Page 8 of Crown of the Dunes

Of course, my prior dreams of Keera had been more than just nighttime imaginings.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing for just a moment of peace.

I almost wished that I could go to Lord Alasdar’s tent and find him sitting there, ready to brand a fresh line into my back. The burning of fire would be less painful than my nightmares, which taunted me with perversions of my purpose.

If Lord Alasdar was there, he would lift the burden of leadership that I had run from my whole life but somehow seemed to find myself yoked with anyway. He would be responsible for the death and destruction sweeping across the desert, and I could return to being an instrument for his machinations.

But he would have ripped out the heart of any who opposed him—even Keera.

If I missed a monster like him, what did that make me?

Another shudder wracked my body as I heaved again and again, until unconsciousness finally claimed me.

Chapter three

Keera

The handle of the cane bit heavily into my palm as I leaned my weight on it, forcing my weakened right leg to lever me up another stone step in the winding staircase. If Aderyn, who walked behind me, was impatient with my pace, she didn’t say so.

In fact, she had said very little since she came to fetch me, helping me dress gently but quickly. She had brought me loose pants and a belted vest. It was the most of my own body I had seen in weeks of being dressed in the shapeless, shift-like garments provided by the infirmary.

As Aderyn lifted the gown over my head, my gaze flickered down over my skin, and a lump rose in my throat. The shadows of burns and blisters littered one side of my body, healed, and less severely scarred than they might have been, although they would never truly leave me. With the amount of my body that they covered, it was clear that I would be dead if not for the efforts of Erix.

And the queen.

My hands shook as Aderyn held up a mirror and offered me a piece of string to tie my hair back with. The right side of my scalp remained smooth where the lava wyrm’s flesh had burnt my hair away. With a heavy sigh, I pushed the remainder of my hair to the left and braided it away from my face along the side of my head.

As I took the tie from Aderyn to hold the end in place, she did not smile, but she gave me an approving nod. While fully shaven heads, like hers, were common among the clans—convenient for both combat and keeping cool—partially shaved heads were also a popular clan style, and I had braided my hair like many riders with such a style would.

I stared at my reflection and frowned at the warrior who stared back at me. My deep-set eyes and upturned nose were accentuated by the hollowness of my cheeks and the harshness of my new hairstyle. The mantle of the hero of Kelvadan, who had saved them from Lord Alasdar, sat heavier on me at the sight. The remarkably scarless right side of my face—aside from the absence of hair—pressed the burden on me even more heavily. Guilt made the weight of responsibility a burden to carry—guilt that I still craved the touch of one who would see Kelvadan fall and fear that I would fail them still.

Some of that weight abated in the face of curiosity at Aderyn’s reticence. While she was never one for unnecessary chatter—likely part of why I had grown comfortable in her home so quickly—we had never been prone to this thick of a silence.

As we climbed the stairs, I glanced back over my shoulder quickly, finding her gaze darting over the passages that lead off to our left and right, as if watching for a threat. I frowned and continued my climb.

Finally, to the relief of the quivering muscles in my thighs, we crested the last flight of stairs to the queen’s private terrace. She sat at a small metal table, as she had when she waited for me to join her for lessons in controlling my magic. The sight warmed my chest with comfortable familiarity. As I hobbled closer though, that warmth was chased away by an icy horror that the rising heat of the morning sun did nothing to dispel.

The queen hunched in a wheeled chair, accentuating her slight frame. While she had always appeared petite and never pretended to be in her youth, the strength and pride that normally kept her chin up and her eyes bright had fled. Her head was bent over, and she stared at where her hands were folded in her lap. More gray hairs than I remembered were woven into her twisted braid.

My cane rapped against the stone, and her gaze snapped up. Despite the depth of the lines around her eyes, they held a smile as she caught sight of me.

I braced myself for a wave of overwhelming magic and feeling at the sight of her—but it never came.

The night before, I had laid awake, trying to pick apart my feelings about my coming audience with the queen. They had remained as tightly woven and unable to be unraveled as Neven’s finest cloth.

In the desert with Erix, I had been overcome with anger at what she and Kaius had done to their son. Now, back within the walls of Kelvadan though, everything that had been so clear became murky, and the rage in my belly remained dormant.

Slowly, I crossed the courtyard and lowered myself into the chair across from her. I extended my right leg out in front of me as I did so, still stiff after so much immobilization.

I settled myself as comfortably as I could, and the queen smiled wryly, as if intimating “What a pair we make.”

We stared in silence for a moment before a throat clearing at the doorway caught our attention. I turned to where Aderyn hovered.

“I have some duties to attend to,” she said, her intention in giving us some privacy clear.

With that, she withdrew, and Queen Ginevra and I were alone on the terrace. I looked back at her, but her gaze had drifted over the edge of the railing. Instead of looking out over the horizon though, she looked down at the stacked tiers of the city below us, spreading out like the ripples in an oasis disturbed by a thrown pebble.

“It was the lyra leaf tea,” she started without preamble.