Page 102 of Crown of the Dunes

I sighed and scrubbed my sleeve over my face, finally dashing away the tear tracks that stained my skin.

“Come on.” Aderyn removed her hand from my shoulder and wheeled her horse around. “Why don’t we get you cleaned up. Tonight, it can be the end, and tomorrow, we will get on our feet and fight again.”

Aderyn glanced up from the scroll she was reading and frowned at me where I sat sprawled at the foot of my bed. The dirk I had been trying to balance tip first on my finger fell to the mattress, crinkling the pile of papers strewn there.

“As captain of the Kelvadan riders, it’s my job to protect the queen,” she observed. “That is infinitely more difficult when the queen is the one who seems intent on cutting off her own fingers.”

I shrugged, but I put the knife aside. “I saw a clansman do it once, and I was always jealous.”

She sighed in exasperation before handing me the scroll she was holding. “This one needs your signature.”

I took it, although I wrinkled my nose in distaste. It was just for show, though. In reality, I was grateful that she had agreed to sit with me in my room. After the disaster in the throne room this afternoon, I was not ready to face the archons and the people again. Neither was I ready to sit alone with my thoughts.

Neither of us had addressed the dark storm clouds that hung over us; tomorrow, I would have to tell the archons I would accept Prince Calix’s proposal of marriage. At the thought, a deep ache of sadness settled over me, punctuated by sparks of anger that it had come to this—that I had no other alternatives. We still didn’t know how to get to the Heart, and I could not let Kelvadan starve. The only balm to my pain was that Calix would send word of my agreement to his father, and our people would have grain.

My gaze jumped involuntarily to the small table next to my bed, the light of the lamp Aderyn read by shining off the scarred metal lying there—Erix’s mask. After we had returned from our trip to the clans, he had left it here. Now, it stared at me in judgement, its gaze unavoidable.

Aderyn followed my gaze, and her eyes darkened. She had never mentioned Erix’s nightly visits to me, but it was clear she knew about them. Her brows had only risen a fraction of an inch when she saw the mask, although I hadn’t fully been able to meet her eyes as she spied the dark tunic thrown over the back of a chair that I had been sleeping in. The shoulders were clearly too broad for it to be one of mine, but I couldn’t give up the comforting scent of salt and sandalwood that lulled me to sleep.

Finally, she put the scroll aside and looked at me grimly. “I sent for Neven to join us. I figured we could use the company, and he is going to want to get your opinion on an outfit for the wedding.”

I tried to swallow around the shards of glass lodged in my throat. “I’ll be happy to see him,” I admitted, although my voice was hoarse.

At that moment, both a knock sounded on the door as well as a scuffling on the balcony. Both of us jumped to our feet. In a matter of seconds, the door swung open to reveal Neven with a bolt of sapphire silk over his arm. At the same time, Erix swung over the railing, landing impossibly lightly on the balcony, despite his muscular bulk.

We all froze, and I looked between all of them with wide eyes. Aderyn and Erix appeared to be on speaking terms these days, but I was not sure how much of that was aided by being able to beat on each other with blunt weapons. I would trust all three of the people in this room with my life, but I wasn’t sure how much they might trust each other.

Neven broke the silence. “Aderyn, you didn’t tell me it was a party. I would have brought laka.”

Some of the tension rushed from the room, and Neven shut the door behind him. He and Aderyn began sorting the paper strewn across my bed into piles, but I stood frozen. Erix hovered on the balcony, and as I met his gaze, I saw the hard truth written there.

He knew. Deep in his bones he knew that I was about to agree to marry somebody else. I wanted to find anger in those silver eyes—for him to match my rage at the situation, so hot I thought I could melt the very stone around us.

But instead, his silver eyes were a steely gray. His mask may have lain on the table across the room, but his face was just as hard and expressionless.

“It’s good to see you again,” Neven said over my shoulder.

Erix’s gaze snapped away from mine, and finally he stepped through the archway to the balcony and into the room.

I raised my brows, looking between the two of them. I hadn’t known they had met, but Erix just shrugged. Neven turned to set the pile of scrolls in his hands on the trunk at the foot of my bed, but his gaze caught on the sheaf of papers already there. On the top was a piece that Erix and I had both pored over the past few nights, trying to puzzle out what it might be.

Neven picked up the ripped page of Kelvar’s diary and squinted at the angular handwriting.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Erix hesitated, but Aderyn cut in, “He knows about the blood glass and the Heart.”

“It’s barely worth keeping it a secret anymore, considering we can’t figure out how to get to it anyway. It’s hard to worry about people wanting to steal it for their own power when it doesn’t seem possible to steal it at all,” I muttered.

Erix strode up to Neven and took the paper from his hand. He stared at it with such intensity that I was unsure if he was trying to decipher its meaning or set it on fire.

“Kelvar says we need a substance ‘born of the desert’s rage’, but that is frighteningly vague,” he admitted, a rumble of frustration clear in his tone.

Neven hummed in thought and sat down on my bed next to Aderyn. His gaze caught on the metal mask sitting on the nearby table, and he reached out to it.

I hissed in a breath through my teeth as he picked it up, something about the action feeling like it must be horribly invasive for Erix. The noise made Erix look up from the paper before him, but when he caught sight of Neven turning over the mask in his hands, he only frowned slightly.

“What kind of metal is this made out of?” Neven asked. “I thought it looked like steel, but it seems too light. And too strong.”