Page 21

Eleven

KURAI

W e hadn’t made it far from the caves when the wind picked up. The storm caught us shortly after sunrise. The sun heated the sand, turning the desert into a scorching frying pan.

Ciana’s breathing grew more laborious. I felt her thirst, her hunger, and her exhaustion through my tendrils. They mixed with my own, making every step a strain.

My body was far stronger than hers. My life force was far more resilient. And that kept us both alive and moving. If I retrieved my tendrils, I feared she’d pass out. But even with me sharing my strength with her, she was rapidly deteriorating.

Usually chatty, even when tired and hungry, Ciana hadn’t said a word for the past hour. The numbness of her emotions terrified me. It was deeper than exhaustion. It rivaled the numbness of death.

We weren’t far from our new destination now. The black, tall rocks, common in the area of the temple, peppered the desert around us.

I had no idea what or who waited for us at the temple. The guards might have come and left. Or they could’ve stayed to wait for me in case I returned.

If my calculations were correct, the last portal would’ve opened a day ago. The humans from Prince Rha’s sarai might have been sent off to their world by now, unless something went wrong. But I couldn’t bring myself to care about any other humans but the one I held in my arms.

Ciana needed help. And the temple was the closest place where I could get it for her.

The wind raised sheets of sand up into the air. Its blasts pushed at me from all directions. The storm was relentless and growing in strength, and it wasn’t even noon yet. It’d get much worse as the day progressed. I had to find a shelter or risked having us buried alive in the sand.

I headed for a cluster of rocks, then climbed between them, and sat on the ground with my back leaning against a rock, placing Ciana on my lap.

“We’ll wait out the storm here,” I said, unsure if she even heard me.

The dense sand clouds blocked the scorching sunlight. It didn’t make the day any cooler, but my skin didn’t feel like it was burning alive when I removed the top layer of my garment from my head, then arranged it around us to shield us from the wind the best I could.

“Kurai…” she exhaled, rolling her head on my shoulder.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

She pressed her face to the side of my neck, and a wave of her tenderness flooded me through my tendrils.

Storm sand blasted the rocks at our backs.

But I barely felt it now, embraced by the warmth of her affection.

I hugged her shoulders, drawing her closer to me.

I wasn’t planning to fall asleep, but exhaustion had worn me down, and Ciana’s measured breathing eventually lured me to sleep.

Something heavy slapped against my face, waking me up. The fabric that I had tied to the rock for shelter gave in under the weight of the accumulated sand. Our mini shelter collapsed, falling on my head.

“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, lifting the fabric off my face and checking on Ciana.

She stirred against my chest.

“Shhh, sleep. It’s too early still,” I soothed her.

The storm raged full force. Our legs had been buried in the sand completely.

It piled up against my side too, all the way up to my shoulder.

But the rocks protected us from the worst. Under the fabric of our shelter, I curled my body over Ciana, keeping her safe.

But through my tendrils, I felt her growing weaker with every laborious breath she took.

She smiled, finding my hand. As life was slowly trickling out of her, she tried to encourage me , squeezing my hand gently.

“You don’t have to hide behind a smile for me,” I said, running a thumb over her dry lips. “I can feel your sadness. I know how excruciatingly tired you are and how much you just want to go to sleep.”

If she fell asleep again, she might not wake up, I realized, with a sharp stab of anguish.

“I think I’ve outlived my fear, Kurai.” Her voice sounded like a rustle of tall grass in a breeze or sand blowing over a dune.

“I’m not even afraid of death. I’ve experienced it all in life.

Because of this harness, I’ve felt every emotion under the sun.

I have no regrets, whatever happens. Except for one… It really hurts leaving you.”

Her longing tightened around my heart like a noose. My throat closed with sorrow, and my eyes burned with tears that my body had no moisture to produce.

“No… No, Ciana.” I held her closer. “Don’t say it like this…”

Like this was already our goodbye.

“I wish I’d kissed you more often.” Her whisper caressed my skin, tangling in my hair above my temple.

“I wish I kissed you ‘like lovers do.’ I wish I did more with you, just like we both wanted, without fear or doubt. It kills me now that I may never know what it’s like to be with someone like you. ”

“With someone like me?” I echoed. “A shadow fae?”

