Page 73 of Heart of the Desert

“If you wish to die throwing yourself against Viltov’s defenses, then I will not deny your wishes,” he conceded. “But the journey here is long, and my ships need tending after a long voyage. Will you allow us to camp here a few days longer while we make the necessary repairs?”

Keera folded her arms. “You have delayed before when you had no intentions of granting my requests.”

Warrick scoffed. “I have no desire to stay in this cursed wasteland longer than I have to. But you rest your horses at the end of a long journey, do you not?”

“A boat isn’t a horse.”

“Like I said, there is much you do not know,” Warrick responded cryptically.

“Two days,” I conceded. “You can remain for two days, and then you and your men must leave these shores.”

Warrick sighed. “I do not wish for Viltov to gain control of all the desert, but neither do I wish my men to fight and die where their sacrifice is not appreciated. We will leave when our boats are ready.”

Keera and I turned to go, but a heavy weight settled in my stomach. I could not decide if it was from suspicion that he would actually leave without bloodshed or doubt that we should be sending him away at all.

War brought with it strange allies. While I didn’t trust Warrick, I wondered if trust was a luxury we could afford.

I jolted when I opened my eyes to see Kelvar, silhouetted in moonlight and looking out at the ocean, but I was not as afraid of his presence as I had once been. I was simply surprised. I had thought—perhaps hoped—that he would leave me in peace now that he had given me his message.

He lingered though, and I got to my feet to join him. Despite Kelvar’s presence, Keera remained sleeping peacefully. She and I had fallen asleep next to a small fire we had built beside the ocean, too taken by its beauty to walk back to the tent Izumi had found and erected for us in the very center of the encampment—the prominent position befitting of high lords.

Kelvar too seemed mesmerized by the ocean, not looking away as I approached. Perhaps he would have more guidance—anything more than the vague instruction that I had to save Alyx from the prison trapping her between life and death.

“I wish Alyx could see the ocean,” he said as I stopped next to him.

“She never made the journey?”

Kelvar shook his head. Some of his long hair had slipped out of his knot and brushed across his face. Something about its unkemptness continued to dispel doubts that he was a conjuring of my imagination. In the statue in Kelvadan, his appearance was perfect—every hair in place, skin smooth. That is how I had always pictured him, but in reality, crinkles at the corners of his eyes gave away how often he had smiled during the long years of his life. He seemed strangely human for one who had died decades ago.

My mind would not have conjured him this way. To me, he would have been a giant, both great and terrible in his power and legacy. But here he stood, a man speaking of missing his wife.

“We talked about it, but there was always something to do in Kelvadan. She was a great queen and would not leave her people. It suited her, and so we never left. I never left, until she fell ill,” he continued.

“And then you traveled to the ocean, to take the Heart,” I observed, reciting the story that Lord Alasdar had told me on these very shores when I first saw the temple.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I could tell I was not aging the way Alyx was, and I spent many decades fearing the eventuality of her death. But many clans passed through the city, and I bargained for every scroll and tidbit of history I could glean from them, eventually able to put together the true legend of the Heart. I knew it held my answers.”

I sucked on my teeth. I had spent so many years of my life angry at his choices, but just like when I faced down my mother and the tragedy of her death, ready to rage at her for what she had done, I found my anger defanged. Kelvar had spent just as much time—even more—trying to tell me how to fix it, helpless to do anything but watch my floundering.

If I had the chance to speak to him before I found Keera at her oasis, perhaps I would have shouted at him for his failure. I might have even drawn my blade against him. But now, I feared how much I understood his choices.

“Alyx wouldn’t have wanted me to do it,” Kelvar admitted. “She was always wiser than me. But I had promised her eternity together once. Of course, the great irony of it is that, in my efforts to give it to her, I doomed us to an eternity apart. I could not give her life, only stop death from taking hold. So, she is trapped, somewhere in between where I cannot reach her.”

“Do you know how we might free her?” I asked.

Kelvar shook his head. “I just know that I broke the balance between life and death. I should have known better. The desert gives and it takes, after all. She is equal parts the life that persists despite the harsh environment, and the death that takes the weak.”

“We will try,” I promised Kelvar. It seemed nearly impossible—to lead all the clans across the desert as one to free the city, fight our way all the way to the top of the tower, and then reshape the fabric of the desert itself to heal the Heart. But now Keera and I were high lords together—we were stronger together, and we had done the impossible before.

“I miss her,” Kelvar admitted. “I even miss the way she is sure to be furious at me for risking everything for her.”

“Never before has a man so loved his wife,” I observed.

Kelvar let out a breath like a laugh and looked down. His eyes caught on the packs at his feet, and he frowned.

“Is that my sword?”

I followed his gaze to the handle, sticking from a scabbard, curved quillons gleaming in the starlight. Picking it up, I pulled the top half of the blade out of its sheath to show him what had happened. My heart clenched at the shape of the jagged edge where it had broken in two.