Page 40 of Crown of the Dunes

Without warning, I let go of my saber with my dominant hand, trying to surprise Erix with an offhand attack. I lunged, stabbing for his shoulder, but caught the strike easily on his own blade, his free hand darting out to grab my throat as we locked together in a grapple.

It was an achingly familiar position, as he bore down on me with both his sword against mine and his fingers around my windpipe. I scrabbled at his ruthless grip with my own free hand, but they slipped uselessly at the leather of his gloves.

This thing between Erix and I—whatever it was—was going to end the way it began, but this time I couldn’t even look into those striking silver eyes.

With one last choked off scream, I abandoned trying to break free of his grip and instead reaching for his face. My fingers hooked under the edge of his metal mask, and I pulled, hearing leather bands snapping.

The world froze as it clattered to the ground, leaving me staring Erix full in the face.

Chapter ten

Erix

There she was. My feral little fighter.

It was like waking up from a terrible nightmare. One where my existence was nothing but the desert screaming in pain and fire consuming my entire being.

My blurred-out vision filtered back in to the sight of golden eyes, just as full of wildness and depth as the first time I’d seen them. Awareness of my body came back next, and I found my hand locked around Keera’s neck, my saber bearing down on hers.

The wave of battle had overtaken me, driving me to advance, telling me that my goal was close—so close that I hadn’t realized she was right in front of me. I didn’t even remember arriving in the palace courtyard or the start of my fight with her. My vision had been nothing but a red cloud and my thoughts a chaotic tumult of screams—but when she pulled the mask free of my face, it had been a break in the storm, and my vision had finally focused on her familiar, beautiful face.

A clatter of steel against stone told me that I had dropped my sword. My grip loosened and my thumb drifted over the pulse point in her throat, straining to feel it, to reassure myself that she was alive and well before me. After the crush of the desert’s magic had completely overwhelmed my consciousness, fear overtook me that this was just one of her cruel tricks.

A shock ran through my bones as my knees hit the stone ground, my forehead falling forward to rest on Keera’s stomach, right between her hip bones. This close, and with my mask removed, I could smell the sunshine and earth scent of her skin. My heart hammered in relief.

She was here, and she was whole.

The tether at the top of my spine glowed and pulsed with bright light, no longer pulling me along like a raging beast. Stillness spread, and I realized it wasn’t just the quiet of the desert’s power in my mind for the first time in weeks. The sounds of battle around me—the chaos I had hardly paid attention to before—now subsided.

I tilted my head up, despite wanting to bury my face in Keera’s torso and crush her to me, not letting go until my muscles gave out. I met her eyes again, this time paying closer attention to the emotions that passed over her face—expressive and unguarded as ever.

Anger. Relief. Pain. So many contradictory feelings that the conflict tangled in my own knots of magic.

The gazes of all the warriors in the courtyard lay heavily on me as she slowly raised her saber—my saber, I recognized—to point at my neck.

“Do you surrender the rule of Kelvadan?” Keera’s voice was firm.

My brow furrowed. Something about the question didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t parse out why. The wildness that had calmed in my blood urged me to lash out and fight. To never allow defeat or surrender after I had given so much—endured so much—to see Kelvadan destroyed.

My lip curled into the beginnings of a snarl, but Keera’s question from a dream echoed in my head.

Would you surrender if that’s what it took to get me back?

In a split second, it dawned on me with striking certainty that I would do anything. And while I had prepared to take on an entire army by myself if I had to, this might be the more difficult challenge.

My heart leaped into my throat even as I bowed my head. “I surrender to you, Keera of Kelvadan, the true Champion of the Desert.”

I said it loud enough that the whole courtyard would be able to hear.

A ripple like a shockwave ran out from where I knelt before Keera, the statue of Kelvar towering behind her. Clattering filled the air as riders began to drop their swords. The sound was interrupted by a raged yell.

“Traitor!”

Izumi’s face contorted with rage and pain, and she spurred her horse toward me with her sword held aloft. Before I could grab my own weapon or jump between her and Keera, another horse cut her off.

Badha’s bay gelding stamped at the ground before me, acting as a shield between me and Izumi. For a moment, I thought Izumi would cut down her own warlord, but she hesitated, although rage was still written into every line of her face.

“Coward,” she spat at me, the word hitting me like a punch to the gut. “You promised to restore the desert, but it was a lie. I trusted you, and it was a lie! You just wanted her, and you don’t care about the losses the rest of us have suffered.”