Page 60 of Heart of the Desert

But Aderyn had cut her binds as well when she had found us. I did not watch where she had gone, too desperate to get to the storm I felt brewing in Erix, but she would not be in the collapsing shelter.

Izumi didn’t hear me shout or didn’t care. She sprinted toward the spreading quicksand as the top peak of the canvas was pulled beneath it.

“No!” I shouted again, loath to see a meaningless death added to this landscape of destruction, but it was too late. Without breaking her stride, Izumi dived headfirst into the pit. She was willing to risk her life to save Badha, not knowing she was already saved. I swore and skidded to a stop at the edge, my toes already sinking into the wet, silty ground.

Aderyn had joined me in my chase and we stared in horror. But I understood—I had jumped into quicksand after Erix before I realized I loved him. And Izumi still had the Heart.

“Sands,” I swore, unwinding my hood from around my head and handing one end to Aderyn. “You’ll be able to pull me out?”

I meant it as question, but it came out as a statement. Aderyn just nodded sharply. “Carry a baby, carry you. I do it all.”

Wrapping the other end of my hood around my wrist, I took a deep breath and jumped into the sand. I would have preferred to enter in a more controlled manner, but Izumi’s dive would have carried her deep, and I needed to reach her before she ran out of air.

I found her quickly as her thrashing limbs churned that sand around her. Reaching out blindly, I tried to wrap my arms around her waist, but she twisted and fought—thinking I was trying to pull her away from saving Badha.

I grimaced as her fist scraped against my jaw in slow motion as she writhed against me. Everything felt heavy and thick as my lungs started to protest the lack of air. Eventually, though, I managed to grab a hold of her awkwardly and tugged on my hood to signal Aderyn.

The sand tried to suck us deeper as we were pulled free, turning thicker and more solid as we pushed through it. Izumi continued to twist and thrash, but her movements became weaker as she ran out of air.

My own lungs burned and white spots flashed behind my closed eyes. Sluggishness began seeping through my limbs. The end of my hood in my grasp began slipping through my fingers as I struggled to hold onto both it and Izumi. Aderyn was strong, but the hold of the desert sucking us down was just as inexorable.

I couldn’t let Izumi go, though—not when the Heart of the Desert was still tucked into her sash. And she didn’t deserve to die for the one act of selfless love I had seen from her, among all her fear and anger.

If we were to drown in here, then we would perish together. I would die without the tendrils of Erix’s magic in my mind, and as angry as the thought should make me, my oxygen deprived brain could only manage soul-crushing sorrow.

A sudden jerk came on the length of fabric in my hand, as if somebody had joined Aderyn in pulling. It nearly yanked my shoulder out of its socket with its force. Hope rekindled in my chest. It was the fire under my ribs that refused to die, no matter how dire the situation was.

I fought against every protesting muscle to tighten the arm banded across Izumi’s chest and squeezed my fingers around the cloth. I willed every last bit of energy in my blood to help me hold on.

An awful squelching sound echoed through my head as I finally crested the surface. I gasped and tried to blink my eyes open, almost regretting it as grit filled my throat, but the feel of air filling my lungs was too sweet. Through my watering eyes, I could just make out the figure that had joined Aderyn in hauling us out of the pit: Badha.

A shuddering gasp broke from her as Izumi crested the surface just after me. I struggled to pull her out of the edge of the sinking pit, but my muscles still shook and were slow to respond to my commands. Then, strong hands grabbed my shoulders.

Betrayal and rage were temporarily muted by my oxygen deprivation, and relief crashed over me as Erix knelt in my line of vision and pulled both me and Izumi back onto solid ground. I shook and coughed and spat sand from my mouth, but it didn’t matter, because Erix’s arms were solid around me, and he was real and here, no matter how hard he had tried to tear us asunder.

He had come back in a way my parents and my clan never had, no matter how hard I yearned. And then I felt it.

The loose tendrils of my magic that had been left exposed and raw found his, as if they had been reaching out to them in desperation—the same way Kelvar and Alyx had been reaching out to each other in death, their fingers just inches apart. With me crushed to Erix’s chest and him breathing in my hair in relief, they instantly began knitting themselves together once more. It wasn’t the strong rope of many fibers it had once been, but the basting stitches of connection already returned.

Erix might carry the mighty power of the desert within him, but even he could not permanently tear what was one in two.

The momentary relief was split by a scream of despair. I turned my head, my cheek pressed into Erix’s shoulder as his arms caged me in.

“No,” Badha sobbed, where she kneeled over Izumi. Every strand of her dark frizzy hair was coated in sand, and her tan skin was unusually pale as she laid on her back. Her lips had a sickly blue tinge, and her chest did not rise and fall.

Dread was a heavy weight in my belly, as Badha interlaced her fingers and placed her palms on Izumi’s chest. She pressed savagely, trying to force air into Izumi’s lungs. Aderyn stepped up behind her, but Badha growled as she pumped at Izumi’s chest, causing Aderyn to take a step back.

Dhara and Elion appeared from the far side of the next row of tents. Dhara opened her mouth as if to exclaim in relief, but Elion stopped her with a hand on her arm as they took in the desperate scene.

“You’re not. Allowed. To die.” Badha grit out from behind bared teeth in time with her compressions. “You have to fix this. Fix us.”

Tears started to prick my eyes that had nothing to do with the way I still gulped down grateful lungfuls of air, or the tenderness with which Erix held me. In fact, it almost seemed to make it worse, while witnessing somebody else’s grief so close and so raw.

A horrible hacking wheezing split the air, and everybody gasped. Badha rolled Izumi onto her side as she coughed up mouthfuls of wet sand. She rubbed soothing circles between Izumi’s shoulder blades as she cleared her lungs out and gasped in shuddering breaths.

“Why did you do that?” Badha asked, her tears evident in her voice.

“I couldn’t lose you. Not to the sand… not again,” Izumi wheezed once she finally had enough breath, her voice raw and scratchy. “It’s not worth it. None of it is worth it—not if it cost me you.”