Page 62 of Heart of the Desert

So, as Keera had headed off with Aderyn to find Daiti and wash off, I had wandered into the camp full of people I had once ruled from behind a mask. Unlike those in the other encampment, these riders did not recognize my face. So, when I came across a man—little more than a boy really—struggling to herd horses back into their enclosure and re-erect the portable fences around it, I rolled up my sleeves and began to help.

I hammered the supporting stakes deep into the re-hardened ground as the stranger held the panel in place. The quicksand seemed to have retreated as soon as we saved Keera and Izumi from its grasp—a thought that my brain was too tired to grapple with at the moment. Instead, I reveled in the sweat breaking out on my skin from the exertion in the late afternoon sun.

“I don’t remember building fences to be among your skillset, Viper.”

I spun to find Izumi standing a few paces away, watching me curiously. Her hair was damp and curled at her temples as it dried. She had changed into clean clothes, and I couldn’t tell if the slump of her shoulders was from exhaustion or relief.

Meanwhile, the man holding the fence jumped back as if in fear. He indeed had not realized who I was when he accepted my help.

I sighed. “I don’t use that name anymore.”

“Then what, Prince Erix?” Izumi asked.

I shook my head. “Just Erix.”

She sucked on her teeth. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“I’ve always called you Izumi.”

“Fine. Then walk with me, Just Erix.”

With a nod, I handed the mallet back to the man I had been helping. He tapped his fingers to his brow in respect, but then his eyes widened as they darted to Izumi, as if expecting retaliation. Izumi did nothing, just turning away and picking a path through the tents. I followed, hastening my steps until I walked abreast of her.

People looked curiously at us as we passed, and I took in the damage wrought by the morning’s fight. As chaotic as it had been, the people of the desert were resilient, and already tents were being repaired and wounds bandaged.

In my youth, clans seemed to fight one day and share their campfires the next. The desert’s people were quick to draw swords but did not seem to hold grudges. The thought bolstered me as Izumi and I continued to walk in silence for a moment. She had carried a deep-seated anger inside her the entire time I had known her, but perhaps we could find peace after all our battles.

We reached the outer circle of tents in the encampment—usually just for supplies and single riders—but Izumi kept walking. We were headed in the direction of the crumbling temple.

“I always envied your power,” she started suddenly.

I pressed my lips together, giving her time to speak. It was something I had always suspected, but we never talked about it outright.

“I thought that if I had your strength, perhaps I might have been able to prevent the tragedies of my past. And I always sensed that Lord Alasdar confided in you more than me. It made me fear that I might not be capable of doing what needed to be done to save the desert. I would do anything to prove to Lord Alasdar—to myself—that I could do what was necessary.”

“He pitted us against each other.” I sighed. “Used us to sharpen one another like a sword and whetstone.”

“He knew my weakness, and he played on it well,” she agreed. “I realize now that he did the same to you.”

I exhaled heavily through my nose, and we walked in companionable quiet for a moment. Our boots crunched in the sand, and the crash of the waves on the shore to our right was equal parts peaceful and violent, much like the rest of the desert. It seemed to echo the events of the day.

“Her name was Azara.”

I frowned, taking a moment to realize what Izumi was saying. And then it hit me: The twin she had never spoken of, but I had learned of from Lord Alsadar.

“Izumi and Azara. Water and fire.”

“I always found it funny that she was named for fire when I was always the one with the temper,” Izumi said. She did not look over at me as she spoke, and I sensed it made it easier for her to speak of her past. “She was the better of us in every way, and I didn’t even mind. She was both kinder and fiercer. A better fighter while less likely to come to blows with all she met. Azara was the better half of my soul. When quicksand appeared and swallowed her tent in the middle of the night, taking her with it, I wished I had been the one to die. I’ve spent my entire life thinking that she would not have failed to avenge me. She would have taken vengeance on the ones who took me from her and healed the desert. But no matter whom I betrayed for my cause, or how fiercely I fought, I could not bring her back.

“And today, when I thought I had lost Badha the same way, I knew it was my fault. Azara would have been strong enough to see I had been deceived. She would have turned away from her course before she destroyed even more people she loved.”

By now, the walls of the crumbling temple were near. “It’s hard to turn away from a path to which you had given so much.” It was true. The scars on my back were a testament to how far I was willing to go in the wrong direction, because enduring more pain was so much easier than admitting all of your prior suffering had been in vain.

We stopped in the shadow of the crumbling structure, looking at the way the walls had been worn smooth on the outside by the constant breeze rolling off the ocean. A clack from my side finally drew my gaze toward Izumi. She reached into her sash and pulled out the two broken pieces of the Heart. I had been so focused on getting Keera back that I hadn’t even processed that she had it.

She looked down at it, with her brow furrowed. “This is truly the answer? Not the destruction of Kelvadan?”

I sighed heavily. The Heart and conquering Kelvadan had always been inextricably linked in my mind, but that was the result of my own anger. Kelvadan was the representation of the failures of my family which had broken the desert, but it was not the true cause of my pain.