Page 56 of Blood of the Sands

I chewed my tongue before answering. The truth was, I had been watching her. I planned to stay in my tent and avoid the celebrations altogether, but something urgent in the beat of the drums had driven me out—pulled me toward the revelry at the center of the encampment. Lurking in the shadows, I watched the twirl of dancing bodies and breathed in the air fragrant with woodsmoke and spiced food—wishing for the clean smell of hot earth and horseflesh.

My gaze had snapped to Keera as soon as she entered the crowd of revelers, and the magic within me twitched as she began to sway. The moment the diplomat pressed her against him, I was weaving through the dancers toward where they stood. It must have been the swell of her magic, pulling me inexorably toward its source.

Keera began to turn to look at me, but I tightened my grip on the back of her neck to stop her, realizing that she was waiting for an answer. Even though she couldn’t see my face, I oddly didn’t want the weight of her stare.

“It’s hard not to feel your lack of control.” My words came out unusually harsh, as if I spat them out with great disgust.

Keera stiffened. “If you just came to insult me then…” She began to step away.

“You need help,” I cut in before I could stop myself. “I—I could help.”

“Your help is the last thing I need.” Before any more unwise words could tumble from my mouth, she stormed off through the dancers, not stopping as she reached the edges of the celebration but continuing on toward the gates of the city.

My attention returned toward the celebration around me. I realized now that I stood at near the center of what served as the dancefloor, the rhythmic movement continuing around me and giving me a slight berth as I stood stock still. I was a dark rock in the bubbling of a spring, blocking its cheerful flow.

I turned and stalked back to my tent, breathing heavily through my nose. It had been unwise to go to the party, and even less well thought out to offer Keera my help. She stood between me and the Champion’s circlet—the fall of Kelvadan—and would be eliminated like every obstacle that faced me.

Still, the more I thought on it, the less I regretted my offer. I couldn’t afford a slip in my restraint now. Even when I had been leagues away, her turmoil had threatened my control, tugging at the strings of madness that always hovered at the edges of my awareness. This close, combined with the unease from sleeping in the shadow of Kelvadan, the uncontrolled waves of her magic threatened my very sanity.

The encampment at my back was quiet, everybody still asleep after the dancing and feasting had lasted well into the night. While food for many of the clans had been scarce recently, the yield of the opening hunt had provided ample meat. Despite the sleepiness of the clans and the city behind it, the desert was awake, and I let the feeling of the hidden life stretching beyond the horizon fill my bones.

I sat on the ridge of a dune a way out from the encampment, the sun just a threat of light below the horizon while the sliver of moon shown bright overhead. I always rose before dawn, but I had been unable to sleep long under the canvas roof of my tent and ventured out even earlier than usual. Zephyr fluttered back from wherever he had been hunting, landing at my side and pecking at the lizard he’d caught himself. I watched him with envy, wishing I too could fly away as I wished.

The shifting and squeaking of sand underfoot signaled somebody’s approach from the encampment, but I did not turn. I knew it was Keera, and wondered for a moment how she knew where I was, but concluded quickly it was the same way I could identify her footsteps at this distance in the dark. After all, who else would be coming to see the Viper in the dark of night? And surely nobody else pulsed so strongly with power that the strings at the base of my skull tugged insistently in response.

Her feet swished quietly over the sand as she approached, stopping beside me. I didn’t look up, keeping my arms folded loosely across my knees. She paused for a moment before sitting off to the side, mirroring my position as she too gazed at the horizon. Out of the corner of my mask, I could just spot her toes digging into the sand, apparently having walked out here barefoot. She sat far enough away that several more people could have fit between us, and it struck me as painfully close as well as awkwardly distant.

“Why?”

I stayed silent. She could have been asking me any sort of question, but I knew she was asking about my offer to help her. If she was here though, sneaking out of her comfortable bed somewhere in Kelvadan, I knew she was considering it for the same inscrutable reason I had offered. Ever since I happened upon her in the wilds, we were like two hawks circling above our prey, encountering each other at every turn, but inexorably drawn to the same target.

She huffed at my lack of answer. “Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” I said, voice low with warning. “But I’d bet whatever the queen is trying to teach you is only making your situation worse.”

It was an educated guess, but the long pause before Keera responded confirmed my suspicions. Her power would not have escaped the queen’s notice and could likely be credited with her finding a place in Kelvadan so quickly, but I did not envy her. I could still taste the lyra leaf tea on my tongue sometimes, and in the darkest hours of the night, I felt the weight of the mountains pushing in around me, an oppressive silence filling my mind as I was cut off from the desert. The silence disturbed me even more than the hum that made me want to tear my skull open to let it out.

“Wouldn’t it be to your advantage for your adversary to not be able to control their magic?” she asked.

“Maybe once I show you the truth of the power of you wield, you won’t be my adversary anymore.”

“Unlikely,” she shot back without hesitation.

“Besides,” I started, chancing a glance over at her, as if I could see the magic dancing off her skin instead of feeling it with the odd sense that lived at the nape of my neck, “you’re throwing off so much turmoil that I can feel it halfway across the desert. It makes it hard to get anything done.”

“How do you know it’s from me and not your own turmoil?”

I barked out a humorless laugh, and Keera jumped at the noise.

“I’ve become familiar enough with the feeling of my own madness over the years to know that this is not mine. At first, I thought I was losing control, but after tonight, I’m sure you were the source of the disturbance.”

Keera turned to look at me too, narrowed eyes glinting in the moonlight. “You’re just telling me this so I’ll agree to whatever trap you’ve concocted.”

“Today you lost control when you were crowded in a large group. Maybe it has happened like that before,” I mused out loud. “It was at the Kelvadan festival, wasn’t it? I was sitting in my tent that night and I could feel it all the way at Clan Katal’s encampment.”

Keera’s shoulders slumped, and I knew I was right. I was glad, and yet somehow wished I wasn’t.

“Fine.”