Page 103 of Crown of the Dunes

“Oh.” Erix’s eyes went wide, as if nobody had ever asked him such a thing. I certainly hadn’t, spending most of my questions on why he wore it. “It is steel, but Lord Alasdar knew ways of crafting things to imbue them with the magic of the desert. I guess I know how he learned now.” He glanced down at the stolen pages of Kelvar’s journal, and his lips twisted in a scowl. “That mask was tempered with my own blood. The process made it remarkably durable, and resistant to both heat and cold.”

My breath caught at his casual mention of another one of Lord Alasdar’s cruelties—bleeding Erix to make the device of his torture nearly indestructible. Aderyn too blanched where she stood next to Neven, making the black line on her head stand out even more starkly.

Neven’s eyebrows just climbed higher on his forehead. His long, nimble fingers traced the jagged groove now gouged into the face. “But this… this damage was done by the tricrith’s venom?”

“Yes,” Erix answered. “It’s the first thing to ever…”

My eyes widened at the same moment his did, and our gazes locked across the room.

Neven vocalized my racing thoughts, a few beats ahead of me in logic. “This material was strengthened by blood, but the venom could undo it. The tricrith is a creature of legend.”

“Born of the desert’s fury,” Erix finished.

“The tricrith from the funeral—”

“We burned it,” Aderyn cut me off, sounding glum.

Some of the excited energy drained from the room. My shoulders slumped at the sudden loss of momentum—another dead end in our search.

“I can find another,” Erix said, his jaw tight and a dark glimmer of determination in his eyes. “We just need to be sure the venom is truly what we need.”

“How are we supposed to test that?” I asked.

Erix’s brow furrowed. Then he turned on his heel and stalked from the room without a single word. The three of us left exchanged confused looks. Then, we hurried after him. By the time I pushed through the door from my bedroom, Erix was already halfway up the flight of spiraling stairs to the library and Alyx’s tomb beyond.

We trailed him into the library where he immediately began shuffling through scrolls and books.

“There is a bestiary in here that describes many of the creatures from before the desert was crossed. I remember being fascinated with it as a child,” he explained. With a triumphant grunt, he held up a thick tome, bound in green leather and embossed with gold letters. He laid it on the table and began flipping through it.

I drifted closer to look over his shoulder, only to see that the binding was not in fact leather, but snakeskin. A small shudder danced up my spine, but Erix didn’t seem concerned. He jabbed a finger at the page before him.

“There,” he said triumphantly. “This is how I knew what the tricrith and the gravehawk were.”

Aderyn and Neven hovered over his other shoulder and read from the page. “Any who are injected with the tricrith’s venom die a horrible death, as their blood is boiled inside their veins. It destroys all blood on contact and is the only substance known in the Ballan Desert to weaken blood glass.”

“Sands,” I breathed. “We found it.”

Erix looked up from the bestiary and met my gaze. The storm clouds that had gathered in my mind since hearing that the crops had died seemed slightly further away. If the Heart was restored, the herds would return, and crops would flourish again. The people of Kelvadan would be saved from starvation, even without Viltov’s grain.

The flinty hardness in Erix’s eyes put a stopper on the spring of hope bubbling inside me.

“The trouble will be getting our hands on it,” he said.

My heart plummeted, as we all stood in apprehensive silence.

I sighed heavily. “I suppose it’s time we hunted another desert horror.”

The moonlight shone off Erix’s curls as he stood on the balcony with his back to me. Aderyn and Neven had headed home for the night, leaving the two of us alone. The breeze drifting in through the arched opening to where I sat on my bed was gentle and cool. It would be easily mistaken for a pleasant evening, if not for the tense set of Erix’s shoulder and the waves of barely contained anger rushing down the bond between us.

It felt like the time his temper had nearly caused me to wound Aderyn with a training saber, wresting my own magic from my control, but amplified. Usually, reaching out to touch him would calm the storm dancing under his skin—it had stopped a sandstorm in its tracks when we traveled the desert—but tonight I feared it would make things worse.

“We did—You did everything you could,” I murmured. It seemed like an empty sentiment, but it was true. For the past two weeks, Erix had barely made it onto my balcony before collapsing headfirst on the bed in exhaustion.

“And somehow, it only managed to make everything worse,” Erix said, not looking at me. His tone was heavy and dangerous—as sharp as the saber he cared for every night. “Just like everything I’ve ever tried to accomplish. When I pledged myself to saving this desert, I became a weapon for a mad man. Even now the clans I helped him conquer threaten war against the ones I swore to serve. I am a weapon, made only to hurt, and I only cut deeper when I try to help.”

I pushed to my feet and walked up behind him. He didn’t turn, but I wrapped my arms around him and rested my forehead between his shoulder blades. A shudder ran through him, so small that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been pressed against him, and I breathed in his salt and sandalwood scent. The dust that clung to his clothes mixed with it in an earthy, comforting combination.

“If we restore the Heart, the famine will abate,” I spoke into his back, but a rumble in his chest told me he heard me. “We’re so close to getting it. If the herds of oryx come back and we can make peace with the clans, the riders will be able to hunt for enough meat to make up for the lost grain.”