Page 19 of Heart of the Desert

Keera had been wise to suggest we walk.

Around me, the others did similarly, laying out bed rolls and pulling dried meat and dates from their packs for a meal. We would have no fire to cook over tonight with no fuel in the area. Darkness descended as we finished, plunging us into the sort of blackness only found in the depths of the wilderness. Tonight was a new moon, and the silvery specks of the stars were not enough to penetrate the inky night.

At Clan Katal’s encampment, the night of a new moon would mean sacrifice.

I shivered.

“We should take turns keeping watch tonight,” I said. “Without a fire, predators might feel emboldened to approach us. I’ll take the first shift.”

Everybody nodded their agreement and began to settle onto their sleeping mats. The horses laid down close to their masters, offering their warmth. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elion offer Dhara a spare robe to wrap around herself. She took it without looking at him.

Before she laid down to rest, Keera reached out and squeezed my arm. The lines of concern around her eyes deepened, their shadows exaggerated by the dim light. I covered her hand with my own in what I hoped was reassurance.

Then, she turned back to the sleeping mat, and I settled myself cross-legged on the sand with my blade drawn and laid across my lap. The sounds of shuffling behind me fell into the silence of deep breathing as everybody slept.

The minutes stretched on, and I strained my eyes against the darkness, trying to detect any possible movement. With the buzzing in my mind and the shimmering of half-realized hallucinations, I worried I wouldn’t be able to sense an actual threat. At the thought, my fingers tightened around the blade in my hands. The edge bit into my flesh, and I sucked in a breath through my teeth at the sharp sting, but the chattering of magic and the swirling at the edges of my vision lessened in response to the pain.

Reflexively, my grip tightened, chasing the sharp sensation. Anything to clear my head. Especially when Keera needed all the rest she could get, and my restlessness might rouse her.

At the thought of her, I grimaced in a way that had nothing to do with the well of blood between my knuckles. I had managed to keep my self-inflicted injuries from her, but tamping down my desire to turn to her touch for comfort instead was even more painful. Keera already bore so much. If my madness was a burden I could lift from her, then I would shoulder it. So, I clenched my fists and tried to hide the irritated twitching of my muscles and the visceral urge to look over my shoulder for Kelvar’s appearance, even when a prickle on my neck told me somebody was watching me. The half-moons of my nails were permanently indented into my palm at this point.

As if my thoughts had summoned her, the sound of footsteps told me she approached. It might have been one of the others, but I recognized her just from her cadence. Just like I would know her by touch and feel alone.

At least it wasn’t Kelvar, coming to torment me with more cryptic words.

“You should be sleeping,” I murmured as she sat down beside me and pulled her knees to her chest.

Keera rested her chin on her knees and sighed. “I should be the one to keep watch. It’s my fault we’re stuck in the open without a fire.”

I furrowed my brow. “The only one at fault is the desert, and she has much worse in store than a night without protection.”

“And she has every right to be angry. But I’m the one who suggested that we should walk. If we had continued to ride, we might have found shelter.”

“Or one of our horses may have gone lame or taken a bad step in their exhaustion,” I argued. Her words fell heavier than I would expect for a simple discussion about logistics. The hiccups in the flow of her magic hinted at what she struggled with: Bitter fear and crushing guilt. It only reinforced that the pain of my own madness should not be piled on top of those burdens. I tried to lighten them anyway. “Your instincts for survival in the desert are good. We have to make the best choices we can with the information we have.”

Keera hugged herself tighter in a way that made my chest ache. “That doesn’t seem good enough most of the time.”

I got the distinct feeling we weren’t just talking about our camp for the night. “Aderyn and Dhara and Elion don’t respect your opinions because you have never been wrong. They respect you because you’re stubborn and loyal and would fight tooth and nail to protect those who have earned your trust. It’s why I respect you. It’s why I would go to the ends of the earth with you.”

Keera let out a shaky exhale, and the pulse of her emotion down the tether in my mind was as knotted and confused as my own thoughts often felt.

“I thought I was the one going to the end of the earth with you,” she quipped, not acknowledging her feelings, although she knew I could sense them.

I opened my mouth to tell her it seemed as if we were doomed to chase each other in circles around the desert, when a noise at the very edge of my awareness halted me. Keera frowned at me, her expression barely visible in the muted starlight. Perhaps this was one of my imaginings.

She reached out to rest a hand on my forearm, and the sound came again. This time, I recognized the dull clatter in the distance. Keera’s eyes widened as she heard it too, and acid rose to burn the back of my throat.

“Bone spider!” I no longer kept my voice low, jumping to my feet and raising my blade in front of me.

I scanned the horizon, my head whipping this way and that as I squinted into the darkness for its misshapen form. The blackness was nearly impenetrable, and I feared sound was the only warning I would get. Keera lunged back to her sleeping mat, quickly groping about for her weapons and rousing the others. The sounds of metal and rustling told me they woke easily, ready for battle at a moment’s notice, all of them practiced warriors.

We would need such skills against a bone spider in the dark.

Stars exploded behind my eyes as something hard and fleshy smacked me in the face without warning, knocking me to the ground. My breath rushed out of me all at once as my back hit the ground and I threw my sword out in front of me, trying to keep it between myself and the monster.

My vision faded from white to black as I struggled to sit up. I expected a flurry of attacks from the bone spider’s many limbs to follow, but none came. The bone spider had attacked once but retreated before I could strike back, leaving the white-hot burn of adrenaline in my veins nowhere to go.

Keera appeared at my side, helping me up with a hand on my shoulder. I sensed the others at my back, all waiting with their swords drawn. The silence stretched taut like a bowstring as we all held our breath.