Page 93 of Heart of the Desert

And all of Calix’s forces surrounded her.

Somehow, she had been separated from the riders in the charge. Between our two forces, the armies of Viltov were slowly crushed, but it would not be enough. The rings of soldiers separating her from us were at least twenty deep, and among them were the riders astride stolen horses. She would not want to hurt the mounts, forced to fight against their will, but they would have no such qualms.

They were focusing all of their energy on her.

Viltov could retreat back to Kelvadan if they lost their water, but none of that would matter if Keera fell.

Nothing would matter.

As the men around me continued the fight to the water’s edge, Alza and I broke ranks and plunged into the fray.

She would not face this army alone.

Chapter thirty-two

Keera

Sand and shards of molten glass flew through the air as lightning struck the ground. One of the jagged pieces caught me across the temple but I barely felt it.

Instead, I rapidly blinked blood from my eyes as I tried to regain my bearings after the earthshattering blast. The man who had been dragging Aderyn from her horse had fallen, and she was on the ground next to him, seemingly unharmed. She recovered first, scrabbling to her feet and raising her twin blades.

Before she could dispatch her assailant, another jumped at her from the side. Her blades came up, catching his weapon between their two lethal curves, and she was forced to stumble back a few steps.

Daiti lunged forward in response to a squeeze of my legs, charging through the open space between us created by my blast of magic. I advanced toward Aderyn, dispatching any who tried to harry me with brutal downward cuts of my saber and my long dagger on either side.

Aderyn’s adversaries drove her back deeper behind enemy lines as she held them off, but still I pursued them. I reached them just as Aderyn spun one of her blades in a lethal twist, cutting off one man’s hand cleanly at the wrist. He fell to his knees with a mangled scream, cut off in a gurgling crunch as Daiti crushed his skull with lashing hooves. My blade caught the other man in the neck, who fell like a stalk of wheat before a scythe.

Aderyn looked up, shaking blood from her eyes, but instead of relief at my presence, horror twisted her face.

“No!”

I twisted to see where she looked and found the cavalry from Viltov charging in from the side. Their lines barreled into the fray between us and the mass of clan riders. We were cut off behind enemy lines.

“Sands,” I swore, reaching down to try and help Aderyn up on my horse behind me. If any stallion could charge through a thicket of enemy spears and return us to our allies, it was Daiti.

Before I could grip Aderyn’s slippery fingers, the whistling of an arrow split the air. I ducked just in time, and Aderyn was forced to turn and parry another foot soldier’s incoming attack.

She put her back to Daiti’s flank as she felled him with exquisite skill, but I still ground my teeth in frustration. Even as I defended our other side, slashing in twin arcs with both my saber and my long dagger, a horrifying thought penetrated the mayhem of battle in my mind.

This had been intentional.

I had tried to draw attention, and draw it I had. Calix’s men had wanted to separate me from the riders and cut off the snake’s head.

But this snake had fangs.

Magic bubbled up, hot and potent as a lava wyrm in my chest. If I could just buy us a moment’s respite, we could fight our way back to the other lords. A cry escaped me as I thrust my sword up to the sky.

Lightning shot from the sky, blinding even against the searing light of the sun. All the soldiers around us were blasted back a few steps. The cleared circle around us was charred black and smoldering by the time my vision refocused.

Still, the soldiers tightened in again like a noose. This time, the cavalry pushed in as well. Aderyn was a force of nature, her sickle blades forming impenetrable discs of swirling steel as she fought with bared teeth.

But we could not last forever.

The tether low in my belly pulled so hard it was nearly painful. I gasped in a breath, drowned out by the familiar roar that cut through the turmoil.

Erix had arrived.

As I cut down a rider of Viltov—seething at the way he yanked on the reins binding his horse—he fell out of the way to reveal a dark figure cutting through the gleaming ranks of Viltov’s soldiers.