Page 41 of Crown of the Dunes

Rage boiled in my blood again, and I made to stand up, but the tip of Keera’s blade dug into my collarbone in warning. Badha grabbed Izumi’s arm.

“We can still restore the desert to the old ways, but we will not win this fight divided,” the warlord said to Izumi, her voice quieter, so that only those of us in the immediate vicinity could hear.

For a moment, everybody stood still, waiting to see how the bones would fall. Then Izumi wrenched free from Badha’s grasp and raised her saber in the air. “Retreat! All riders who remain loyal to the desert, pull back!”

Before anybody could stop her, she spurred her horse into motion, leading the way out of the palace courtyard. She repeated her order to retreat as she went, and almost all of the clan riders in my eyeline followed her.

A familiar roan horse moved to follow, but Keera’s fist shot out, signaling Aderyn to halt. I frowned that the captain of the Kelvadan riders was taking orders from Keera, but a tendril of relief ran through me at Keera’s next words.

“Let them retreat. The day is won for Kelvadan,” she said, although something about her tone made it sound like a question. As sure as she was in a fight, she seemed hesitant to command those around her now that the battle was over—almost as if she doubted that they should follow her orders.

As the sounds of hoofbeats retreated down the main road, I sent a silent thanks to the sands that the clansmen would be safe. Conflict gnawed at my heart after Izumi’s outburst, but at least I would be relieved of the guilt of thinking I had led the clans to their imprisonment—or their graves—here in Kelvadan.

At last, I looked away from the scene of the aborted battle to stare back up at Keera. A deep line was embedded between her brows as she looked at me, frustration and anger written into her expression. But in her eyes, I saw a hint of the molten gold that had drawn me in when it was just the two of us out under the open desert sky—when she had told me I just needed to be loved.

I held on to that as I met her gaze, wanting nothing more than to pull her into my arms and drag her back out to the sands where it could just be two of us without the complications of war once more. But I tensed every muscle, willing myself to be still as she came to some sort of decision.

After all, I had surrendered to her, and there were no prisoners in the Ballan Desert.

Eventually, she opened her mouth, but her voice was not the commanding one which had demanded my surrender. “Take him to the holding cells in the riders’ quarters.”

Two warriors of Kelvadan I did not recognize grabbed me by the arms and began to lead me away. I didn’t look away from Keera, until they hustled me around a corner and she was lost to my sight. She hadn’t looked away either, and the tether in my skull shivered when our line of sight was broken.

As doubt and confusion clouded my mind, only one thought held certain. Something had happened in Kelvadan since I had last seen Keera.

My fingers dug into my knees where they rested on my crossed legs. With great effort, I breathed evenly, trying and failing to fall into the meditative state that had been one of my few sources of control throughout the years. Instead, my eyes kept skittering over the gray stone walls surrounding me, outside of the wooden cell in which I sat.

I wasn’t inside the mountain thankfully, but in an outer building where I could still feel the hum of life around me. Still, I hadn’t been surrounded by walls like this in many years, and they seemed to close in the longer I sat. My shoulders had involuntarily drawn up toward my ears and my breath came in short, sharp pants. So, I had sat down to meditate.

It hadn’t been more than half an hour since I was left here, and I refused to let my mind wander to what came next. Instead, I focused on the movement at the other end of the tether tugging at the magic in my brain.

Keera was alive, and she was moving around nearby. I had no idea what had caused the connection to her to be suddenly severed before—or even what the connection truly was—but I clung on to the reassurance that I had seen her with my own eyes with every fiber of my being.

She was more than alive—she was still fighting and untamed and as beautiful holding a sword to my throat as I remembered. It was a vast improvement on the last time I had laid eyes on her, bleeding and unconscious on the floor of Lord Alasdar’s tent—a memory that still choked me with rage and desperation.

I had successfully gotten to Keera as I had promised, but now I was trapped here, in yet another prison of my own making. Keera hadn’t responded to any of my messages, and despite being closer to the Heart than I had been in years, I somehow felt farther away from my goal than ever. Even if I were in the same palace as the Heart, I couldn’t retrieve it without Keera’s help. But instead of being her ally, I was now a prisoner.

And I had done it all for Keera.

Of course, Kelvar had reshaped the mountains and destroyed the desert for Alyx.

My stomach twisted, and I wrenched my attention back to my breathing as best I could. I had only drawn a handful of shuddering breaths before the sound of a commotion outside the room drew my attention.

I stood at the sound of voices. Although I couldn’t make out the words, the tone was angry, and something about the gruffness was familiar. Whoever it was, they could only be discussing me, for the rest of the wooden cells in the otherwise barren room stood empty.

Finally, the door swung open, and my heart stuttered in my chest.

I had expected Aderyn or Keera to come see me first and inform me of my fate, although I could tell the latter was not in the immediate vicinity.

Instead, the soft gaze of my father knocked the wind out of me.

For a moment, I was young again, sneaking into the stables to work with my father when sitting still for lessons with my mother began to make me want to peel off my own skin, and only the soft noises of horses could fix it. But the differences I found in him shattered the illusion that no time had passed. The broadness of his shoulders had diminished, and now they slumped as if he were perpetually exhausted. Worse though, the twinkle of mischief in his gaze that I always remembered whenever I dared think of him was nowhere to be found.

I tried to swallow as he stepped further into the room, but my throat was dry as a sand dune. Part of me wanted to back away, press myself into the far side of the cell to escape the depth of feeling in his expression. Another part of me wanted to rage and snarl, but I planted my feet and stood firm.

My mask had been lost in the fray, and my bare face itched as he searched my expression.

He stopped a few feet away from the wooden lattice before me.