Page 60 of Crown of the Dunes

Keera rested her hand on my back, her thumb rubbing gentle circles. I could only partially feel it as it passed over the ridges where my nerves had been burned away, but it was still enough to quiet the chittering of guilt in my mind. The guilt bit especially deep as I momentarily wished Lord Alasdar were not dead, as he always had the answers, and I had none.

I shuddered at the thought and lifted my head once more to meet Keera’s gaze.

“I hated him for even longer than I could admit to myself. But now that he’s gone, it’s as if I’m wandering in the dark.” The words burned in my throat as I said them.

Where I expected anger and hurt, Keera’s face only held sadness. “It seems we’ve both been left to find our own path forward, when nothing is quite as simple as we once thought. But Lord Alasdar seemed to always have a plan. He knew about the Heart and the altar at the ocean when nobody else did. Certainly, he must have known something about the blood glass.”

I clung to the logic in her words. “He had to have gained the knowledge somewhere.”

Keera’s mouth fell open as if a realization had dawned on her. “Before the Trials, I was reading Kelvar’s texts in the library downstairs. Surely, there must be some information on blood glass there if he and Alyx crafted their doors with it.”

“It could be a start,” I admitted, even as bile burned in my throat. There were certainly all sorts of texts and legends in that library, some I wished to burn to ash.

“I’ll start looking there when I have a chance,” she declared with a sharp nod. “Will you help?”

I hesitated. “I’m supposed to be a prisoner locked in a cell. Not shuffling through sacred archives.”

My throat tightened at the thought of spending hours in the library.

“As a prisoner, your schedule will be less busy than mine,” Keera pointed out. “And you clearly can get out of the room where you are being held. You could come at night when nobody knows you are here.”

Sands, I had already come this far.

“I will find a way through the blood glass,” I promised.

The claustrophobia always grew worse as dusk fell.

When the sun streamed through the high, narrow window in the room where I spent my days, I could almost close my eyes and pretend I sat in the shade of a date palm at an oasis. But as the shadows grew longer, the stone walls grew nearer. The chattering in my head grew more anxious and desperate as the sun neared the horizon, and I balled my fists until my fingernails bit into my palms as I watched the setting sun.

For the millionth time, I wished for my sword to sharpen, or some scrap of pain to distract me. Already, bruises littered my knuckles from punching the stone, trying to quiet the voices that made me want to scream with no activity available to me with which to let out their frenetic energy.

My only outlet lay in pouring over the tomes Keera had had delivered from the library in the tower, looking for some hidden secret about blood glass that had been lost to time. I had already been through the dozen or so books and scrolls she had brought me several times with nothing to show for it, only worsening my frustration.

I had surrendered to be close to Keera, but to keep her rule secure, I had to be a prisoner. I couldn’t risk being seen as an alternative if the people of Kelvadan grew discontent—something they would be wont to do in a time of famine and war.

The only way I could be close to her was in my mind.

With a swelling feeling of guilt leaving a bitter taste on my tongue, I let my eyes drift shut and reached down the tether that led from the base of my skull straight to the center of her being. I hated doing this when she was likely busy with some important matter. I knew how hard it was to try to hold a coherent conversation while trying to ignore voices invading your consciousness.

But I needed to feel Keera for just a moment.

As soon as the threads of my magic touched against the wild flow of her power, it jolted, as if she hadn’t expected me. It didn’t immediately part to let me tangle in her consciousness as I wished it would, the cooling current of her magic washing over me to quiet the rising storm that was making my clenched fists begin to shake.

I prodded again at the tether—a phenomenon I had also looked for other descriptions of in the tomes I read to no avail—and finally a lick of her power jumped against mine, giving me a sense of where she was and what she was doing.

She wasn’t alone.

She was speaking to somebody, and I sensed a warm flush of embarrassed pride wash through her magic.

Keera was talking to a man. As I pushed against her consciousness with no regard for how distracting it must be, I got the vaguest sense of easy charm and windswept hair. He was flirting with her.

Mine.

The thought came with such vehemence that it almost brought me to my knees. I needed everybody to know in no uncertain terms that Keera belonged to me. But nobody could know, and there lay the crux of my anger.

My eyes snapped open to the sight of impenetrable gray stone just a foot from my nose, and my rage boiled over at the sight of familiar walls—of my cage. With a roar that cracked in my dry throat, I lashed out, driving my fist into the wall.

The wall shook with the force of my blow, causing a deep rumbling sound. But it did not abate after a few seconds, morphing into the roll of thunder in the distance and growing closer by the second. The hairs on my arm lifted as sparks danced across my skin, warning of incoming lightning.