Page 9 of Crown of the Dunes

“…the tea?”

“I had become so reliant on it, that I didn’t even realize it was poisoning me slowly. It was safe in small doses, but it turns out decades of constant use takes its toll.” Her voice was even. Resigned. “It was only when I stopped and reached for the desert’s magic to heal you that it became clear what I had done.”

My voice came out raspy and broken, just like it had when I first started speaking again after years in exile. “I’m sorry.”

She lifted her gaze from the city below me, examining my face.

“I’m just glad I still managed to save you some pain and scarring.” Her expression, which had been stoic, fell. “After all, I feel responsible for what happened.”

“Responsible?” Where words had come slowly before, now she shocked the question out of me.

“The Viper—Erix—my… my son. He was the one who lured you away after I wouldn’t send help to the clans. Then he led you to Lord Alasdar to torture you like this. If I hadn’t failed him, or if I had been able to send riders to help face the lava wyrm…”

I opened my mouth as she trailed off, but words wouldn’t come. The anger I had expected to feel at Queen Ginevra now rose up to choke me. It wanted to pour out of me in torrents—rage at the way a mother had feared her son so much that she drove him away, just like my parents had. It bubbled hot and potent in my belly.

But the look in the queen’s eyes gave me pause, putting a stopper on my anger, leaving me unfulfilled and frustrated. An emotion that had seemed raw and simple in the wilds became another thing complicated in this Great City.

“Erix isn’t responsible for what happened to me,” I finally bit out. “And you still have a chance to set all of this right.”

As I recounted the tale of our battle with the lava wyrm and what Erix had told me about the Heart of the Desert, the queen’s gaze hardened, calculations clearly taking place behind her eyes despite the exhaustion in every line of her face.

“If we can just get into Kelvar and Alyx’s rooms, we can restore the Heart and stop the destruction in the desert—prevent this war,” I explained emphatically.

The queen did not dismiss my claims, but neither did she jump at the information like I thought she would. “How do we know this wasn’t just another one of Lord Alasdar’s manipulations of Erix?”

I hesitated, grasping for the answer that seemed to evade words. It was a question I had already asked myself several times. “Don’t you feel it? The way the air is wilder than it used to be, as if lightning might strike at any moment? Something has unbalanced the magic of the desert. It would explain why the monsters rise again, like the lava wyrm that attacked Clan Otush.”

The queen grimaced. “The crops in the irrigated lands around the city have been failing, and the herds grow thinner and more ragged by the day.”

“Surely you can’t dismiss the story out of hand,” I pressed. “We need to break into the tower and see if it’s true. It’s the only way to avoid a war.”

The queen sighed heavily. “Will it though? Does anybody besides you and Erix know about the Heart?”

I blinked and shook my head. “Lord Alasdar kept it a secret from the other Lords. He didn’t want anybody trying to steal the Heart for their own gain.”

The line of the queen’s mouth hardened. “I told you once that what people believe is often more important than what is actually true. If the riders of the clans truly think that destroying Kelvadan is the way to solve their plight, working to restore the Heart won’t stop their attack. Desperation blinds people to reason.”

The queen’s words swirled in my head, throwing stones into the clear flow of logic in my mind. As always, the realities of the situation were more nuanced than I had given them credit for, and Queen Ginevra picked up on the complications more easily than I.

“Aderyn told me Erix took charge of the combined clans after Lord Alasdar’s death,” I argued. “He will want to broker peace. He knows about the Heart.”

The queen sat up straighter, some of the regal elegance that had been absent in her posture returning at the mention of Erix.

“The spy that sent us that information has also sent word that the nine clans are preparing to mount a siege. Although we haven’t heard from him since right after our attack on the encampments, I believe The Viper has every intention of following through on Lord Alasdar’s plan. Our failed attack has likely only added fuel to the clans’ ire.”

Fire, dampened up until now by the queen’s guilt, now burst forth and flooded my veins at the use of Erix’s former title.

“Don’t call him that,” I gritted out between my teeth.

Sadness creeped into the queen’s eyes, but her posture did not soften. “I call him that because that’s what he is choosing to be. I failed my son. I will not fail my people. I will not leave this city vulnerable because I can’t face the fact that I shattered my son so thoroughly that he wants to watch his home crumble to the ground.”

“He doesn’t want that,” I said, but my voice was thin and reedy. Even as I said it, a sickening doubt twisted in my stomach. There were things about Erix I knew for certain—that he cared for the desert. That he would destroy himself to set things right. That he was a man with a living, beating heart under the impenetrable metal mask.

But even as I had come to believe that we fought on the same side—that we could turn away from Lord Alasdar and restore the Heart ourselves—he had remained adamant in his hatred of Kelvadan.

“If he had wanted to make peace, he would have sent word by now. You don’t know him like I do,” the queen insisted, although her tone was gentle.

I wanted to argue. I did. That his magic had flowed so certainly inside mine that I was sure we were one and the same. But looking into Queen Ginevra’s regal gaze, doubt overcame me.