Page 48 of Crown of the Dunes

I raised my head to meet Erix’s eyes, finding them screwed shut. Gently, I wrapped my arms around him. Through his thin sleeping shirt, I could trace my fingers over the neat lines of scars marching across the back of his shoulders.

“You haven’t failed.” I held him as if I could somehow force the brokenness I felt in his words back into wholeness.

“I still might,” he insisted. “I wonder if Kelvar wanted to become a king when he pulled this city from the mountain. Or if he was just thinking of Alyx when he did it.”

I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “He still made a great king.”

“No.” He shook his head violently. “He ripped this desert apart. But Alyx… they say Alyx was a great queen.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Alyx was a healer. I only know how to destroy.”

A humorless laugh rumbled in his chest. “Two warriors, left to make peace. The desert has a sense of humor with her wrath.”

“There might still be a time for war,” I said, with a sinking feeling of dread.

I woke suddenly to the thin light of dawn falling across my pillow, and the heaviness in my belly only deepened. Today was the queen’s funeral.

Chapter twelve

Erix

Apounding on the door to my sparse chambers startled me from my pacing.

Twelve steps from the window to the door, eight steps to the foot of the bed, ten steps back to the window. Over and over, I had walked the route in the past two days. My mind had traversed the same paths over and over again as well. It bounced between the mind-numbing need to see Keera—whom I could feel nearby but hadn’t seen in two days—and melancholy wondering about what came next.

Just like Keera, the Heart was so close yet so far away—in the palace but behind an impenetrable wall. I could have neither of the things I wanted while I was a prisoner. And I was a prisoner because I had surrendered. And I had surrendered so I could be close to Keera. So, my brain turned in circles, and I paced. I was surprised I hadn’t worn a path in the floor.

The pristine stone of Kelvadan never changed. Not like the ever-shifting sands of the dunes, the landscape remaking itself for each traveler that passed.

The pounding came again, and I made a sound of frustration in my throat.

“You know I can’t open it,” I called through the wooden door.

It wasn’t entirely true. I could probably kick it down if I tried, but I didn’t want to give the archons more reasons to want me executed. Keera was likely struggling with them enough as it was.

A key turned in the lock with a metallic scrape. The door swung open with enough force to slam into the wall behind it.

“I was just making sure you were decent. Or have you forgotten all your manners during your time with the clans?” Aderyn stood on the threshold, arms folded across her chest, and her gaze piercing as the line of daggers strapped across her chest.

A moment of shock overtook me before the accusation in her tone made me curl my upper lip to show her my teeth. “Just because the clans’ code of honor is different than the city’s doesn’t mean we don’t have one.”

“I don’t hold with any ‘code’ that condones going to war against your own family,” Aderyn hissed.

“Well then it’s a good thing I didn’t, because the queen was dead by the time I got here.”

Aderyn’s gaze grew so cold, I imagined I could hear the cracking of ice behind her eyes. I breathed heavily, as if I had been fighting her physically instead of just exchanging a few barbs.

The voices in my head chattered at me excitedly, as if they were hoping it would come to blows after so many hours of inactivity. Instead, I raised a hand to my chest and raked my fingers across the scarred handprint on my chest, using my nails to try to draw forth enough pain to ground me. It was too well healed and my fingernails too short to do much good, but I leashed my magic through sheer force of will.

“Did you come here just to yell at me?” I asked.

Aderyn did very few things without purpose, but something of the steadfast demeanor I remembered from her seemed to be missing. We had only exchanged a handful of sentences and already seemed ready to tear each other’s throats out. As one of the few people in the city I had any sort of prior relationship with, it did not bode well for my continued stay in Kelvadan.

“I didn’t.” The anger had drained from Aderyn’s tone, which was now clipped and businesslike. “You’re coming with me.” She unfolded her arms, revealing a pair of manacles clutched in her hands.

I eyed them warily as I asked, “Where?”

Aderyn’s lips twisted for a moment. “Today is your mother’s funeral. She would want you to be there.”