Page 130 of Crown of the Dunes

The fibers of the desert shuddered within me, as if having to adjust to a sudden rearrangement, and my hands shook as I reached up to close his eyes. Where the desert had never felt sparse before—full of life for those who knew how to listen to her rhythms—now there was a large emptiness at her core.

Somehow, I made myself move away from my father’s side. At some point, Keera had slipped her hand into mine, and as I glanced at our interlaced fingers, I saw the blood that still splattered them. We had narrowly escaped with our lives, and we had no time for grief. We were alone in the middle of the desert, with nothing but our wits and a broken gemstone laying heavy in my pocket.

I pushed to my feet and wiped my face dry, looking around at the tattered group we made. Keera was barely dressed, not even wearing shoes, although she held her saber. The sword strapped to my own back was shattered in two.

Aderyn kneeled over Neven, who laid on the ground, appearing unconscious with a mangled hand resting on his chest. I walked over to them, and kneeled on the ground across from her, on Neven’s opposite side.

She didn’t look up, but her jaw tightened.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I’m sorry that the city was lost, and I couldn’t do enough to stop it, even after I promised you.”

“We live to fight another day,” she said, her voice hard. She looked up at me, fixing me with her piercing stare. “Now I need you to make me a new promise.”

I nodded.

“Vow to me that this fight is not over, and that we will reclaim Kelvadan.”

I held out my hand to her. “I vow not to rest until all corners of the Ballan Desert are restored, including the Great City.”

She clasped my forearm, and we locked eyes. Behind the cold despair in her gaze, I saw a lick of the icy fire I remembered from sparring with her. We were not defeated yet.

“I see a rider!”

My head jerked up as Keera called out, and indeed, a lone figure on a horse stood out starkly among the crimson-stained dunes as they weaved toward us. I stood, moving to stand beside Keera, who held her saber before her in warning.

The rider did not seem concerned, continuing to approach until I could make out a familiar face.

“Lord Dhara?” I asked.

She smiled. “Lord Koen had a dream last night that you needed our help. When a familiar falcon landed at our encampment half an hour ago, I wondered if you might be nearby.”

“Your encampment?” Keera asked.

Lord Dhara gestured over her shoulder. “Just beyond that rise.”

Relief washed over me, but Lord Dhara’s smile faded as she let her gaze wonder over our tattered group—Aderyn crouched protectively over Neven’s unconscious form and my father’s body lying lifeless in the sand.

“Come,” she said, dismounting from her own horse to help. “I will take you to our encampment, and you can tell us all that has happened.”

Epilogue

Keera

The sand squeaked under my bare feet as I trudged up a dune. Erix sat with his back to the encampment, looking out at the endless darkness of the sands at night. Zephyr trilled as I approached before fluttering off—likely to see if he could snatch some food away from the clansmen cooking around one of the many fires in the large encampment.

Erix didn’t look up as I reached the crest of the dune and sat down beside him, my shoulder just barely brushing his. On a night that seemed impossibly long ago, at an encampment just outside the city walls, I had found him in a similar position, but I had left substantial room between us when I sat down that night. Neither of us had been familiar with the touch of another then, but now, it seemed to be one of the only things we could hold on to.

When Erix lit his father’s funeral pyre two days earlier, he had clasped my hand like it was the only solid thing left in the world. As Neven screamed in pain when Clan Otush’s healer set the bones in his hand, Erix had pulled me close, as if he could protect me from the guilt that wracked my chest with every pained gasp that passed Neven’s lips. At night, he clasped me to him with such force I thought my bones would crack, and I didn’t protest. We were alive, but barely, and so much was still uncertain—but the creak of my joints as he squeezed me to him was real.

Lord Dhara and the lords of the other clans at the encampment had welcomed us in, still tapping their brows to Erix deferentially. Aderyn had tensed at first, but as soon as the healers had begun tending to Neven, all her worry was directed toward him, with none to spare for the thought that she was among those who had recently been enemies. Luckily, the clans of the desert fought often and forgave as soon as the blood had finished drying in the sand.

For a few days, we had focused only on grieving and healing, and the small lingering effects of Calix’s poison purged themselves from my blood. The tasks before us towered like mountains on the horizon. The desert had to be healed, and the city reclaimed.

Now, Erix’s gaze remained fixed in his lap, and I followed it down to find that he held the two halves of the Heart, one in each hand. Repeatedly, he brought them together, trying to line up the hewn edges so it looked like they had never broken.

“Some things can’t be unbroken,” I pointed out as he let the two halves fall apart with a huff of frustration. “Some things have to heal.”

“Healing has never been my strong suit,” he admitted. “Legend says that Alyx could heal almost any wound with just a touch, but I inherited none of her skill. Only Kelvar’s power—the power to destroy.”