family—your own parents—be afraid of you? Is it really a choice between making your own path and staying with people who would drug you instead of accepting what you are—poison him like you poisoned yourself?”

My knees trembled, but I refused to let them buckle, my knuckles white on the handle of my cane. The queen’s mouth opened in shock, and she took a shaky breath like she was about to say something.

I turned toward the door before she could and stormed away as forcefully as I was able with my limp.

Queen Ginevra didn’t call after me or try to prevent me from leaving. I grimaced as I passed under the open arch leading me back into the stone confines of the palace, but I was unwilling to stay in her presence any longer just for the pleasure of being outside.

I had struggled down one flight of winding stairs before the bubbling rage in me abated enough for me to think about where I was going. I paused on the landing, finding myself unchaperoned in the palace for the first time since my injuries.

If Aderyn were here, she would likely encourage me to return to my bed and recover from my outing.

But she wasn’t here, and I could ignore her well-meaning advice.

Instantly my mind turned to the stables. If I couldn’t be out under the open sky, at least I could be among creatures who carried a hint of the desert’s wildness within them. After all, a horse was freedom in the Ballan Desert.

Before I limped down the first step, my heart sank.

Daiti would not be there. My golden warhorse had been at the clans’ encampment when Aderyn stole me away on her own mount. I hoped Erix was taking care of him—and that Daiti was letting him do so without leaving too many bites and bruises.

I trusted Erix to take care of my mount more than I trusted him not to use the army at his command to reduce Kelvadan to dust. Even in his rage, he would draw the line at mistreating a horse.

But the anger I had felt when we meditated together would not be easily assuaged.

I knew because it was as hot and potent as the rage that bubbled in my own gut at my clan—at my parents—for leaving me to die when I was just a girl.

He wanted this city destroyed to dust—saw its destruction as the only way to calm that fiery fury within him—and I could not fault him for that, even if it cut me to the core to think that the bond between us might not be enough to calm that urge. My eyes burned and my throat tightened.

I sighed heavily, leaning one shoulder against the stone wall of the landing and looking out of the small square window that let in the morning light.

The noises of the city below beginning the day—voices of citizens at stalls haggling for supplies and the muted clash of blunted sabers as the Kelvadan riders trained—drifted distantly on the air. My stomach growled at the scent of baking bread that wafted up from the palace kitchen below.

To my surprise, the sounds and scents of life being lived comforted me, dulling the sharp ache of my sadness and anger.

As much as city life had overwhelmed me when I first arrived in Kelvadan, it was a far cry from the isolation of exile.

Now, it soothed me. It served as a reminder of the refuge this city had been, both in my mind and in reality, when I was alone at my oasis.

It might not offer the freedom of the open desert, but the camaraderie of its inhabitants was an answering call to my yearning to belong somewhere.

In the flash of rage that possessed me to turn my back on the queen, I had the fleeting thought that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to let Erix and the clans destroy this city.

But I knew I couldn’t let it come to that.

His anger at his mother had echoed my anger to my own parents in a way that made my blood sing for destruction, but Kelvadan was not the target of my anger. It was a source of hope.

I only survived a decade in exile because the hope of Kelvadan burned like a beacon in my mind. I knew too sharply the agony of abandonment—first by my parents, and now by Erix. I would not abandon the city that offered me sanctuary.

I didn’t register the echoing sound of footsteps climbing the stone stairs until they were nearly upon me. I pushed from the wall where I leaned my weight, prepared to explain to Aderyn that I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the infirmary yet.

Instead, a much taller figure than Aderyn rounded the corner, and I reared back in surprise. As I shifted my weight inadvertently onto my bad leg, I hissed sharply at the lightning bolt of pain it caused. I threw my hand out to catch the window frame to keep my leg from buckling under my weight.

The stranger reached out a hand to grab my forearm and steady me. The moment his skin touched mine, I flinched. I had thought the constant touch of the healers had purged that habit from me, but my gut lurched unpleasantly at the human contact.

I looked up to apologize, only for my voice to catch in my throat at the expression on the stranger’s face.

His appearance was strange, skin pale but unfreckled, with a shock of straight copper hair fallen across his forehead.

His square jaw was offset by a ragged scar across one cheek, as if his skin had been ripped by a claw.

What made my voice catch in my throat, though, was the hardness in his gray eyes.

Apparently unperturbed by my staring, his gaze swept up and down my form, pausing on my scars and the cane in my hand. My grip tightened on it, fleetingly wishing it were my saber instead.

I cleared my throat in discomfort, and the moment shattered.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t realize anybody would be on these stairs.” His words were not unfriendly, but the iciness of his gaze still unnerved me.

“Why are you here?” I asked before I could realize how rude it sounded. The only rooms above this landing were the queen’s quarters, the library, and Alyx’s tomb.

One corner of his mouth twitched, as if he were tempted to sneer but had controlled the expression. “Who are you to ask?”

“I’m Keera. I’m”—I struggled for one moment before the rest spilled out of me—“a rider of Kelvadan. ”

His eyes narrowed, but he did not respond.

I was saved from the crawling feeling of my skin under his scrutiny by a clatter on the stairs behind him.

“General Warrick, is that you?” an unfamiliar voice called.

A moment later, another man rounded the corner, stopping on the step below the landing as he found the other stranger and I still facing off in the small space.

“There you are, Warrick. We are supposed to be meeting with the Archon of Trade, but he wouldn’t start without you.” He paused as his gaze jumped to me, and he smiled. “It would seem you made a friend, though.”

I snapped my mouth shut, realizing it was hanging open as I took in his windswept brown hair and neat beard.

While he was tanned like he spent much of his time in the sun, the tailored jacket, worn over a white shirt—the formal style of which was at odds with how far it was unlaced—was unlike any I had seen in the Ballan Desert.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I jumped, realizing I still hadn’t spoken. “Sorry. You two just surprised me.”

His gaze traveled up and down my body, but the furrow between his brow seemed concerned instead of appraising like the other man’s.

The gaze of the first man had made me feel vulnerable, but I did not fear this man seeing my scars.

His eyes lingered on the cane clutched in my hand and the bare side of my head.

“You’re the one they’re all talking about,” he said.

I shrank back at the idea of so many people speaking of me, wondering what they might be saying.