Page 44 of Crown of the Dunes

She shook her head. “I don’t have the desert in my blood that makes the people want to follow me. And your right to the title of Champion gives you the strongest claim, as it is a mark of the power that runs in your veins.”

I slumped back in my chair. “I’m not sure that power is a good reason to give me the crown.”

“You won’t be ruling alone.” It was Aderyn’s turn to clap me on the arm. “I’ll be by your side. You just need to keep giving the people hope, like you did today, or when you stopped the avalanche. And for now, you just need to get some sleep.”

I nodded, but as we both pushed to our feet, I said, “I’ll be heading to my room, but I need to do one thing first.”

The riders’ quarters were quiet as I padded through the maze of stacked buildings that housed armories and stables. It was hard to believe this city had been the site of a battle not a full day ago, but all the wounded had been moved to the infirmary and a hush had fallen over the palace now.

It wasn’t the complete silence of isolation though, and the distant nickering of sleepy horses calmed my nerves as I slipped toward the building that held the few cells in the city. The guards stationed outside the door looked at me curiously as I approached, and I half expected them to stop me from entering.

Instead, they stepped aside to let me open the door and enter the quiet room. My skin prickled, and a nauseating mix of nerves and anticipation whirled beneath my sternum.

Instantly, my gaze snapped to Erix as the door thudded shut behind me. He sat cross legged in the center of the farthest wooden cell, hunched over so that his hair fell forward, obscuring his face. The moment I saw him, the bond between us, which had been pulsing and twisting all day, pulled taut.

His head snapped up, and as I was fixed with luminous silver eyes, I knew he felt it too.

My heart pounded, as if it were trying to escape my ribcage to get closer to him. But my boots stuck to the ground just as my voice stuck in my throat.

He broke the silence first, rising to his feet with a deadly grace that I had almost forgotten.

“What happened to you?” he demanded.

I blinked. It was not the greeting I’d expected from him. “What do you mean?”

“The night before I attacked the city. You were there and then you were gone. I couldn’t feel you anymore. I was afraid…” He trailed off, his gaze raking me up and down. It caught on my broken and bloody fingernails, and I didn’t miss the way it took stock of the scars littering the bare skin of my right arm and the exposed side of my scalp. I wondered if he saw his own burn scars when he looked at them.

His eyes on me scalded like a physical touch, and I had to wrench my focus back to his words with a concerted effort.

“The room under the palace,” I thought out loud. “When I was in there, I couldn’t feel you either.”

In an instant, Erix was standing at the edge of the cell, his hands gripping the slats so hard I thought they would snap. “Who put you in there? Tell me their names, and I’ll make sure they never lock you away again.”

The part of me that had watched the horizon for him every day bloomed like a larrea flower during the rainy season at his words. But another part of me, the pit of anger in my gut he had introduced me to, boiled over.

“I asked them to do it, so I wouldn’t hurt anybody!” I snapped, baring my teeth at him. “The queen and I tried to break the blood glass to get the Heart, and it killed her. We tried to retrieve it ourselves because you weren’t here to help, and I had to be locked away so I wouldn’t tear down the whole city around me. And it all happened because you wouldn’t make peace. You could have come for me or sent a message, but instead you arrived with an army at your back. We could have gotten the Heart together, but you chose to lead the clans against Kelvadan after everything we fought for.”

My hands shook and lightning danced across my skin as my voice grew louder and louder. I wanted to snarl and snap at him like a wild animal, lashing out at the fact that he insisted on remaining my enemy after making me love him, and now he had the audacity to make me believe he cared. I hated myself for wanting to believe it.

His eyes blazed, and his voice dropped deathly low as he responded. “Every fiber of my being wanted to come to you—to tear apart the entire desert to get you back. But you were the one who made me want to be more—not a sword, but a man again. A leader. So, I tried to be that man and help the clans when they needed me most.

“And you were the one who sent back all my messages unanswered. Despite all of that, when I couldn’t feel you anymore, not even the walls carved by Kelvar himself could keep me from getting to you.”

Breath rushed out of me in a torrent even as a tiny fire sparked in my chest—this time the warmth of hope instead of an inferno of rage.

“You sent messages?” I asked, my voice dropping from my previous shouting to barely more than a whisper.

“I sent Zephyr again and again. And every time he came back with my letters unanswered, leaving me to believe that either the desert didn’t want you to receive my messages or you didn’t care to respond.” His voice was raw and sincere, and his gaze was so intense that it drew me forward. I took an unconscious step closer.

My mind raced. He could be lying, but there was no deception in his voice nor uncertainty in the feeling pulsing down the tether between us. Only the raw desperation that was so quintessentially Erix that it made my eyes burn.

“I thought—” My voice came out embarrassingly thin. Not the voice of a queen or a warrior but one of a woman whose heart had been on the edge of shattering for too long. “I thought you had abandoned me too.”

A wave of heat crashed through the room, and I was forced to squeeze my eyes shut against the power of it. When I opened my eyes again, Erix’s wooden cell was aflame, all but crumbling to ash as if it had been burning for hours.

Erix stepped through the disintegrated bars, tongues of flame brushing over him harmlessly as he closed the space between us in two large steps.

“I would sooner carve my own heart out than abandon you.” The words were a growl, rumbling in the scant inches between us.