Page 53 of Heart of the Desert

My own release slammed into me so hard my vision went white, and I bit down on her calf where it rested on my shoulder to stifle my roar.

When my sight finally returned, I met Keera’s dazed golden eyes. If passion was what the desert needed to heal her Heart, we had certainly given her more than enough, sacrificed willingly on her altar.

But my mind didn’t want to think about such things right now. Instead, it wanted to keep Keera close. So, I did. I pulled her into my arms and slid us both down, so I sat with my back propped against the altar, and Keera lay cradled against my chest. She was safe in the cage of my arms as our breathing evened out.

A languid warmth settled into my veins, even heavier than the peace that normally overcame me after laying with Keera. A quiet voice in my mind reminded me that we shouldn’t linger here, with enemies so nearby.

But for the moment, Keera was safe and appeared equally sleepy and sated. I inhaled the sunshine scent of her hair and found that a strange, sweet smell mixed with it. In fact, the air was hazy, as if with the smoke of burning incense. Or perhaps my vision was still blurred from the intensity of our intimacy.

I inhaled deeply again. I had the brief, uneasy thought that the smell was oddly familiar—like the steam from the lyra leaf tea I choked down as a child. But even the panic brought by such a thought was drowned out by the lethargy working its way through my veins. I relaxed as darkness took me, my mind strangely quiet after so much noise and Keera asleep on my chest.

A hand on my shoulder and a clamoring in my head woke me violently. It wasn’t just the voices in my skull—although those were loud too—but the splitting headache like after a night of too much laka that brought me to awareness with a groan.

“Erix,” a sharp voice demanded, firmly, but not unkindly. It was Aderyn’s signature no-nonsense tone, indicating something serious was afoot.

I opened my eyes to find myself still in the temple, only barely dressed with my pants slung low on my hips and my tunic still discarded.

“What happened? Why didn’t you and Keera return last night?” Aderyn demanded, looking around the temple as if it could provide answers. I almost reddened thinking what the walls had witnessed and was glad they couldn’t speak. But the urgency in Aderyn’s tone drew me away from such contemplations.

“Keera…” I looked around, finding her notably absent, explaining why my mind, which had been strangely quiet when I went to sleep, was now all but screaming in protest. Her clothes, which had been laying crumpled on the ground with mine, were also missing.

I looked to Aderyn, but she shook her head, indicating she hadn’t seen her. Fear started to rise in my chest, tinged dark with an edge of anger. I shot to my feet, ignoring the pounding in my head and striding out of the temple. I was still barely clothed, but that hardly mattered as I looked around, trying to find Keera’s silhouette.

I reached down the tether at the same time, finding her end fuzzy and muted. She wasn’t gone, like she had been the time she had shut herself beneath the mountain, but it was hazy, as it had been when she’d been drugged in the palace infirmaries.

Drugged. We must have been drugged by the odd smoke I smelled on the air.

I whirled around finding Aderyn looking at me with apprehension.

“Where’s my wife?” I nearly spat. I tried to reign in the terror and rage that overwhelmed my mind, but they were too strong.

Aderyn pressed her lips in a line. “If she didn’t wander off on her own for some reason, there is only one place she could be.”

She pointed over my shoulder, and I spun to look at the encampment of General Warrick’s men. I blinked, finding it had nearly tripled in size from the patch of beached boats and campfires we had seen flickering in the distance last night. Now there were tents and…

“Horses,” I murmured in confusion before horror washed over me like icy water from the mountain springs in Kelvadan.

A black banner flapped at the top of the largest tent, and I couldn’t see it from this distance, but I knew it would be emblazoned with the snake that I once fashioned myself after.

Izumi and the other clans were here.

Chapter eighteen

Keera

My mouth was full of cotton, and my belly was full of snakes. I tried to groan, but the sound came out dry and broken, and the effort made my stomach twist. Afraid I was going to vomit, I tried to roll onto my side, only to find that my hands and feet were immobilized, making movement almost impossible.

I managed to swallow down the bile in my throat as my eyes snapped open to stare up at a rough canvas ceiling. Confusion and panic coursed through me in equal measure. I had fallen asleep safely cradled to Erix’s chest, my limbs inordinately heavy as sparks of pleasure still danced lazily across my skin. Now, the warmth and security offered by his arms were gone, replaced by the rough scrape of rope at my wrists. I began to squirm, testing how well bound I was.

It wasn’t as bad as being trapped beneath the mountain, but being restrained still made the wildness of my magic buck and snort like a horse that didn’t like being tied.

“They won’t come loose. She ties her knots far too well for that.”

I froze at the sound of a voice nearby, the tone both resigned and sympathetic. It was distantly familiar.

In my inelegant struggles, I managed to roll in the direction of the voice, falling onto my side to face the wall of the tent. Sitting against it with her bound hands hanging between her bent knees was a woman, looking at me sorrowfully.

Her face was as familiar as her voice—I knew I had seen her, but my brain was still too muddled to place her.