Page 55 of Heart of the Desert

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to be loved. And it doesn’t mean she isn’t a good leader. She makes mistakes because she cares so deeply, and she continues to care and try even after she fails.”

I blinked at her words. They pierced me like an arrow in my heart, although I knew she hadn’t aimed them at me. Perhaps Izumi did deserve to be loved, just as Erix deserved to be loved in all his brokenness. I wasn’t yet sure if I had earned the loving belonging I craved, in spite of my failures. My chest ached all the same.

The moment was interrupted by a sudden influx of light and the rustle of a tent flap. I twisted where I sat, almost falling over, immobilized as I was. Izumi strode in, her dark eyes hard and her arms crossed over her chest as she took me in, crumpled on the floor.

“And here we have it, the woman who made the mighty Viper abandon his purpose and his people.” She glared down at me with hard, calculating eyes.

“What did you do to him?” I demanded. We had both been in the temple when the odd sleepiness had overtaken me, and my heart sank that she had found us both there.

“Nothing,” Izumi shook her head. “It was all too easy to drug both of you with one of the poisons General Warrick supplied. I built a fire and wafted the smoke of the sedative leaves into the temple until I was sure you were both unconscious. But I only took you and left him there to realize you were gone.

“It’s a horrible feeling, you know? Waking up with half of yourself vanished and realizing you slept through the whole thing.” The hardness in her voice was betrayed by an age-old hurt.

“What do you want with me?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“I can’t afford to let him stop me,” she said. “Our force is large, but he has destructive power that I cannot match. If I have you, though, he won’t strike this camp, and I can lead the riders of my clans and the armies of Doran to destroy Kelvadan.”

Heat bubbled up in my chest, warring against the sluggishness still weighing me to the ground. “I am as powerful as he is. I could destroy this camp too if I wanted to.”

With my own wild power only fed by Erix’s growing madness spilling down the tether between us, even as far apart as we were with the bond muted by sedatives, I knew I was right. When I was barely more than a child, I had collapsed the earth around my clan’s encampment, casting all who were too close into a dark chasm. My power had multiplied since then.

Erix would do anything it took to get me back—he had nearly torn Kelvadan down when our bond had gone quiet. I could not let him risk the mission to restore the Heart though or agree to let Izumi and her army march for Kelvadan unhindered. I had to get free before he made a deal that would bring more harm to the people of the desert.

Izumi shook her head, clearly not threatened. “You won’t destroy this encampment. General Warrick told me in his letters of your rule—the way you were ready to hand Calix power through marriage because you couldn’t bear to see the people go hungry. You wouldn’t sentence hundreds of women and children and horses to death to achieve your ends.”

“And you would?” I spat. Izumi’s accusations cut me deeper than any sword, but I knew she was right. I carried within me destructive power and seemingly bottomless anger, but in my efforts to avoid unleashing it on those who didn’t deserve it, it so often turned inwards and ate away at me, hurting those closest to me.

Izumi hesitated, then she pressed her lips into a hard line. She could have slit Erix’s throat as he lay unconscious in the temple, but she hadn’t.

Still, she lifted her chin. “I will do what is necessary. Kelvadan is an affront to the ways of the desert, even more so now that it has become a home to foreigners who do not respect our ways.”

“General Warrick and his men are foreigners too.” They would not fight our war with no expectation of a benefit in return. Perhaps they would steal our horses as well—or maybe they planned to occupy Kelvadan in Calix’s stead.

“The enemy of my enemy is my ally,” Izumi insisted. “And they would rather see Kelvadan destroyed then in the hands of the enemy where it might give them an advantage.”

“And you think they will peacefully leave us to our ways after this battle? That they won’t seek to find some advantage of their own?” I demanded.

“He might, now that I have found what Lord Alasdar and his Viper kept from me for all those years. A power that even an army the size of Warrick’s could not stand against.” Izumi reached into her sash. When she opened her fingers to reveal her prize, a heavy weight settled in my gut, rooting me to the ground.

The two broken halves of the Heart.

“I found it in your sash when I went to dress you—thank you for that by the way,” Izumi commented with a wrinkle of her nose.

I might have been embarrassed by the state in which Izumi found me and Erix if my mind wasn’t racing faster than Daiti galloped. I didn’t know what Warrick might have told her about the Heart—I had barely been conscious in the courtyard to know what he had heard from Calix and Erix in their confrontation. I couldn’t think of a story to spin to extricate myself from this mess. Lies were not my strong suit. I preferred a sword.

Taking a deep breath, I clutched on to Badha’s assurances that Izumi was not a bad person, just driven to save the desert. And now, she held in her hand the one thing that could truly save us all, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“Lord Alasdar and Erix were wrong not to tell you,” I admitted. “The stone you hold in your hand—the Heart of the Desert—it is the reason the desert suffers. Their purpose in taking Kelvadan was to acquire it, so it could be restored to its rightful place at the ocean. The temple you found me in is where it belongs. It needs to be healed, so the desert can be at peace. It is the true reason our home is angry. Alasdar kept it a secret, told you half-truths, because he knew people would covet its power. But now you have the opportunity to fix it.”

Izumi stared at me, her dark eyes flinty even as something flickered across her face. It seemed to waver between anger and disbelief before she hardened her jaw, and her face became impassive once again.

“And how do I fix it?” she asked.

Even as hope sparked in my head that Izumi might see reason, I shook my head. “I don’t know. That’s what we journeyed here to figure out. But leaving it broken will only lead to further strife. Destroying Kelvadan will not bring you the peace you seek.”

A muscle ticked in Izumi’s jaw. “My sister died for a broken rock?”

“And many more will if we don’t fix it.”