Page 103 of Heart of the Desert

Lord Elion waved us over, and cold concern washed over me.

“You’re needed in the healing tent. Both of you.”

“Dhara?” Keera’s tone echoed my own worries.

“She’s awake,” Lord Elion assured. “And we’re getting married.”

Chapter thirty-six

Keera

The small tent was crowded, even though only eight of us were present. I stood close enough to the pitched canvas wall that I had to duck my head to avoid bumping it.

Dhara sat on a sleeping mat in the center, propped up by cushions but still looking supremely uncomfortable. Her dark brows were knit together with pain, and a sheen of sweat coated her skin. Thick swatches of bandages were wrapped around her middle, and she was pale with cracked lips. But the fire in her eyes was even brighter than I remembered it—as if it had intensified to compensate for the weakened state of her body.

Elion kneeled in the sand next to her, while a collection of the bravest people in the desert gathered around: Badha and Izumi, Aderyn and Neven, Erix and I.

Elion offered a dagger hilt-first to Dhara, and she took it in a trembling hand. My eyes burned at seeing her so weakened yet utterly determined. She drew the blade decisively across the palm of her hand, letting the blood well up before dripping onto the blankets below. She didn’t seem to care—it wasn’t the first blood to adorn them.

Elion took the blade back and did the same, before sticking the knife into the ground and reaching out. As they clasped hands and their blood mixed, the flows and eddies of magic in the air shivered. It was as if it wanted to celebrate the union and the offering of two bloods made one but couldn’t quite manage it in its broken-hearted state.

I echoed the sentiment as I felt myself smile although my throat was still tight. The scar on my own palm tingled.

Dhara spoke her promises first, her voice hoarse. “I vow to fight by your side with all my fire and all my strength until all my blood is spilled and my last breath leaves my body.” Her solemn expression softened with a hint of mischief. “And I want everybody assembled here to know that I actually didn’t lose count. I killed forty-seven enemies yesterday.”

I exhaled heavily through my nose in place of a laugh. Two more than Elion. She had won the bet after all.

Elion smiled, and despite the direness of the situation, the expression was bright as the sun, as if he couldn’t imagine his luck at marrying Dhara even in such circumstances. “And I promise you that I would happily give you command of all that I have and all that I am, as long as I get to ride by your side. I love you in my very bones, and I will ride to my death a happy man knowing that you are my wife.”

The heaviness returned to the room with the force of a hammer hitting an anvil. We would ride to whatever doom awaited us tomorrow. Even if we were victorious, many would never return.

And if we failed…

It wouldn’t be long until the desert was truly uninhabitable, and all people of all clans would be lost.

That was tomorrow’s battle though. In the gathering twilight, Elion leaned forward and pressed his lips gently to Dhara’s. He couldn’t jostle her too much with her wounds, but I saw tears glimmering on her long, dark lashes.

“If I do not return, I hope you will do what you can to protect the women and children of my clan from whatever fate awaits the desert,” Elion murmured to her after they separated.

“All those that cannot fight and will stay behind will look to you in our absence,” I pointed out.

Dhara nodded. “All my life I’ve fought, and now the greatest challenge I have ever faced will be staying behind while others do the fighting for me.”

“It’s because you’re such a competent rider that the desert had to lay you a different challenge,” Badha said.

Dhara let out a humorless laugh that quickly turned into a gasp of pain as she jostled her wound. Elion reached out to support her shoulders, laying her back down gently. She let out a noise of pain and Elion reached out to soothe her. The rest of us turned away and filed out, knowing how much it pained Dhara to have others see her this way. She had let Elion past her prickly exterior, and I was glad that they would at least find comfort in each other.

They needed rest now, and so did we.

We all paused outside the healers’ tent as if waiting to say something, but words didn’t come. Everything felt too much and simultaneously not enough on the eve of such a battle. After a moment, we all broke off and headed in the direction of our separate tents. Erix slid his hand into mine as we walked, and I squeezed it tightly.

While we both had gotten more comfortable speaking since our first journey together, tonight, we let the quiet that had so often been a comfort between us stretch. As we stepped into our tent, it filled the space with all the promises we could not speak. The promises that it would all be all right, and that the ones we loved would survive the coming days unharmed.

In the quiet of our shelter, Erix looked at me with silver eyes like molten stars, and I let my actions speak for me. I stepped into his space, slowly and intentionally. As I tilted my face up to his, he obligingly lowered his lips to meet mine. My hands drifted up to lay flat on his chest as his fingers curled around my hips, pressing us flush together.

The heat between us still burned, but tonight, it wasn’t the white-hot flash of lightning but the low and steady fire that would keep you warm all night long. It dripped through my veins like honey as Erix devoured my mouth with the singular focus of a drowning man seeking air.

My head spun by the time I managed to gain enough focus to pull away from his kiss. His lips sought out my throat, but I held him back with a hand on his firm chest. I didn’t want to be distracted by the sensations he pulled from me as I undressed him.