Page 61 of Crown of the Dunes

I had been in the city less than a fortnight, and already the uncontrolled storms of my youth overwhelmed me. A grunt of desperate frustration escaped me as I fell to my knees, the bruising force of them on the unforgiving floor grounding me enough to keep the lightning in check.

But it wasn’t enough.

I needed Keera’s touch. I needed wind in my hair and Alza beneath me. I needed Lord Alasdar to burn another brand into my back.

The last semblance of my control frayed in my grip at the last thought as the door banged open. Cool hands landed on my face, and I blinked away the red haze of rage to see Keera’s concerned eyes set deep beneath her furrowed brows.

“Erix,” she said, her voice clear and exquisitely real, solid enough to overcome the constant chattering that died in my skull at her touch.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, panting as if I had run a long distance.

“You didn’t hurt anybody,” she said, shaking her head in reassurance. She knew what it was like to fear the consequences of feeling anything too strongly.

It was my turn to shake my head, my cheeks brushing against her callused palms as I did. “You shouldn’t have to run off to keep your prisoner from tearing the palace from the mountainside like this.”

She sat back on her heels, kneeling before me and finally letting her hands drop into her lap. I was no longer at risk of destroying anything, but I still wished she would keep touching me. Still, I was sure guards lingered around the corner, and it would be better for them to not see us act so intimately.

“Well, what set it off?” Keera twisted the end of her embroidered purple sash tightly between her fingers.

I swallowed and shut my eyes. “These walls. The mountain,” I started before hesitating. “And when I reached out I… felt you talking to somebody.”

Keera bit her lips, and I couldn’t decipher her expression. “Prince Calix,” she said. “He’s the ambassador from Viltov. He’s a friend.”

My upper lip started to pull back in a snarl, and it took every ounce of control I had earned through years of training to school my face back to neutrality. As she said the word “friend”, I heard how her tone softened with something akin to reverence. To somebody who had nobody for so long, friendship was sacred, and I could not take that from her.

I just wished the friend were not a handsome prince.

“I—Kelvadan needs friends right now,” she echoed my sentiment.

I squeezed my eyes more tightly closed to avoid seeing the age-old loneliness in her eyes, so deep and bottomless that it cracked my heart. I felt it anyway down the tether between us and echoed my own back to her.

“I can keep myself under control,” I promised, finally opening my eyes to take her in.

In her finely crafted sash and loose pants, she looked so far from the grubby exile I had found in the desert. She even wore a golden band on her arm and a bangle on one wrist. But the determined set of her jaw and the challenging furrow between her brows was the same as ever—my feral little fighter.

“I know how you would control yourself,” Keera responded, her voice quiet but hard, “And I won’t have it.”

My jaw clenched. She was right—I had planned to turn to pain to keep myself from hurting others.

“You can’t stay in this cell,” she said. “Getting outside will help. And horses. You can help in the stables,” Keera thought out loud.

I shook my head, even as just the thought of brushing Alza soothed something within me. I had once confided in her that helping my father with his duties as horse master had been one of the only things to bring me peace as a child.

“I can’t let myself be a cause for people to rally around,” I insisted.

Keera lifted her chin. “And you won’t be. Your mother often told me that what people think is more important than what is true. And we will make them think that you are no threat to me, and I am letting you walk around more freely because you support my rule.”

“I do support you,” I said automatically.

“Then it won’t be an issue.” She nodded sharply, as if that settled the matter, before her eyes darted to the precarious pile of books and scrolls on the small table in the corner.

“And… it will give you more time to figure out how to get the Heart. We’re running out of time.”

My own heart stuttered as her words. “What do you mean?”

“That’s why I was speaking to Prince Calix,” she admitted, and I grit my teeth against another flare of jealousy. “I was asking if he had heard back from his father yet about getting our people grain. We’re already rationing tightly and…” She trailed off, but not before I sensed the tremor in her voice.

“Every night. I’ll spend every night searching the library for a way past the blood glass,” I promised.