Page 22 of Crown of the Dunes

Aderyn looked between the two of us. “Then one of you can open the doors?”

“It’ll take both of us,” I admitted. “Two panes of glass for two of the most powerful people in the Ballan Desert.”

An apprehensive silence fell.

Aderyn pursed her lips. “I will admit, I have not been touched by the desert’s power. Much of it is a mystery to me. But just healing Keera left you bedridden for a week, my queen. Using that kind of power seems dangerous.” She gestured to me. “Keera is still on the mend as well.”

Queen Ginevra unclasped her hands and spread them over her knees. “Then we will wait until we are both stronger.”

“As if I didn’t have enough motivation to get better,” I grumbled under my breath, but Aderyn’s grimace told me that she heard my frustration.

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, distant shouting cut through the air. All three of us turned toward the palace gates where the noise came from.

“Stay here,” Aderyn ordered, not wasting a moment before striding purposefully in the direction of the chaotic noise. As she rounded the edge of the courtyard heading toward the wall, the volume grew.

“Let us see our queen!”

“Show us Queen Ginevra!”

“The queen is dead. She has been assassinated!”

My heart accelerated to a gallop in my chest as the shouts traveled over the wall, growing more insistent by the second.

“Wheel me toward the gate,” Queen Ginevra ordered.

My hands fluttered, and I hesitated. Aderyn and Queen Ginevra had worked hard to keep her illness secret for a reason.

“Aderyn told us to stay here,” I hedged.

Queen Ginevra interlaced her fingers in her lap and fixed me with a serious stare. “I’m not accustomed to following orders. I got the impression you weren’t fond of those sorts of constraints either.”

Despite the direness of the situation, her mouth still quirked wryly at the corner as she spoke. “If they’ve reached the point of gathering at the palace gate, news of my condition has already gotten out. Hiding from them now would only feed the fires of their speculation.”

I nodded jerkily, but dread still settled in my gut, like a rock. The wheels of her chair creaked over the stone ground as I pushed her chair toward the arched entrance to the palace courtyard. As we rounded the corner, the shouting of the crowd abated, replaced by a wave of mutters that ran from those at the front to those who couldn’t see us approach.

Aderyn frowned as we stopped beside her, and I raised one shoulder in a small shrug at her expression. If anybody understood that the queen tended to set her own agenda, it was Aderyn.

The queen raised her hands from her lap, and the crowd before her quieted. I scanned their faces, finding them wearing a variety of frowns and furrowed brows. Still, they respected their queen enough to give her the opportunity to address them. It struck me as a reminder that she had been a good leader, even when she hadn’t been a good mother.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

A man near the front stepped forward, seeming to be the chosen leader of the group. “Rumors have been running through the city that you were dead. Word had it that the new ambassador from Doran had assassinated you, just like the last one tried to interfere with the Trials and kill a rider. Nobody had seen you in weeks, and we became concerned that our city had fallen into enemy hands.” He shoved his hands in his sash and lifted his chin as he spoke.

“As you can see, I’m not dead.” Queen Ginevra spread her arms in demonstration, a hint of levity in her voice reassuring me, even though I knew the direness of the situation better than most. “I have just been ill and taking some time to recover.”

The crowd rippled, apparently assuaged, but a current of concern still undercut their murmurs. A flash of copper in the back of the crowd caught my attention. I narrowed my eyes, trying to find the source, but it was swallowed by the churning of the throng. In a moment, my attention was drawn away from my search by more shouting.

“If you are ill, who is responsible for Kelvadan?” asked the crowd’s spokesperson. “You…” He hesitated as if second guessing himself, but then squared his shoulders and soldiered on. “You have no heir to rule in your stead… Not since Prince Erix died.”

My fingers, still wrapped around the handles of the wheeled chair, tightened so forcefully the wood creaked. In my peripheral vision, I saw Alyx glance at me, but nobody else paid me any mind.

Words bubbled up in my throat—a scream ready to burst forth that Erix was alive and he had been taken from me. Instead, they stuck like a ball of lava, bubbling and festering beneath my breastbone.

There was a living, breathing man beneath the mask of the Viper—one who was beautiful and broken and had held my beating heart in his scarred hands. But he was not Prince Erix of Kelvadan—he was not the man these people needed to be a beacon of strength when the ground seemed to shift beneath their feet. In fact, he was an earthquake that threatened to raze this city to its roots.

I bit my tongue so hard that copper filled my mouth, and I fixed my gaze on the twist of braids on the back of Queen Ginevra’s head.

She used the arms of the chair to lever herself up and stand. Aderyn’s hands fluttered, as if she wanted to steady her, but she clenched them at her side.