Page 94 of Blood of the Sands

“It will have to be.” He sighed, beginning to move around the small space, our tense moment shattered. The sand swished softly as he unrolled his sleeping mat against it. I moved to do the same. “I’m committed to healing the desert, and I won’t let its inhabitants die before we have a chance to set things right.”

I started at his use of the word ‘we’ before realizing he meant himself and Lord Alasdar. For a moment, I wished he didn’t. I just nodded, setting up my own sleeping mat. With a thump, I laid down, staring up at the stained canvas above me with a frown.

“I hate not being able to see the sky,” I admitted.

A shuffling next to me indicated that Erix mirrored my position. Just out of the corner of my vision, I spotted him setting his mask beside him, but I didn’t turn to look. I didn’t want to draw attention to how easily he showed his face around me.

“I have trouble sleeping indoors too,” Erix admitted.

“Why?” We both stared up at the tent, not looking at each other. Somehow, it felt as if words came more easily when I didn’t have to meet those clear eyes that held so much while remaining so closed off.

Erix shifted his weight, and for a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer.

“I have nightmares about being trapped in the rock,” he admitted softly. “Sometimes when I wake up and can’t see the stars, I think I’m still a boy stuck in the room beneath the palace in Kelvadan.”

It was only the third time we’d directly talked about his life in Kelvadan, and I held my breath, not wanting to scare him from saying more. When he didn’t continue, I chanced prompting him.

“The meditation room?”

He let out a humorless snort. “If only it was just for meditation. It also makes a pretty good cell. Sometimes, when I was barely a teenager, I couldn’t keep my power in check. My emotions were just too big. Always too much. It would break things or cause lightning storms like yours. When that happened, my parents would shut me in that room to try to cut me off from the desert and calm me down. It would work sometimes, but the mountain around me…”

He trailed off, but he didn’t need to continue. I had felt it for myself, that oppressive silence. For one as powerful as him, so in tune with the currents of magic running through every inch of the desert, it must have been devastating.

As overwhelming as the feel of the desert in and around me could be, the complete absence of it was akin to losing an arm. It was a sense of loneliness even deeper and more aching than the isolation of my old oasis. I suspected the experience was similar for Erix.

Words came up short when it came to giving him my empathy, but touch was a language he and I were learning to speak together. I inched my hand across the space between us to find his. Warm, callused skin met mine, telling me he’d already taken his gloves off for the night. He jumped, but then interwove his fingers with mine.

“I have a trick for falling asleep inside though,” he admitted.

“Really?”

“Close your eyes and focus on the feel of my magic.”

I did as he asked, finding the threads of his magic with relative ease, some of them still caught up in the currents of my power after meditating together. Gently, he tugged on them, drawing me out of myself until I was floating. I knew I hadn’t completely escaped myself though from the solid warmth of his fingers in the spaces between mine.

Slightly detached from myself as I was, I could feel the phantom of the rapidly cooling night breeze across my face and the vibrations of life that ran through the clansman preparing the encampment around us.

“Like the sun, it’s still out there, even when we can’t see it.”

I squeezed his hand in silent thank you, and after a beat, he squeezed back. I don’t know how long we floated together like that, but when I opened my eyes, the pale light of early dawn filtered in through the tent flap, and his hand still gently clasped mine.

Chapter Thirty-One

Erix

The encampment was no more by the time Keera and I mounted our horses. All the tents had been strapped onto the backs of the remaining horses and only marks in the sand from where they had stood remained. Those too would be dusted away by nightfall.

“Wait until we reach the horizon line, and then ride for Clan Katal as fast as you can,” I instructed the assembled clan.

Keera tapped her brow in deference to Lord Dhara as she nodded her understanding. To my surprise, the lord echoed the gesture back at us. Lords rarely made such gestures to others. I bowed my head respectfully.

Without another word, we set out in the direction the rider had indicated the night before. Once we were out of earshot, Keera spoke.

“Do we have a plan for attacking the lava wyrm?” she asked.

“I may be skilled in combat, but even I’m not stupid enough to go into a fight with a creature of legend unprepared.”

“Thanks for cluing me in,” Keera quipped.