Page 29 of Crown of the Dunes

“It seems Clan Miran is in need of new leadership,” I said, glaring down at the kneeling warlord before me. “Izumi, I appoint you the new Lord of Clan Miran.”

Izumi’s eyes widened before hardening. She had always grasped for more power, and I had dropped it in her lap. Now, she tapped her fingers to her brows deferentially, even as the crowd bristled. I couldn’t afford trust in a time like this, but Izumi’s devotion to healing the desert bordered on zealotry, and she would do what was necessary to keep the clans in line.

“Appoint a warlord as you see fit,” I continued, staring down at the whimpering warrior at my feet. Blood still bubbled from his wrist, dripping onto the ground to puddle around his knees—an utter waste for us to spill one another’s blood when disaster pressed in from every direction.

Izumi stepped closer to me, drawing my attention away. She reached out her hand.

“Badha, correct?” Izumi asked.

The other woman nodded, looking wary.

“I need a warlord who will protect my back. Would you join Clan Miran as their new warlord? It is your right, as you defeated the last one,” Izumi asked.

Badha’s eyes flickered to me in surprise, and I gave her the tiniest nod. The offer was an unspeakable honor, but she had earned my respect, if not my trust.

She reached out and clasped Izumi’s forearm. Something foreign flickered in Izumi’s eyes, different from her usual steely determination, as she grasped Badha in return.

I could only hope this wasn’t the next in my long list of mistakes.

The hard back of a chair pressed against my spine, and the edge of the seat dug into the back of my thighs. It was so different from the soft give of a rug laid over sand, where I normally sat when I had the rare moment of inactivity, it immediately set my nerves alight.

I peeled my eyes open, not realizing they had been screwed shut, only to wish for the release of ignorance once more. All around me were gray stone walls, lifeless and cold in their impenetrableness. Even though this was a room that had been used very little in my youth, I still recognized the walls of the palace immediately.

I wrenched my gaze from the walls of my mother’s throne room, only for the sight at my feet to solidify the rising horror in my gut.

Keera kneeled before me where I sat on the throne of Kelvadan, her clothes as tattered and dirty as the night I had found her at an oasis nearly wasted away to nothing.

“No… no,” I breathed frantically, raising my hands in front of my face to inspect them. The last time I had seen Keera, her blood had coated my hands and dripped from her gaping chest. Now, I just saw the black leather of my gloves.

I reached up to my face, finding my mask in place, unlike it usually was when Keera appeared in my dreams. I wanted to yank it off, but for the first time in weeks, I worried about showing Keera my face.

She had seen beyond the darkness in me and claimed that I didn’t need to be fixed to be loved. But in her absence, I had shattered further, that darkness in my mind urging me more toward violence every day. Back among her friends in Kelvadan, perhaps she had changed her mind, not even having the heart to tell me, and sending my letters back unread.

I’m not sure I could even blame her, yet I feared it nearly as much as I feared sitting on this throne.

“Erix, Erix,” she repeated, drawing me from my reverie.

A firm grip pulled my gloved hands from my face.

“You’re not real,” I insisted, half in sadness and half relief, remembering the way the phantom of Lord Alasdar had pulled her still heart from her ribcage in my last dream.

“I am,” she insisted, peeling my gloves from my fingers. Once my hands were bare, she laid my palm on her chest under her tunic. The warmth of her skin heated mine, and her heart beat steadily beneath my fingers.

Lub dub. Lub dub.

Finally, I met her golden eyes, and a shudder ran through me. They were just as molten and warm as I remembered, but other parts of her were different. Half her hair was missing, as it had been after the fight with the lava wyrm, and the shadows of scars covered one side of her neck and chest.

Just seeing her wasn’t enough. I needed more. Needed to feel the weight of her pressed against me to know she was alive.

In the space of a breath, I had scooped her off the floor and onto my lap. Her knees bracketed my thighs on the hard wooden seat of the throne. My arms wrapped around her waist, crushing her to me without mercy. I buried my masked face in her sternum, searching for the earthy scent of her through the metal, even as her hands gripped my shoulders.

The heat of her against me—the solid realness of her living, breathing body—eased some of the ache in my chest, but it wasn’t enough. My fingers tightened against her back, digging into the tattered cloth of her tunic. Maybe if I stripped it off and tasted every inch of her skin—slid her onto my cock and held her there until I couldn’t tell where I ended and she began—it would be enough.

Keera distracted me from that line of thought by digging her fingers into my hair, pulling on it until I was forced to look up at her face where she kneeled over me. Her golden eyes appeared to boil like molten metal, just as fiery and angry as they had been the night I first pinned her to the ground.

“Why did you leave me?” she demanded.

I shook my head. “They took you from me.” It came out as a growl.