Page 2 of Crown of the Dunes

“It’s just water,” Aderyn assured. “Unless you want something for the pain?”

I shook my head as hard as I could muster, despite the wave of dizziness it caused. She raised the cup to my lips, and I let her pour the water into my mouth. It was blessedly cool, and I tried to drink too fast, droplets spilling over my cracked lips. Thirst was a memory that never really left you when you lived in the Ballan Desert.

After a few healthy swallows, Aderyn pulled the cup away.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice coming with a little more strength now. “I want to be able to think for once.”

Aderyn didn’t meet my eyes as she turned to set the cup back on the table. “I’m sorry we had to keep you unconscious for so long. The healers… We thought it would be safer to keep you sedated until your control returned.”

I blinked as the meaning of her words set in, then shrunk back into my pillows.

Aderyn shook her head wryly. “You nearly brought down the entire palace the first time they tried to change your bandages.”

A lump rose in my throat, and I tried in vain to swallow it down. Out in the open wilds of the desert with Erix, my unleashed powers had not been as much of a liability, and his touch could always bring me back to myself. Here in the city though, lives would be at stake if I lost control. I wanted to rage against the fact that I had been forcibly drugged, but I couldn’t. Not when I knew what it was to have my emotions cost innocent people their lives.

It was the reason my parents left me.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

“Don’t be,” Aderyn insisted firmly. “After what you endured at the hands of the Viper and Lord Alasdar, I would be more concerned if you weren’t spitting fire.”

“This wasn’t Erix,” I said immediately. As soon as the words were out of my mouth though, doubt reared its head in my gut, swirling with my resolve in a nauseating mix. Erix had not caused my injuries, but he had taken me to his cruel lord—delivered me to a would-be conqueror when I was in no state to fight. But I had fought, nonetheless. Lord Alasdar was dead, but the fate of the desert was still in peril as long as she was missing her Heart.

The Heart that remained locked in the tomb in the highest tower of Kelvadan.

“I need to talk to the queen. We can prevent a war.”

Aderyn scrubbed a hand over her bare head, exhaustion written deep in every line of her face. “There may be more than one war knocking on our door these days.”

Her answer was cryptic, and I frowned, pleased to find that the expression was possible. The burns on my face had apparently healed enough to stretch without cracking.

“Even more reason for me to speak with Queen Ginevra immediately.”

Aderyn looked at me solemnly. “Keera… the queen is very ill.”

The thud of the cane against the stone floor of the courtyard radiated up my arm. I dragged my foot forward in another step, grateful that the design of the palace left the floors without any lips or obstacles to trip on. Walking was turning out to be a difficult enough task as it was.

I tottered through another step, bracing most of my weight on the cane in my hand to keep it off my injured leg. The bone seemed to have healed well, but after weeks of immobility, it was weak and wobbly.

In fact, all of me was weak and wobbly. Neven seemed to sense this, hovering just off my elbow as I trudged doggedly in another circle around the courtyard that abutted the palace infirmary. His hands fluttered as I swayed, as if he wanted to reach out and stabilize me but was afraid I might bite off his fingers if he tried.

Given the scowl I seemed unable to wipe from my face, I didn’t blame him. My breath puffed out through my lips in sharp pants, and I pursed them in annoyance. I paused, giving my burning lungs a chance to recover, and me an excuse to stay outside for a few minutes longer. After long weeks in the infirmary, sleeping under a stone ceiling, I yearned for the open sky with a bone-deep ache that slowly became more painful than my burns. As much as I loved Kelvadan, nothing soothed me like the sun-bleached desert sky, stretching endlessly as far as the eye could see.

With the hand that wasn’t holding the cane, I grabbed the railing that enclosed the terrace and let my gaze wander out over the edge. It skittered over the stacked, geometric stone tiers of the city carved straight from the side of the mountain, past the blazing gold of the dunes, and instead fixed itself on the horizon.

My heart clenched, like a rag being rung out. I squinted at the line where the sky met the sand, as if I could will my vision to penetrate the miles of open desert—as if I could summon the sight of a distant encampment. But the magic pooling in my gut, becoming less sluggish every day that passed without pain medication, did not grant my request. The desert had motivations I had yet to understand, and she did not deign to show me Erix, despite the strange connection that lingered between us.

I bit my tongue, hating how I longed for the sound of his voice or the feeling of his fingers carding through my hair. Making peace with him and the clans should be at the forefront of my mind, but selfishly, I often found myself just wishing for him. But beneath that yearning bubbled an anger—a twisted and confused sense of betrayal. It knotted up like the ball of darkness I knew existed in Erix’s own mind. He had brought me to Lord Alasdar, and he had not come for me.

I let my eyes drift up toward the cloudless sky instead, hoping for a fluttering of familiar wings.

Erix had used his falcon, Zephyr, to send a message to Lord Alasdar during our time in the desert. Surely he could send him with a note saying… anything. He could negotiate a peace between the Great City and the combined clans he now commanded. We could make a plan to retrieve and restore the Heart of the Desert. At the very least he could confirm that I still lived—although I had a feeling Erix already knew that much, based on the way the bond between us pulsed and shivered at random intervals.

But the sky remained empty, the cloudless expanse bleached by the brightness of the sun. The endless openness of the desert sky usually calmed me—far more welcome than the stone ceiling of the palace infirmary—but now, the barrenness opened a hole in my chest.

It would seem Erix wasn’t coming.

A month had passed since that fateful night in Lord Alasdar’s tent, but no message had appeared—no rider on a dark horse crested the horizon to put a stop to the looming war. I had told Erix that I loved him in all his brokenness just as darkness claimed me. I hadn’t heard his response. Perhaps he thought I had abandoned him during the Kelvadan riders’ attack. Maybe he still planned to march on the Great City and raze it, as if that could somehow destroy the legacy it had saddled him with.