Page 27 of Heart of the Desert

I almost detected levity in his words. At least the manifestations of my insanity had a sense of humor—a trait I had never particularly prided myself in.

“I need you to leave, before she gets hurt,” I practically growled.

All the lightness left Kelvar’s expression, and it turned hard as stone. “Nothing either of us can do will stop that.”

Anger bubbled up in my chest, hot as lava. He was wrong—he had to be. I would go to any length for Keera. I would control my madness at any cost, to keep it from spilling into her own mind.

I grabbed my dirk from my belt and drove the tip of it into the front of my thigh. Fire bloomed in my flesh, and Kelvar vanished between one breath and the next. Even as my chest clenched with the overwhelming pain, my heart jumped in surprise at how thoroughly he’d disappeared—like he had never even been there.

He hadn’t been there, I reminded myself.

With a hiss, I yanked my blade out of my leg. Warm rivulets of blood trickled down my thigh to my knee, the heat contrasting sharply with the cold night air. I closed my eyes and held on to the sensations in my body.

The single-mindedness of pain was a balm to my whirling thoughts. My awareness narrowed to the pulsing in my leg. I hadn’t driven the knife in very deep—no more than an inch—but the shock of it was enough to serve my purposes.

Quietly, I set out cleaning and bandaging the self-inflicted wound. I had carried far worse injuries into battle. With luck, nobody would notice one more scar.

If Keera saw it, she would know the lengths my madness had driven me to. She would insist on risking herself to save my own shattered mind, even though I had long known I was doomed. She would tear herself apart out of loyalty, and I could not let that happen.

The ground was treacherous today, and my teeth creaked in my head as I watched Alza carefully pick her way along the crested top of a sand dune. Wind had whipped the terrain into sharp slopes with high peaks cresting into even steeper cliffs.

The inclines were too pitched for the horses to traverse; they slid down the shifting surface every time they tried. So, we plodded along the crested peaks, but the threat of a bad step that would send us tumbling down the perilous slope remained.

I watched Alza’s dark hooves land, every footfall sure despite my worry. She was steadier than I these days. As she took her next step, a strange undulation in the sand beneath her caught my eye.

My brow furrowed as I stared. The ground was often rippled and ridged—looking like Keera’s skin in the places her burns had left it scarred. This pattern though looked more uniform, like something heavy had been dragged.

“Stop,” I held up my fist, and we all halted, in a single file line across the ridge as we rode.

I slid down from Alza’s back, taking a few steps forward to get clear of her own hoofmarks. A shadow fell over me as I crouched to inspect the tracks. Keera had been riding just behind me and now peered over my shoulder.

“Animal tracks?” she asked.

I shook my head, although there did seem to be some sort of trail. I didn’t recognize the prints of a red wolf or the sinuous swirl left by a large snake. A large divot dragged down the middle of the churned sand, as if disturbed by many legs.

“Could it be a bone spider?” Dhara asked, having stopped next to Keera. She stared down at the path with folded arms and a furrowed brow. Her question was neutral, but I didn’t miss the way she clenched her fists as she tucked them under her elbows.

She was not as unaffected by her last encounter with the monsters as she would like to appear. I could not fault her.

“It could have been dragging something,” Keera pointed out.

I frowned, trying to figure out how a bone spider might leave such tracks. Even if it had many legs, they would end in recognizable prints—feet from beasts and animals of the desert I was familiar with. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure what else could have made such tracks?”

“Let me look.” The voice came from Aderyn.

She picked her way around the line of waiting horses, toward where we gathered.

I continued to contemplate as she approached. There were other beasts of the desert we had not encountered yet on our journey. One that lived underground.

Aderyn’s footsteps stuttered, as a strange sound filled the air: An odd rushing, like sand falling through a massive hourglass.

“Wait!” I threw out my hand at Aderyn, but it was too late. Her next footfall sank into the sand—the appearance of a solid dune an illusion created by high winds, hiding a hollow inside, ready to cave in.

The ground shifted under me. I scrabbled for purchase, trying to claw my way back toward more solid terrain, but it was no use. Sand rushed at me like water, and all four of us slid down into the dark chasm hidden inside the dune. I reached for Keera as she shrieked, my hand closing around her upper arm.

I would not be separated from her, even as we fell into unknowable danger.

At the edge of the collapsing ground, Alza pawed and snorted, alternating lunging forward and rearing back, both scared of the collapsing earth and wanting to follow me. Daiti appeared beside her, whites showing around his eyes as he panicked for his master.