Page 90 of Crown of the Dunes

I punctuated each statement with a punishing thrust, making Keera throw her head back and cry out.

“Sands, Erix,” she breathed.

She might have said more, but I couldn’t hear it over the rushing of blood and magic in my ears as I drove into her harder. Keera threw her arms around me, her nails digging into my shoulder blades as I thrust faster.

All semblance of rational thought escaped me as my hips slammed against hers. I plunged into her one final time as the threads of magic snapped taut around us, and I buried my face in her neck as my release barreled through me, clawing up my spine and out my lips forcefully enough I feared I might breathe fire.

Keera shuddered and gasped in my arms, as magic poured off her skin in waves, strong enough to make the lantern in the corner sputter and die. In the darkness, the only noise was our ragged breaths as we panted in unison.

Carefully, I rolled over, bringing Keera with me and pulling her into my chest. We laid there in satisfied silence for long minutes, the bond between us humming gently.

Keera’s breath evened out, and she was quiet for so long, I thought she might have drifted off to sleep in my arms. I bent to press a kiss to the top of her head when she startled me by speaking.

“What if I’m not meant to be queen? Then what? Would you be the king if that was what was needed?” She spoke the words into my chest.

My arms tightened around her. I opened my mouth, ready to say I would be what she needed me to be, but a cold tendril of fear worked its way into the warm haze of contentedness that blanketed me—a single whisper of the desert in my mind, taunting me with the thought of repeating history, when I was supposed to be undoing the sins of the past.

I could not stop loving Keera any more than I could stop breathing, but I would not let myself follow Kelvar’s footsteps in dooming the desert, even as I felt myself being pushed down the same path as him at every turn.

“You will not fail,” I promised. “I will fight and kill and do everything in my power to see that you do not.”

It was not an answer to Keera’s question, but it was a promise I would die to keep. For it seemed easier to die than to be a king.

The sun was not fully risen over the horizon as we rode away from the encampment. Lord Dhara led the way on her dun gelding as Keera and I rode side by side behind her.

I flexed my gloved hands where they rested on my thighs, and I didn’t miss the way Keera’s gaze flicked to them briefly before a flush darkened her cheeks. While usually I reveled in her shamelessness, I couldn’t help the dark possessiveness that reared its head at knowing she grew flustered thinking about how these gloves had touched her last night. I might have to start wearing them more often again.

We rode for two days.

Lord Dhara was a pleasant riding companion. Even Daiti, who liked no one, seemed to tolerate her presence as we crossed the ever-changing sands. She only spared Keera and me a cursory glance when we rolled out our sleeping mats side by side, close enough that I could interlace my fingers with Keera’s as she slept.

As night began to fall on the second day, I found myself lifting my face to catch the wind, which carried a familiar scent on it: wood smoke, like the bonfires that dotted every clan’s encampment.

The others smelled it just as I did, and we all signaled our mounts to halt.

“We must be close,” said Dhara. “Do you know where in the encampment the artifacts you seek may be?”

I grimaced, letting Lord Dhara see the expression, as I had ridden the past two days without my mask. I had worn it with the clans to be the symbol that Dhara and Elion told me the riders needed, but after weeks in Kelvadan without it, it grated to wear it when it was not necessary.

“Lord Alasdar would have kept them in his chests in his tent. If they are still with Clan Katal, then they are likely in the lord’s tent,” I said.

“Izumi’s tent.” Dhara sighed in resignation. “It will be in the center of the encampment, meaning we will have to sneak past four whole clans to get to it.”

“We could create a distraction,” Keera suggested.

“It would have to be enormous to distract the whole encampment,” Dhara pointed out.

Keera shrugged. “I seem to have a way of causing rather large disturbances.”

I considered her for a long moment. “I can shield Dhara and myself from some unfriendly eyes if you draw the majority of the attention, but we cannot afford for you to get caught. Izumi will recognize you, and she is consumed by her anger and her need to destroy Kelvadan. She will want you dead.”

“She would want any of us dead if we were caught.” Lord Dhara’s tone was flat.

“I won’t be caught.” Keera lifted her chin, looking exactly like the exile that had dared me to slit her throat at a faraway oasis. “I spent ten years slipping in and out of encampments unnoticed to take what I needed. They won’t even know what caused the disturbance.”

A smile tugged at my lips, despite the direness of the situation. We needed the missing pages of Kelvar’s journal to uncover what Lord Alasdar had known about restoring the Heart of the Desert. The weight of the responsibility lay heavy on me, and the whispers chattering in my skull threatened to carry me away on their unending tide, as if they tried to impress on me the importance of our mission. With Keera’s fierce determination bolstering me though, I was able to keep the madness at bay.

“I’ll set out for the encampment first,” Keera said. “Wait five minutes, and then follow me.”