Page 71 of Heart of the Desert

My muscles twitched with the desire to lunge again, but I held them in check. I knew what she was doing, and I couldn’t afford to be sloppy. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t let her think it was working.

I growled as I lashed out, my blow wide and sloppy. Nathaira fell for the attack moving to parry me and slide in a stab of her own. But I anticipated the action. At the last second, I changed directions, aiming for her now unprotected right side. Nathaira was wily though and danced out of the way.

Still, my blood began to hum at how narrowly she had escaped. My heart pounded in time to the song of battle in my veins. She would not continue to escape. I leapt forward, trying to overwhelm her with a flurry of blows. She matched me, strike for strike, but blocked me more narrowly each time.

She made to dance backward to regroup, but I couldn’t let her. Years of experience would allow her to toy with me in long fought games of strategy, but I had strength and a decade of pent-up rage on my side. I pushed forward, not allowing her to gain the distance she needed from me.

Her arms began to shake as I bore down on her and the feral beast of battle in my chest roared in triumph. The bond in my belly thrummed in time, and I could tell Erix’s own lust for battle was pulled into my current. I distantly realized I should have been worried—he still battled his own demons and didn’t need mine as well. But the inexorable call of that wild rage was too strong to turn away from.

I slammed my blade down on Nathaira’s with a brutal overhead strike, a broken cry tearing from me. We locked together in a bind, our hilts crossed as I tried to press my superior size down on her.

Our faces were inches from each other, and her rapid breaths feathered over my face. She trembled beneath my strength, but she did not yield.

Fast as lightning, she let go of her blade with one hand. Before I could react and extricate myself from her, her fist shot out and slammed into my face. Pain exploded in my skull, and my eyes watered, blurring my vision. Only pure instinct helped me lift my blade fast enough to block Nathaira’s next attack. As I gasped through the sharp sensation, I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision.

I continued to stumble back, barely avoiding Nathaira’s attacks. The force of her next blow traveled up my arm to my shoulder as I tried to shove it aside. The warmth of blood dripped down from my nose to my lips, coated my teeth.

The shock of the blow when I thought I had the advantage had left me rattled, but now the taste of blood on my tongue awoke something new—or rather something that had always been there but rose to the surface more readily these days. When the desert tasted blood, her power both bloomed and calmed, and so did mine.

As my vision finally cleared, my gaze homed in on Nathaira like a falcon on its prey. Every detail from the sweat gathering on her brow to the shimmer of blood glass in her hilt came into sharp relief. Her next blow came at my left shoulder, which I had left unguarded, as Aderyn had warned.

At the last second, I sidestepped and the force of Nathaira’s stab carried her past me. With one hand, I grabbed her wrist, twisting it as I wrenched her sword from her grasp. As I did so, I hooked my ankle around hers and kicked the back of her leg. With a cry, she dropped her sword as she fell to her knees. I caught the falling weapon and crossed it with mine, holding both blades at her throat.

Time slowed, as I met Nathaira’s eyes. A bead of sweat tracked down her temple as the moment stretched. She met my eyes with nothing but contempt as she raised her chin in something like a dare. Even bested by me, she did not yield or admit she was wrong to exile me. Instead, her glare seemed to say, See? I was right about you all along.

I had imagined this moment many times but never quite like this. In my imaginings, she and my parents would beg for my forgiveness, and sometimes I would give it to them.

Sometimes I wouldn’t.

But in my imaginings during exile, I had never considered that I might have friends at my back, watching me exact my vengeance. It had never occurred to me that I would be facing Nathaira with the promise of being a new type of leader—not a lord of a clan that had to conquer others to prove my power, but a high lord who would stand above the squabbling for a higher purpose.

I did not need to kill Nathaira. I would spill blood for the desert, but killing her would mean nothing. It would not prove what I had once hoped it would, for I had already proved it to myself.

She had been wrong. I deserved to belong.

I took one slow breath in as everybody around us held their breaths. Then, I shakily exhaled and took a step back, lowering both weapons.

Nathaira’s sneer deepened. “Duels of honor only end in death.”

“Not this duel,” I declared. “Erix and I said that we do not seek to overthrow you as lords. Simply to unite all the people of the desert, from the clans to the Great City, and drive out those who don’t respect our ways.”

“You dishonor us both by sparing me,” Nathaira said, clambering to her feet and stepping toward me, as if she looked to continue our fight even without her weapon in hands.

Now it was I who raised my chin. “I have already proved my honor, and you had none to begin with. Perhaps you can regain it by helping us in our battle to heal the desert, once and for all.”

A cough that sounded like an aborted guffaw sounded behind me in Elion’s voice. I swallowed. While I still preferred a sword, perhaps my time as queen had made me better with words than I once had been.

Nathaira’s nostrils flared. “You will regret this.” Then, she turned on her heel and marched out of the circle of tents, her warlord hot on her heels.

Finally, I turned and faced the others who had been watching. Some of the lords wore hard expressions, their lips pressed into firm lines. Izumi looked relieved, while Aderyn wore a look of pride. My gaze stuck on Erix though, whose gaze was glittering and feral. While his control had seemed better since his conversation with Kelvar, now he seemed to be gripping on to his composure by a thread, and I didn’t think it was the voice of the desert pushing him to the brink of his sanity.

My lips twitched. I had sensed he thought the trappings of a queen ill-suited to me, but it seemed the role of high lord, with blood on my face and a sword in my hand was more to his liking.

I preferred it too.

“It is settled then,” Izumi pronounced. “All the clans present will follow Keera and Erix, High Lords of the Ballan Desert.”

Chapter twenty-five