Page 97 of Crown of the Dunes

Chapter twenty-four

Erix

“Marriage.”

The word was spoken in my own voice, but it sounded like it was being shouted at from the end of a very long tunnel. Much closer and more immediate was the screaming in my head. I reached up and covered my ears, like that might help, but the voices were inside my skull, and try as I might, I couldn’t rip them out.

Cool fingers closed around my wrists and pulled my hands away from my head. The overwhelming chattering abated enough for me to focus on Keera’s eyes, which shone overbright in the evening light as we stood on her balcony. A cool breeze lifted the night air, but I could barely feel its gentle caress as my blood boiled.

“It’s how his people secure alliances,” she said.

“What…” I started to choke on my words, and I forced myself to take a long, deep breath through my nose. As I did, I pulled on the tangled web of power at the base of my skull, trying to let it flow away from me like I did when I meditated. However, it was as if somebody had coated the fibers with honey, and they stuck together. I only managed to pull the knot taut.

“What did you tell him?” I managed to grit out.

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Keera said.

“So, you’re not going to marry him?” I wanted to feel relief, but tension and uncertainty still shivered down the tether in my head.

Keera’s silence was too long. I tried to pull my wrists from her grasp, but she resisted.

“I don’t want to,” she finally said. Her voice was raw, but the truth there was unmistakable. “The archons think I should consider it, though.”

“Damn the archons and their opinions to the fiery sands,” I spat. “What do you think?”

Keera stared at me, her eyes glittering and every line in her face written with pain. Even as the deepening dusk cast the shadows of her doubt darker, I saw a steely strength behind her gaze. It was the strength of the exile that had challenged me—dared me to take her life, bringing me to my knees even when I was the one holding a sword to her throat.

“I think that I promised I would do everything in my power to help the people of Kelvadan. Queen Ginevra”—Keera’s voice wavered, but she soldiered on—“once told me that to be queen was to murder the woman inside you again and again. I didn’t understand how she did it at the time, but I see now what she meant.”

My heart sank, and the voices in my head chattered, but I was able to pull away from them in favor of focusing on the way Keera’s strong visage cracked—just like the deep crack I had found rent into the floor of the palace throne room by her passion.

Her voice was quiet, but somehow every word hit me like a punch in the gut as she murmured, “I can’t let them starve. I know what it is to watch yourself waste away, and I can’t do that to these people.”

And there it was. Just the day before, I had promised her I would never let her go hungry, and already I wanted her to turn away from the path to bring her people the food they needed. But I had also already given everything to be by her side.

“There is more than one way to feed your people,” I said. “What of restoring the Heart? Or if the irrigation system is repaired, the grain fields may once again be salvaged.”

“We don’t have much time,” she admitted.

“How little time?” I asked, my brain already whirring. Even today, I had been out in the field, the skin on the back of my neck blistering with sunburn as I pulled at the threads that held the desert together to push and pull the boulders that had fallen in the avalanche.

Keera screwed up her face in despair. “A few weeks at most,” she admitted. “Not enough time to restore the Heart, even if we did get to it in time.”

“Give me two weeks,” I begged. “Two weeks to fix the irrigation before you give Prince Calix your answer.”

Finally, she released my wrists from her grasp and laid her palms flat on my chest. “I promise. I’ll give you as long as I possibly can.”

She stepped closer to me, and despite the magic still dancing under my skin, I wrapped my arms around her. I tightened my grasp, as if I could pull her close enough to me that I could never be parted from her again.

“I will do what I must to save the people of Kelvadan, but I refuse to lose you,” she admitted. “We were nearly torn apart once, and even now we can only be together behind closed doors, yet we have still held on to each other. We can find a way through this.”

I prayed to the sands that she was right, but as I set my chin on the top of her head and stared at the moon hanging low in the sky, a newfound dread settled deep in my bones.

The splash of cold water on my face made me gasp as it contrasted with the heat of my skin. After nearly twelve hours laboring away under the beating sun, I felt like a dried-out husk, ready to collapse where I stood. My only consolation was that the heavy ache in my muscles and the blistering of my sunburn were small balms against the growing chattering in my head.

Using my magic to aid the Kelvadan engineers in fixing the irrigation systems stretched and exercised the power that paced under my skin like a caged animal. But every night, I had a harder time stuffing it back into the confines of my skull.

I looked up from the basin, grasping the sides of the small stand it stood on with each hand as I met my own eyes in the mirror. They seemed hollow and angry, and I worked to soften the clench of my jaw.