Page 108 of Crown of the Dunes

I stared at him. Easy was a concept that seemed ephemeral and laughable in the Ballan Desert, but something about his promise was enticing. The desert was difficult, restoring the Heart was difficult—Erix was difficult. None of the things I desired had ever been easy, but something about the way Calix suggested it was enticing. After so much struggle, perhaps I could let just one thing be easy.

“That might make me happy,” I admitted.

“Happy enough to dance with me?” he asked.

I laughed. “Of course.”

He took my hand and led me out into the courtyard, toward the side where the musicians were seated, and people swayed rhythmically to the beat of drums. I began to move with them, the music loud enough to vibrate my bones and fill my ribcage. Prince Calix held my hands and twirled me around. The lights of the fire blurred as I did, giving the night a dreamlike quality.

I began to dance more freely, throwing my hair back, glad that Neven had convinced me to let it flow loose over my shoulders tonight. Prince Calix smiled at me, and a strange warmth blossomed over my skin—like I had been in the sun too long, despite the fact that the stars now dotted a velvety sky.

He moved to spin me again, and I nearly tripped over my own feet. For some reason, my clumsiness made me laugh. My head was so light, I feared it might fly off my shoulders. Calix laughed too, an arm coming around my waist to steady me.

His fingers landed on the inches of bare skin between the cropped beaded top I wore, and the waist of the flowing skirt at my hips. Instantly, my attention zeroed in on the way the pads of his fingers pressed into my flesh, pleasantly hot, although I already felt warm.

Something dim in the back of my mind told me my reaction was strange—that I rarely liked the touch of others. I shook my head to clear it, but the motion just made me more unsteady, and I tipped toward Calix. He caught me, and I leaned my weight against him. His other arm wrapped around me, and I let him hold me to him as a strange sort of effervescence bubbled beneath my skin. Perhaps it was just relief after so many weeks of constant worry about Kelvadan’s food supplies.

“You all right there?” He smiled down at me. “I’m not used to literally sweeping people off their feet.”

I tried to smile at him but was distracted by just how warm I was. My mind was drawn to the persistent itch forming at the base of my spine.

“I…” The beat of the drums overwhelmed me, and I frowned.

“I need to borrow the queen for a moment,” a voice rumbled behind me.

Prince Calix’s grip on my waist tightened, but it was overshadowed by another touch on my upper arm. Warm, callused fingers pulled me away from Calix, and I went with them willingly. Where Calix’s arms had felt pleasant and warm, this touch burned, lighting a fire under my skin that I didn’t want to quench.

Calix frowned, and something flashed in his eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but I waved him off.

“It’s all right, I’ll be right back,” I said.

Then Erix was pulling me through the dancers and the crowd toward the palace entrance.

“Erix, what’s wrong?” I asked.

His only response was a grunt as he pulled me through the open doors into the shadowed hallway. Worry tried to bubble to the surface of my mind—that another monster had risen or Izumi and the clans were coming—but was overshadowed by my awareness of Erix’s solid form at my side.

He jerked me around a corner and the breath rushed out of me as he suddenly pushed me up against a wall, caging me in with his elbows on either side of my head.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice barely human, sounding more like the warning growl of a wild animal than anything else. “What’s wrong is that I’m not strong enough to watch another man hold you in his arms. I’ve suffered many wounds in my life, but none so painful as the way my heart shattered when I saw you smile at him.”

His hands found my waist and the tips of his fingers slipped below the edge of my beaded top. An involuntary whimper escaped me at the press of his flesh on mine and the sudden awareness that it wasn’t enough—not nearly. My fingers closed around his upper arms, to grasp him to me or hold myself up, I wasn’t sure.

“I had to get you away from him, or I would have broken Calix’s wrist for daring to touch you,” Erix continued, his breath hot on my neck as he leaned in, speaking directly into my ear.

I should have been concerned by his words, but my body didn’t seem to be following the commands of my mind anymore. I arched into Erix, eager to press more of myself against him, even as a voice in the back of my mind screamed that I needed to tear myself away from him. Tonight was supposed to be a celebration of my engagement to another man—of an alliance that would save the people of Kelvadan. Being found pinned against a wall by another man just steps away from where the celebrations continued could shatter the alliance Kelvadan so desperately needed.

My flesh did not care for any of these reasons though, and another high-pitched sound escaped my lips.

“Sands, Keera,” Erix whispered, one of his hands dropping from my waist to my upper legs, slipping under the dangerously high slit in my flowing silk skirt to find the skin of my thigh. “Perhaps this is the desert testing me. Kelvar would not let the woman he loved go, and he doomed us to suffer rather than be parted from her. Now I face the same challenge, and although I have seen how it ends, I find myself aching to hold you tighter.”

“Please, Erix,” I begged, feeling as if I was burning from the inside out.

Erix’s fingers skated higher, and he made a choking noise in his throat as they slipped through the wetness already starting to coat my inner thighs. I started to keen, but he clapped his other hand over my mouth to silence the noises escaping me.

“You have to stay quiet, or somebody will find their perfect queen begging for the touch of a man who is supposed to be her prisoner.” His voice was rough as sand.

Unable to speak past his fingers, I instead parted my thighs further, urging his touch higher. He obliged, finally sliding his fingers over my sex. My eyes rolled back in my head, and my knees trembled, but Erix slipped one thigh between mine to keep me in place.