Page 95 of Heart of the Desert

“Are you hurt? Erix!”

Keera’s voice was breathy and panicked, but still nothing compared to the desperate scream of the desert. I dropped my hand, and a sigh of relief and confusion escaped her as she found no wound.

“Calix is here,” she said hurriedly. “We can end this here and now if we kill him.”

Instead of relief though, her words only deepened my dread.

“The Heart is gone.”

Her eyes widened, and she spun around. Following her gaze, I found that she was right—Calix waited in a circle of guards awaiting his fleeing troops. A rider broke from the rest, racing toward them.

“That man. He was the one who attacked you from behind,” Keera gasped.

My stomach dropped sickeningly, and the world tilted around me. We may have won the battle, but we had lost the Heart of the Desert.

Keera let out a sharp cry, and Daiti leapt into motion. The stallion crashed through the remnants of the battle, galloping straight toward where Calix stood with his guard. As the man joined them, Calix took something from him and raised his hand in the air.

Crimson glittered in the sun: A taunt. Then he turned his horse with a sharp tug on his reins and began to ride away

With my own wild roar, Alza leapt into motion, tailing Daiti.

Keera was right. If we could reach him before the Heart disappeared behind the walls of Kelvadan, we could end Calix’s threat today. He may sit atop a horse of the desert, but he did not ride like we did.

I leaned over Alza’s neck, echoing Keera’s posture as her silky mane tickled my face. We moved as one as the air pulled at my hair with warm fingers. Wind whistled in my ears, but the screaming was not loud enough to block out the clamoring panic in my mind—both my own and the desert’s this time.

The peace I normally felt on horseback was nowhere to be found. Just blind determination—pulsing need to get the Heart back from Calix. The alternative was unthinkable.

Keera and Daiti had a considerable head start, and no other horse could match the stallion for explosive speed. But Alza was long and lithe. Her head bobbed as she lengthened her stride. It barely seemed like her hooves touched the ground at all as we flew in hot pursuit. The distance between me and my quarry was still long, but I knew Alza would not flag.

Her urgency echoed my own, and her own heartbeat thundered in my chest. We were one in a way Calix never would be with his stolen mount. We could not let him have the Heart, for he would never understand this feeling—the brutal beauty of the desert and her creatures. Just as he commanded his horse through ruthless force, he would try to abuse the desert’s power through her Heart, but our goddess would not stand for it. Her retribution would be swift and decisive, and in her rage, all might be lost. I narrowed my eyes against the burning wind in my eyes and grit my teeth.

Alza and I pulled astride Keera and then inched ahead. Once, we had raced each other like this in brutal competition, but now it didn’t matter who was in front. Just that one of us reached Calix and put an end to his miserable existence.

My vision narrowed to the back of his retreating head, close enough now that I could make out his nauseatingly perfect windswept hair. I would crush his skull beneath my boot and darken that hair with blood—for poisoning Keera. For nearly driving us apart. For stealing the desert’s Heart. For taking my heart.

Red closed in around the edge of my vision as my awareness of everything but pounding hot rage faded.

Keera shouted again from just behind me, this time in fear instead of rage. I looked up just in time to see an arrow arcing through the air, fired by one of Calix’s retreating guard.

I didn’t have time to steer Alza out of the way, and I braced for the impact as it aimed squarely for my chest.

Then I was falling. I tumbled through the air disorientingly, although I didn’t even feel the pain in my chest. Breath exploded from me as I hit the ground and rolled. As dull aching spread across my ribs from the fall and stars danced in my vision, I screwed my eyes shut, waiting for the piercing sensation of an arrow in my flesh.

But it didn’t come.

Instead, a scream that sounded like it was from my nightmares tore into my brain. The pain was in my mind, but it wasn’t mine.

I sat upright so quickly my head swam, but it didn’t matter. Alza reared in front of me. Her bucking had thrown me off, not the force of an arrow. Instead, the shaft was embedded deep in her own chest, right where her front leg met her muscular torso.

She tried to lower herself down to all fours, but the leg on her injured side gave out and she crumpled to the ground. Now the screaming filling the air was mine. I scrabbled toward her on all fours. I laid my hands on her neck feeling the rasp of breath in and out of her body as she panted. Foam bubbled from her lips as her own panic and pain trickled into my mind.

My heart almost shattered though as a foreign sort of relief—deep and instinctual—came from her mind. She knew she had saved me, and that brought her comfort, even as she struggled on the ground.

My vision blurred as tears welled up in my eyes, and the back of my throat burned so intensely, I could barely draw in breath. I needed to soothe her—to do something—but I just trembled. All the comforting words I had whispered to her in long years together, trekking across the desert with just each other for company, slipped from my memory.

I was lost. I could barely remember what we had been chasing. Just the pain building in my chest, making it impossible to breathe.

Then arms wrapped around my shoulders, bringing with them just enough calm for me to suck in a rattling breath that escaped me again in a sob.