Page 6 of Heart of the Desert

“I will go with you,” Aderyn volunteered, her voice sure, but growing slightly quieter as she added, “If you will have me.”

Elion appraised her but then nodded sharply. “I will not turn away a warrior who wishes to put themselves in danger at my side.”

I glanced curiously at Aderyn, finding her face stony and her jaw set. Her skin seemed sallow and drawn, somehow only accentuating the determination written into her expression. I had promised her that I would help her reclaim Kelvadan as we kneeled over her broken husband, my father’s blood still staining my hands. I owed it to her and my father and Keera to reclaim the city we had all nearly died for.

I opened my mouth to say I would go too—that I knew Izumi better than almost anybody here. Perhaps I could reason with her.

A scream split the air, sticking my words in my throat. I whipped my head this way and that, looking for the source of the noise.

All the other lords stared at me in confusion. Could they not hear the shouting?

Keera reached out as if to lay a hand on my arm, her brows knit with concern. Before she could touch me, I caught sight of a man, running through the encampment. His sword was drawn.

I recognized that sword.

He disappeared around a corner with a flap of black fabric, but I was already on my feet. I pounded after him, my feet churning in the soft sand. Even running as fast as I could, I only just tracked him through the encampment. His dark robes disappeared around tents like whisps of smoke.

“Erix!” Keera shouted after me, but it sounded distant, even though I knew she was just behind me.

I emerged from the last ring of tents into the open dunes, skidding to a halt as I found the man standing completely still with his back to me. I had planned to attack whoever ran through the peaceful camp with a sword drawn, but nobody who intended to be a threat would willingly turn their back.

He looked back over his shoulder and smiled.

I knew that face.

It was mine, but not. It was the face that had winked at me in the mirror when I was sure I had made no such expression. It was the face that was carved into a tall stone statue, wearing a carefree smirk—the one I had glared up at so many times as a child, cursing our similarities.

My knees hit the sand.

Kelvar opened his mouth, and the voice of the desert came out. I nearly screamed in pain at the volume of it—the way the desert had always sounded in my mind, a million voices chattering over one another in every conceivable language and cadence. Above it all, though, this time I was able to pick out three words.

“Heal our heart.”

Then he was gone. Silence pressed in around me, and I stared at the spot where he had been. Not even a pair of boot prints marked the sand to indicate where he had stood.

“Erix!” This voice was familiar and lacked the otherworldly tone that made me want to peel my own skin off. It was nearly jarring as Keera fell to her knees beside me. Her hands were on my face, but I didn’t look away from where Kelvar had stood just moments before.

“Did you see him?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

“See who?” Keera asked, her tone concerned.

“Kelvar. He was here. He… he spoke to me.”

Keera’s sharp intake of breath confirmed my fears. My madness had been encroaching for years, and now it was finally upon me. I was out of time, but I had one more task to do for the desert. Even my hallucinations reminded me of this.

“You’re tired,” she started, as if she could reason away his apparition, but I shook my head. I pulled free of her grasp and turned to look at her.

“It’s not the first time,” I admitted. I hadn’t recognized it when Kelvar winked at me in the mirror in Kelvadan, thinking it a distortion of my own reflection, so similar were our faces. But seeing him now, I knew his movements were what danced at the edge of my vision. “I’ve seen him before, although I did not know it.”

Keera’s brow furrowed, but her expression did not hold the fear or despair I dreaded. She seemed to face this news with the same stubborn determination with which she approached every challenge. “Why him?”

I frowned. While I knew Kelvar had succumbed to insanity in the end, none of the tales told by my family said what his visions were of. Just that he would argue with thin air or become distracted by sounds nobody else could hear. Maybe my fracturing mind called forth visions of the one thing that had weighed on my consciousness for years, reminding me of my purpose even as my time ran out.

“Because it is his legacy I’m trying to undo,” I thought out loud. His words echoed in my mind.

Heal our heart.

He spoke in the desert’s voice, begging me to finish what I had started.