“No, silly.” She chuckled softly, but it turned into a cough in her dry throat. “With a man who cares.”

Through our connection, her affection swept me. It cradled my heart in a special kind of warmth and sweetness that I’d never known before her.

Regret flooded me, too, regret for everything we had missed because of her fear or my misconceptions. All those obstacles that once seemed impenetrable and important suddenly felt insignificant and fleeting in the face of vastness and permanence of death.

Her fingers trembled when she lifted her hand, then slid it to the back of my neck to hug me.

I kissed her cheek, her eyes, and her lips.

I covered her face with light careful kisses like a brush of a moth wing.

But it came with a tsunami of devastating emotions.

Her longing was so strong, it twisted my insides.

Desire flared through my blood. It wasn’t painful, like the shadow fae’s mating fever, but warm and tender, with the effervescence of excitement pebbling my skin. And with a need for more…for something I couldn’t name but wanted so intensely.

The storm kept raging all around us, but a far bigger calamity built inside me. I pressed my forehead to her temple, searching for some sense in the hurricane of feelings spinning inside me.

She should be scared and miserable. She was tired, thirsty, and hungry, facing a very real death in the desert. But I felt tenderness and affection in her. I felt desire. And even joy.

Ever since I’d connected my tendrils to Ciana to save her life, I’d subconsciously hoped that as long as I felt no human joy, my vows as the Joy Guardian weren’t broken. I thought there couldn't possibly be any joy while we went through the trials of the desert.

But the joy had always been there. It was the pure elation of our connection. Regardless of what I told myself or of what I wished to believe, I tasted human joy .

I broke my vow.

I’d sinned.

And I continued sinning every moment my tendrils remained attached to her emotions, but to remove them would probably kill her at this point. She needed my magic to survive. And I needed her more than ever.

I needed her light, her humor, and her joy. I needed her to be happy because this world would truly be a dark place without Ciana’s light in it.

I waited for the curse to strike me.

Promise breakers died a slow, torturous death, gradually losing their mind to the curse. But no pain struck me. No madness descended upon me. The world around me hadn’t changed.

The wind still slammed with the ferocity of a wild beast against the rocks of our shelter. The sand pressed heavily on me from all sides. And in my arms, the woman who had become my world was slowly slipping away.

“We’re going to make it.” I got up, taking her with me. “We’re going to have a chance to kiss as much as we want. We’re going to have it all, my treasure. Because you deserve it all.”

I anxiously listened to her senses, but I hardly felt anything. It was like her sensations had already been muted by the eternal darkness of the afterlife. And I had to reclaim her.

I needed to take her out of the desert, even if it killed me.

In the storm where the ground merged with the sky in a dark, endless twister, luck led me to the temple rather than my navigational skills. When the black walls of the temple finally emerged from the wind, I felt just as surprised as relieved.

“We made it, Ciana,” I whispered to her while shoving the door open with my foot.

The front room was empty. No one found refuge from the storm here today. Ciana and I were the only refugees in these walls with the comforting words of the First Priestess of Joy carved into the rock above the inner doors:

“Don’t be afraid of the dawn. After a storm always comes peace.”

“I’ll need to shift you a little, sweetheart,” I told Ciana, pressing her torso to my chest with one arm to free my other hand. “I need to unlock these.”

She didn’t reply. Didn’t move. Her eyes remained closed. Only from the faint pulsing of life through my tendrils could I still tell she was alive.

The inner doors of the temple remained locked through the day and most of the night. Only the Joy Guardians had the spell to unlock them. I pressed my fingers to the golden protrusions that decorated the stone in a pattern of the spell and whispered the words that unlocked them.

Magic shimmered from under my fingers, spreading along the lines of gold and warming the stone. The locks clinked, pulling on the chains inside, and the doors opened.

“Here we are,” I murmured to Ciana, praying I wasn’t too late.

The golden glow of the Source lit the main room of the temple, warm and welcoming like always. But I had no time to admire it. The barbed wire of worry tightened around my chest, adding urgency to my weary stride as I carried Ciana across the main room.

Water.

She needed water.

