Page 46 of Heart of the Desert

“What is this?” I asked.

Erix grimaced. “Last time I crossed the desert, it was similar. I don’t remember the fog, but I remember being plagued with horrible visions.”

“What about the others?”

Erix clenched his jaw. “We found each other. We can find them.”

Together, we stood and gazed around us.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter which way we walk,” I pointed out. Erix shrugged, and we set out into the mist. My arm throbbed in time with my heartbeat as we trudged through the fog, but I tried not to let it show how much it pained me.

Erix reached down and interlaced his fingers with my free hand, and I didn’t know if it was a gesture of comfort or to make sure we didn’t get separated from each other in the dense mist. Either way, I squeezed his hand, and he gripped back even tighter.

After a few minutes walking in silence, my ears pricked to a quiet noise. I tugged on Erix’s hand, and we stopped, looking around for the source of the sound. It came again: A quiet squeaking, like that of a wounded animal.

We hastened our steps, racing in the direction of the whimpering until we came upon a form huddled on the ground, emerging from the cloudy gray landscape so suddenly I nearly tripped over it.

The body was curled in on itself, but the black lines inked over the head and hands made it unmistakable.

“Aderyn,” I murmured, falling to my knees beside her. Erix crouched beside me, his body a warm presence against the sudden cold that rushed through me.

My heart fractured like glass at the small desperate sounds coming from her as she trembled. From the moment I had staggered into Kelvadan, barely conscious, Aderyn had been a pillar of strength for me. Through hard battles to the trials of leadership, I had rarely seen her bend, let alone break.

Yet whatever the desert had shown her, it had driven the strongest woman I knew to her knees. I peeled her hands away from her face, finding her pale eyes unfocused and sightless.

“It’s not real,” I murmured.

Her eyes cleared slightly, and she twisted her hands until she gripped my wrists so hard they hurt. Aderyn’s nails dug into the edge of my burn and I hissed, but I didn’t try to pry her free. If she needed this from me, she could have it.

“Neven and the baby,” she murmured frantically, still not appearing to fully see me. “You have to promise me they’ll be safe. I left him behind where I can’t protect him. I can’t—” She hiccupped. “I can’t lose another family.”

“I promise. I’ll keep them safe. We’ll keep them safe.” I tried to make my voice firm, but it was tight with pain.

Something in my tone must have convinced her though as she blinked, appearing to come out of her haze. She stared at me, her eyes overbright. I breathed deeply. Whatever the desert had shown her, its hold appeared to be loosening.

Reality seemed to hit her all at once and she gasped, looking around. “Where are we?”

I looked around too, ready to comment that location seemed to be a flexible concept in the magical fog, only to find that it seemed to be lifting. I could just make out the gentle slopes of sand dunes and a hazy horizon.

Footsteps sounded behind us, and I twisted—not pulling my hands from Aderyn’s—to find two figures staggering through the fading mist.

Erix stood, taking a few steps forward to meet Dhara and Elion where they approached. Dhara appeared to be leaning on Elion for support but pulled away as they reached us. An ephemeral breeze rolled in, a contrast to the heavy stillness of before, lifting my hair from my sweaty neck and tugging at the loose ends of my hood.

As we all gathered in a loose circle, I looked around to find that the wind blew away the last of the fog. We had survived the desert’s test.

Chapter fifteen

Erix

The silence around the campfire was thick. Unlike the last time we had survived one of the desert’s more difficult ordeals, the joy born of still being alive hadn’t found us. Instead, we all sat quietly, each haunted by whatever demons we had been shown.

At first, I had busied my fingers with cleaning and bandaging Keera’s burned arm. She had been right: The injury was barely a shadow of the burns she had once endured as I desperately tried to keep her clinging onto life after our battle with the lava wyrm. But my chest still squeezed so tight I could barely draw breath at the knowledge that I had done this to her.

Now, my hands itched for another task, but I resisted sharpening my new sword. I still carried Kelvar’s broken blade with my things, and I didn’t want to subject the blade I had been given from Clan Jal’s supplies to the same fate of over-sharpening.

Instead, I found my mental fingers toying with the tether between me and Keera. What once had been a fragile thread—forming the first moment I touched her, although I hadn’t even realized it at the time—was now a tangled braid of many fibers. It had always been a comfort to me, but after today’s visions, something about its presence filled me with a sense of dread.

Feeling Keera’s magic would only ever be a balm to my aching soul, but tonight, I couldn’t stop thinking about what the bond meant—what it might lead to. The image of Kelvar’s skeletal fingers, outstretched inches away from Alyx’s perfectly preserved hand, kept flashing in my mind.