Page 37 of Crown of the Dunes

My gaze refocused on her, having glazed over momentarily.

“Are you all right?”

“All right?” I asked, my voice coming out scratchy as I sat up from where I was crumpled on the floor.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she clarified.

I frowned and looked down at my hands, finding my nails broken and torn as if I had been clawing at a hard surface. The legs of my pants were ripped and bloody at the knees, and an odd heaviness throbbed behind my eyes. I didn’t remember doing it, but I must have pounded at the walls before falling on the floor.

I flexed my wrists and rolled my neck. None of my bones seemed to be broken, and I could move all my limbs. I had certainly woken up in worse shape back at my oasis.

I nodded. “I’m all right. What time is it?”

Aderyn returned my nod with a sharp jerk of her own chin. “Just past dawn. You’ve only been down here overnight. Can you fight?” she asked.

“Of course.” The words were out before I processed her question, as if my body were urging me to spring into action before my mind had even caught up with what was happening.

Fight. Fight, a voice in my head that I didn’t recognize urged incessantly. It was different from voices I had sensed before—almost like Erix’s presence in my mind, but darker and more primal.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Who am I supposed to be fighting?”

Aderyn’s mouth was a hard line, and my gaze settled on the sickle blades clutched in her hands. “The clans are at the gate. They took us by surprise, and the riders are not ready for this fight. They need to see their queen—to know there is still hope.”

“Their queen…” The word ripped something loose in my head as I repeated it. My stomach dropped in horror. “The queen. She’s—Is she really…”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish my sentence, the words rising up to choke me, but Aderyn’s grim face said it all.

“You are the queen now.” Her words were grim. “If you’re not there to show them you can lead, The Viper—Erix—will find it all too easy to claim that he is the rightful king of Kelvadan.”

I struggled to my feet. Dread and adrenaline mixed in a heady cocktail in my blood. I had pushed down my yearning for Erix’s presence, but at the mention of his name, it roared to life like a blazing fire. Still, a dark anger fed those flames with feelings of abandonment and betrayal.

“He’s here?”

“He rode at the head of the clans, spotted approaching the gates when I came to get you.” Aderyn’s expression was guarded.

Magic rippled through me anew, too full of feeling to be teased apart. Erix was here. After abandoning me. And he came with an army at his back instead of an offer of peace. He came to destroy the people the queen had just died to protect.

I had let her die to get the Heart, hoping it would help me bring Erix home. I had been so desperate to stop the coming war that I had grasped the queen’s power and shoved it at the blood glass until it broke her.

Now he was home, but I did not have the Heart, so I would greet him with a sword instead.

“Let’s go,” I commanded Aderyn, already striding past her out of the room.

As I struck off down the corridor toward the palace proper, the consciousness of the desert started seeping back in to fill the empty pit in my belly. With it, the bond with Erix brightened. Instead of being a subtle presence, easily ignored, now it shuddered and roared. Instead of a single tether, it was a series of pulsating fibers, hopelessly tangled and knotted. I could barely feel Erix on the other end, just a storm of emotions.

Although, that was what Erix was. Just like Kelvar was described, when the magic of the desert took him, Erix was just a storm in human skin.

I took a sharp turn when I reached the top of the stairs to the main floor of the palace. Aderyn sucked in a harsh breath behind me.

“I need my sword,” I explained before she could ask why I headed toward my rooms instead of out toward the city where the riders would be readying to hold the clans at bay. As much as my hands shook with apprehension and rage, my fingers itched to wield my blade. This is what I had struggled and bled to recover from my injuries for—to protect Kelvadan and truly earn the home it had offered me.

She didn’t try to speak again while we made our way to the room I had been granted here. Without prelude, I dropped down to the stone floor on my belly, reaching under the bed. My fingers met a smooth metal pommel, and I wrapped my hand around a familiar corded grip.

I drew the saber out from under the bed and unsheathed it.

The blade was so long that the tip almost scraped the ceiling as I held it pointed straight up. My eyes met Aderyn’s over the curved quillons, and I knew she recognized the weapon.

Kelvar’s saber, given to Erix on his sixteenth name day. Now I would use it to defend this city from its former wielder.