I hurried down the stairs that were hidden from view of the general public behind a tall black screen. The stairs led to the floor underground with the sleep chambers and the bathing pool of the Joy Guardians.

“Is anybody here?” I called into the empty space of the lower floor.

No one answered, and I had no time to ponder why. Tossing my bag aside, I marched toward the round pool in the middle of the open area. The water in the pool was warm, but a chilled drinking fountain trickled in the wide bowl in the middle, connected to the floor by a stone path.

My throat spasmed at the sound of water. Thirst had crippled my body for so long, I had to restrain my steps, lest I run headfirst into the pool.

Without wasting any time, I waded into the water, fully dressed as I was. Dipping my hand into the bowl of cool water from the drinking fountain, I sprinkled some on Ciana’s face.

“Wake up, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Please, wake up.” I slid my wet finger along her chapped lips. “We have water. As much as you can drink.”

It hurt to move my tongue in my dry mouth. Scooping water with my hand, I drank, hoping that as my thirst diminished, my renewed strength would filter to her through my tendrils too.

Finally, her lips moved.

“Water…” A barely there whisper fluttered on her breath.

“Yes, my darling. We have water. Drink, please.”

I sat on the stone path with Ciana on my lap and cradled her head in the crook of my elbow.

Cupping more water from the fountain, I dripped some on her mouth.

She opened it for me eagerly. Her eyelids fluttered to life.

I reached over to grab a silver cup from the row of them lined up on the ledge of the fountain for the Joy Guardians to drink.

“Here, Ciana.” I filled the cup and brought it to her mouth, shifting her up while supporting her shoulders.

She drank too fast with the water escaping her lips and dripping down her chin and throat, until she coughed, then laughed, dropping her head to my shoulder.

“Oh, blessed be the Joy,” I prayed under my breath. She was alive. Relief rushed me in a trembling wave. I stroked her braids, soothing her. “It’s all right. There’s more water than you or I could ever drink. There is no rush.”

Her breathing became jerky, and a shudder ran through her body. She was crying .

“Ciana?” I pressed my lips to her temple, listening to her emotions through my tendrils, but her feelings were jumbled. Her anxious worry proved impossible to untangle from her relief, and her peace from her sorrow.

“We’re safe here,” I comforted, gently stroking her back and kissing her hair.

She lifted her head. “Where is here? Where are we?”

“The Temple of the First Priestess of Joy. That’s where I live.” Pride rushed me when I said the name of the place that had been my home for a hundred years now.

She looked around, quickly taking in the black rock walls with the carved niches of the Joy Guardians’ bed chambers and the tiled central area with the pool and the drinking fountain.

This floor was modest compared to the hall above with the Source of Joy.

General public never came down here. And there was a separate passage with another staircase to access our study room with the library and archives.

For as long as I remembered, only the Joy Guardians who lived in the temple had been here.

“It’s…nice,” she commented distractingly, looking a little disoriented. The drinking cup on the ledge of the fountain caught her attention, and she licked her lips, focusing on it intently. “May I have some more water? Please?”

“Of course.” I hurried to refill the cup before giving it to her.

“Thank you.” She emptied it in a few hungry gulps, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand with an apologetic smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever drink my fill now.”

It thrilled me to see the light of life returning to her eyes.

“Drink as much as you want, Ciana.” I refilled her cup again, then drank one myself too.

A thirst like we’d endured was a torture impossible to forget. I would remember it for as long as I lived.

She stared at me with her dark, intense eyes.

“I don’t remember getting here. I thought I was going to die out there, in the wind and sand. Kurai…” She twined her arms ar ound my neck. Her gaze trapped mine. “You saved me. You carried me all the way here, didn’t you? Thank you.”

She drew me into a tight hug. The warmth of her gratitude reached to me through my tendrils, wrapping my heart in a soft blanket of pure joy.

I saved her. I carried her for hours through the wind, sand, and heat. It would’ve been easy to let the storm do the job that I’d failed to do, to let it kill a human and eliminate the threat to the Source of Joy.

Instead, I fought for her survival with every drop of strength left in my body. Through my tendrils, I knew she wasn’t ready to die, and I saved her. I’d do it again.

I’d do anything to keep Ciana safe.