Page 12 of Heart of the Desert

The creature went limp, a hole blasted straight through its chest. The heat of the fiery blast bloomed across my face, just on this side of pain from the force with which Erix had unleashed his magic. I shoved the sichat’s lifeless body off me but found myself all but pinned to the ground by the force of the unrestrained storm now howling around me, just weakened by the meager shelter of the dune. I squeezed my eyes shut, covering my face with my arms and praying it would pass quickly.

Then, a solid form covered me, its warm weight at odds with the harshness of our surroundings. Erix sheltered my body with his, bracing his elbows on either side of my head as he hunched over me. I tucked my forehead into his chest and coughed violently, trying to expel the grit I had already swallowed in my brief seconds of exposure.

In the short moment of reprieve, I tried to dip my fingers into the flow of magic in my center again, to see if I could remake the small bit of shelter I had afforded us before. Instantly I found myself almost sucked under by the raging torrent, somehow having been stoked into this state by Erix’s proximity. Before I could regain my balance in its riptide though, the wind began to quiet.

Already the sandstorm raced past us, unnaturally fast in the desert’s anger—devastating, but short lived. A few more long moments, and the strange silence that only followed a terrible storm fell. Still, Erix did not move. I almost didn’t want him to, but worry gnawed under my ribs over the state of Dhara and the horses. I braced my hands on his chest.

“Erix,” I murmured into his sternum, both my lips and his tunic hopelessly coated in grit. He shuddered, and then finally rolled off me, landing on the ground beside me with a grunt.

I sat up and looked around. Dhara was on her hands and knees a few feet away, spitting out mouthfuls of sand, but she seemed to be unharmed. The horses stood just behind her, their coats dusty, but all three with their faces still covered.

Scattered in a circle around us were the corpses of six sichats. Their purple eyes were now devoid of the glow that spoke of magic, but their strangely shaped bodies still gave off a sense of the otherworldly.

I remembered the tales of how they collected the souls of the dead and shivered.

Erix sat up beside me as Dhara sat back on her heels, and we all looked around.

“The beasts of legend and the fury of the elements combine to test us.” Dhara’s voice was slightly scratchy from the sand now stuck in all our throats. “And we’ve only been journeying for a day.”

“How long did it take you to get to the ocean last time?” I asked Erix.

“Months.” His tone was grim.

We lapsed into silence as we stared down the maw of the trial before us.

Chapter five

Erix

While the desert had tested us today, she now seemed happy with our performance and so granted us a reprieve. We found an oasis surrounded by high, rocky walls, at which to make camp.

After the storm, we were all in need of a chance to bathe and rest. Alza’s midnight coat was heavily crusted in dust, and Keera had a set of long scratches on the back of one of her shoulders that needed tending to.

Still, as we all dismounted, I was sad to climb from Alza’s back. The fugue of battle was slow to loosen its hold, but riding helped. Something about the freedom of being on horseback had always helped center my mind, and I was loathe to give it up when so little seemed to ground me.

“We will need fresh supplies,” Dhara said, cutting through my thoughts. “If there is water, there is also likely something to be hunted nearby. I’m going to see what I can find.” She pulled her bow and a quiver of arrows from her supplies and headed out from the shelter of the cliffs surrounding the oasis.

I rested my forehead on Alza’s side, trying to let her scent comfort me, but found it muted by the layer of dust that covered every inch of both me and my horse. Fingers weaved between my own, and Keera tugged on my hand insistently.

“Let’s bathe,” she prompted. “I need your help cleaning the cuts on my shoulder.”

That did finally draw me from my thoughts, although to my shame, I was urged to follow her by the idea of seeing her bare flesh under the fading sunlight as much as by her need for my aid.

We undressed quickly, and it felt like an entire dune’s worth of sand fell out of my clothing as I let it drop to the rocks at the edge of the pool. A snort of amusement came from my side as Keera’s pants fell to the ground, sounding far heavier than the light linen had any right to.

“I felt almost naked from the lack of sand in Kelvadan,” she mused. “Like I was missing a layer of skin without it. I think I may have missed it a bit too much.”

I glanced over at her to tell her that I understood—that I found the city almost sterile without the constant grit carried on the wind.

My breath caught in my throat at the sight of her. I hadn’t seen her naked outside of the tent we shared at the encampment or the confinement of her rooms in Kelvadan in too long. But nothing compared to the way her skin looked, glazed in the golden light of the sun as it neared the horizon.

She didn’t seem to notice my staring as she waded into the water, letting out a blissful sigh as it rinsed the grit away from her skin.

The rest of my clothes were ripped from me in a matter of seconds, before I all but dived into the pool after her. The roar of the earlier battle in my blood returned in force, and I was sure that the only thing that could quell the fire scorching in my veins was the feeling of her soft flesh under my hands.

She turned as I approached, opening her mouth as if to say something. I caught whatever it was in my mouth, covering her lips with my own. I devoured her and her hands came up to tug at my hair.

I knew I should be softer—gentler. She had been wounded today. She couldn’t possibly be as feral for me as I was for her right now.