Page 37 of Heart of the Desert

The word echoed in my skull, and I wasn’t sure if it was the voices of the omnipresent chattering that haunted me, my own thought, or the chanting of the tricrith beneath me. Either way, it suited my purpose.

I needed the tricrith to kill its queen. The large male rounded on its mate, and I dug my fingers into the gap between its armored panels to hang on. My thighs slid across the glossy coating, but I hung on so hard there would surely be indents in my palms, and I flattened myself on the tricrith’s back.

His triplet tails swayed over my head as he turned them on the queen, who hissed and clacked her claws. Maybe it was imagination, but it almost sounded like the shock of betrayal. As she advanced, snapping out with a pincer, her mate scuttled back.

The chant of kill stuttered in its rhythm, but I urged it on, adding the red-hot fury of my own battle lust to the pyre. Shouts and the clang of swords echoed behind me as my companions still fended off the brood.

I needed this to end to protect Dhara and Aderyn and her unborn baby.

I needed to protect Keera.

At that thought, the fire of my mind engulfed the tricrith’s own swirling darkness. It lunged forward, striking with its tail on one side, then the other. The queen, for all her bulk, dodged out of the way with frightening speed—but it wasn’t quite enough.

She evaded the first two strikes, only to throw herself directly into the path of the third from her mate’s center tail. His stinger pierced her in a small, exposed patch below her mouth, and the venom of his sting instantly began to hiss and spit.

The queen shrieked—a sound like a saber dragging across stone—but it was almost drowned out by the horrible smell of melting flesh and the screaming of pain in my own mind. The queen’s mate tossed and writhed, as if in agony over what he’d done. Now, my grip was not enough to keep me astride his back, and I slid sideways. My side met the ground hard enough to leave my ribs bruised, but I tried to let the momentum of my fall carry me out of the way as both the queen and her mate convulsed and twisted.

As I watched, the queen’s mate threw himself on her as she writhed, right in the path of her own stingers as her tails spasmed in pain. Together in a glowing tangle of legs and tails they twitched, until eventually, they went still.

Even as their screeching quieted, the chamber was a cacophony of sound. All the tricriths who had surrounded us now scuttled backward, as if realizing there was nothing left to defend. They climbed over each other in nauseating piles to get to the many tunnels leading out of the cavern, scattering into the darkened passages until the four of us were left alone with the corpses of the queen and her mate.

I lay on the ground and panted in relief, even as the silence pressed in loudly around me. The abyss of the tricrith’s mind and the heat of battle were gone, but my blood still rushed through my body with disconcerting speed. The burning in my throat rushed down through my chest and flooded all the way down to the tips of my fingers. I started to shake. Or maybe it was the ground beneath me.

Kill.

The thought still echoed in my mind, even though the time for it was past. The abyss had taken hold, and it would not let go. I would pull the earth down around me. We’d be trapped. Trapped in the dark forever. Keera would be gone.

My heart would be gone.

I reached for the oozing wound on my thigh, hoping pressing my fingers into the tender flesh would cut through the haze of magic and chattering voices. But the pain barely cut through the red hot haze. It wasn’t enough. I needed more.

My fingers found the snake’s head handle of my dirk, and I slashed blindly, catching myself across the inside of my elbow. The burning sharpness finally cut through the roiling chaos of my mind, and I gasped as if surfacing from underwater.

My vision cleared.

Keera’s face appeared over me. The first thought to hit me was how beautiful she looked, her tan skin lit in the ethereal light from the still-glowing queen. Her curls were made even tighter by the heat of her exertion and framed her face.

Then, the furrow of concern and the hardness at the edge of her lips hit me.

I followed her gaze to the fresh wound in my arm, blood spilling into the dirt. I had torn my sleeve with my sword as well, and now it fell open to reveal the tapestry of small cuts and bruises across my skin.

Bile flooded my throat, and I almost retched.

There was no more hiding my shame—what I had been doing to control my madness. The hurt in Keera’s eyes almost made me want to drive the dirk into my arm again.

Instead, I thrust it into my belt and sat up.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, but Keera continued to scowl at my injured arm, even as her eyes were overbright.

She looked so angry, and sands I wanted to kiss her when she looked flushed and fierce after battle. I clenched my fists. The echoes of violence mixed with a strange surge of lust in my mind, and even as I tried to hold on to the pain, I craved Keera’s touch even more. I had pulled away for too long, and having had her catch me in a moment of vulnerability, I seemed unable to fend off my burning need for her closeness.

Once we were out of this lair, I promised myself. I didn’t have the strength to run from her touch right now. Just one moment of relief before I went back to managing the symptoms of my madness through pain and blood—surely I could manage that without pulling her magic so far into wildness that she was subjected to the pain and visions that haunted me.

“We’re together again. It’s fine,” I insisted.

Keera exhaled heavily through her nose, and her repressed concern disturbed the way her magic flowed through the air around us, but she let it drop—for now. I sensed she would not be put off for long, but she was practical enough to know we could not linger in this lair.

“Then let’s get out of here,” she said, offering me a hand. “We can get to the surface and find some water to patch us all up. Hopefully we can find our way back to Elion and the horses.”