Page 87 of Crown of the Dunes

In a matter of minutes, the short hairs that escaped my braid were plastered to my face and neck by a sheen of sweat, and my heart pounded against my rib cage. As I ran up and down the field, helping Dhara’s team drive the ball toward the arched palm branches that served as our goal, I found myself feeling lighter, despite how heavily my breaths heaved in my lungs.

One rider whacked the ball in my direction. I sprinted toward it, but another dark silhouette barreled in from the left, trying to intercept it.

Instead of trying to evade him, I lowered my shoulder and rammed straight into Erix’s diaphragm. His breath flew from his chest with a grunt, but he didn’t relent. I managed to beat him to the ball by the skin of my teeth, and I turned my back to him using the curved end of my stick to bat it away from his own as he wrapped himself around me.

As he did, the metal of his mask brushed against my cheek, cool against my skin that burned with exertion.

“So, this is how you learned to fight like an angry caracal,” he growled in my ear.

I couldn’t help the curl of my lips, somewhere between a grin and bared teeth. My only response was to throw my elbow back, catching him under the ribs. He swore and retreated just a few inches, giving me just enough room to bat the ball toward another rider who ran past.

We broke apart, both charging down the field to the far goal. The rider from Dhara’s team crashed through the opposition, cutting one down with a sharp blow of his stick to her shin, and shouldering another out of the way.

Lord Elion charged in from the opposite side of the field, on track to intercept him just before he reached his destination. I cried out wordlessly as I pumped my arms wildly, stick forgotten in my hand as I forced my legs to carry me faster.

My thighs screamed, but I ignored it as I launched myself into the air. I crashed into Lord Elion at full speed, catching him on his blind side. The force of my tackle carried us both to the ground, and we rolled in a tangle of limbs and sticks. A muffled crunch sounded as we skidded to a stop in the sands, Elion on his front beneath me.

I pushed up onto my hands, only for horror to rise in my throat as I spotted blood staining the sand next to Lord Elion’s face. He groaned as I scrabbled backward. With my weight no longer bearing him down into the earth, he rolled over to reveal blood dripping from an already swollen nose. It must have landed on the stick that had somehow ended up beneath us in our tumultuous fall.

As the adrenaline of the game faded, dread blossomed behind my sternum. Breaking the nose of a clan lord didn’t seem like a queenly peace keeping tactic.

It certainly wasn’t what Ginevra would have done.

Elion raised his fingers to his upper lip, wiping away the blood there before holding them in front of his eyes to examine.

I bit my lips, waiting for his anger.

Footsteps crunched in the sand behind me, and a shadow fell over us.

Elion looked up at the figure standing behind us and grunted with wry amusement. “I can see why you like her, Lord Viper. She has the spirit of the desert in her as much as you do.”

The breath I had been holding rushed out of me, and I pushed to my feet before reaching a hand down to Elion. He grasped my forearm and let me haul him to his feet. He didn’t let go immediately, his grip tight on mine.

“Fight for the desert—the whole desert—as fiercely as you play kaman, and you will have no issues from Clan Tibel.”

Blood dripped over his lips into his close-cropped beard, painting a fierce picture of a lord who wouldn’t hesitate to wage war for his clan if he deemed it necessary. It drove home the meaning in his words: Peace between these clans and Kelvadan would only last as long as I used my power to heal the desert.

I lowered my chin in understanding, and he turned away, marching off the field and motioning for a rider to fetch him a cloth to mop away the blood.

Erix’s shoulder brushed against mine as he leaned forward to murmur in my ear.

“Maybe we should call it a night before you break any more bones.”

Chapter twenty-two

Erix

The tent Clan Otush had dug up for us was small—not much bigger than the sparse one I had lived in all my years with Clan Katal, and just wide enough for Keera and me to lay our sleeping mats side by side and still have room for our packs in the corners.

I sat cross-legged on mine and reached for my saber, fishing my whet stone from my pack in a set of motions so practiced they were almost like breathing. Keera sat across from me, sprawled out and leaning back on her elbows as she watched me unsheathe Kelvar’s saber and lay it across my lap.

She had handed it to me as soon as she had gotten her own weapon back, and I had to admit I was grateful to have it in hand again. She was the only one I would gladly give my blade to.

Slowly, I ran the stone down the long, curved edge of the blade. The rasp of metal that sang out through the still night air in the tent was like the release of a breath I had been holding for too long.

At first, being outside the walls of Kelvadan had calmed me—made me wonder if I had been imagining the voices in my head growing louder over the past weeks. But they had crept back in as we rode. Somehow, these four clans’ faith in my ability to restore the desert increased their weight in my skull, as if the desert herself said “See? You must undo your ancestor’s mistakes and fight against his weakness.”

Now, in the familiar setting of an encampment with the familiar weight of a mask on my face, I reached for old habits to fight the rising tide of madness.