Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Keera

I stared at my feet as two guards marched me further inside the palace. Even as they flanked me and ushered me through the cavernous stone hallway, a strange sense of calm washed over me. The sensation seemed to be coming from beyond me, slowing my heart rate and breathing even as thoughts crashed through my mind.

I would be lucky to be exiled again at this point. More likely I would be killed for endangering the queen’s guests, showing how the desert had cursed me.

The queen led her guards and me into a lavish sitting room and slumped down on a couch, somehow making the movement look composed even as the silks of her dress fluttered down around her in disarray.

“Wait outside,” she commanded to the guards who bowed and backed out of the room.

I stood in the middle of a plush carpet, wringing my hands as I wrestled with my confusion. The queen tilted her head as she observed me, taking me in.

“What clan are you from?”

I swallowed heavily. “I have no clan.”

“But you are from the Ballan Desert. ”

Her tone indicated it was not a question, but I nodded anyway. She paused, and the silence stretched until it threatened to snap my sanity.

“I am an exile,” I explained, my voice tremulous, but it did not break.

“And why were you exiled?”

I furrowed my brow. “You saw…”

“I saw that the desert’s magic runs strong in you, and you have not learned to control it properly.”

I shook my head. “The desert does not favor me.”

The queen raised an eyebrow. “And how long did you survive as an exile?”

“Since I was fifteen,” I admitted. With no way to keep track of time at my oasis, I didn’t know exactly how long I had lingered on in isolation, but I knew it had been many years.

“It would seem to me that the desert would have to favor you for you to survive the elements on your own for nearly a decade,” the queen observed.

“Whatever magic flows in me has cursed me,” I insisted.

“How?”

I shifted from foot to foot, knowing I couldn’t escape answering but hoping the guards would come in and drag me away to spare me the pain.

“Sit and tell me how you came to be an exile.” The queen gestured to an ottoman beside me. Her tone was gentle but held a hint of command that could not be ignored.

I arranged myself on the seat, pulling the purple silk around me to give me a moment to call the memories to mind, as if they weren’t simply hidden under a thin layer of denial to keep me from looking at them too closely. I had cultivated that denial, both afraid of and exhausted by the anger that bubbled up in me every time I remembered the reason for my seclusion.

“When I was thirteen, and my first blood came, my father took me to the horse master to pick my first horse.”

The queen nodded, indicating she understood this custom of the clans.

“Her name was Farran, and she was nearly wild still, but I loved her. The horse master of Clan Padra said she would be too difficult for a young girl like me, but Farren warmed to me, and I wanted no other. She was so fast, we would gallop across the sands free enough that I could leave even my own thoughts behind.”

I swallowed thickly. I hadn’t meant to share these details, but I hadn’t had the chance to speak of Farran in years. The images of her rich brown coat and the proud arch of her neck sprang forth unbidden.

“Two years later, I rode to hunt a herd of oryx. We weren’t the only hunters out for meat that day, and we got into a skirmish with a mother caracal and her cubs. Farran was wounded, her leg broken, before I managed to drive off the caracal. I helped her limp all the way to the encampment—back to the horse master, begging him to help her.”

I had to take a few shaky breaths before continuing.

“He said he would help me. Before I could stop him, he had drawn his blade and driven it into her skull. He said it was a mercy, that she never would have recovered. But something happened in me the moment I heard her dying scream. It was like my body couldn’t contain me anymore, and the whole world began to shake. I don’t remember most of it, but everybody said the ground before my feet cracked open, creating a huge crater that engulfed the horse master and several other tents. When I came back to awareness and saw what I had done, I couldn’t believe it.

“The clan lord declared my sentence to be exile for murder, saying it was unsafe to have me camp in the clan. I begged and screamed for my parents to do something, to talk to her, but they only looked at me with the same fear as everybody else. The next morning, the clan rode away, leaving me behind with no horse.”

My voice trailed off, and I stared down at my hands where they fisted the amethyst silks in my lap. I relaxed my fingers with great effort, not wanting to crumple Neven’s fine work.

“The story of my grandfather doesn’t end with the building of Kelvadan.” The queen broke the silence.

I glanced up in surprise. I had expected horror or instant calls for me to be thrown from the city. Instead, she cocked her head pensively, a lose silver curl escaping her elaborate twist to brush against her neck.

“We normally only tell the first part, as everybody loves a happy ending. But the immense power Kelvar carried didn’t come without a cost. He was prone to fits of rage and often fell to distraction. Still, for one hundred years, he and Queen Alyx ruled Kelvadan, granted long life by the favor of the desert. Eventually though, time came for Alyx, as it does for us all.

“With Alyx gone, Kelvar fell into a fit that he didn’t come out of. He shouted in argument with imagined voices and lashed out at those around him as if he didn’t recognize them. Soon, he left the city, and although his children tried to stop him, he was still too powerful for any to stand against. He took his horse and wandered out into the sands, never to be seen again.”

I blinked rapidly, the tragedy of Kelvar’s demise pulling at a thread inside my heart.

“The desert’s magic is a difficult gift. My family knows that better than most,” the queen continued. “If you carry it too, then perhaps we can help you control it.”

“Why would you do that when you could just as easily send me away?” I asked. Part of me wanted to clap my hand over my mouth and keep myself from dissuading the queen from letting me stay. The other part of my mind could only see a dark chasm splitting the earth before my feet and the horrified faces of my parents. I would never forgive myself if I damaged the city of Kelvadan, the greatest monument to peace and love.

“My lineage has failed to help those burdened by the desert’s gifts before. Perhaps you are an opportunity to set things right.” The queen’s eyes shone overbright in the flickering torchlight. “Besides, if war with the clans is coming, I would prefer to have you on our side. I’m sure Aderyn would love to have you train as one of the Kelvadan riders. Only my guards and I saw you lose control.”

My throat fought me as I swallowed thickly. It hurt more than I expected to find kindness in strangers that I had not received from my own parents. If I could repay the Queen of Kelvadan by fighting against the clans that would rejoice to see the city fall, then I would gladly fight alongside the City Guard.

Neven chuckled as I led Daiti through the city streets, keeping a firm hand on his head to prevent him from lashing out to chomp down on the arm of an unsuspecting pedestrian.

“You truly have yourself a war horse,” he commented when I slapped Daiti’s flank as he eyed a woman carrying a basket of fruit.

“I wasn’t aware he was so hostile to people besides me,” I admitted honestly. “I haven’t had him around others before this.”

After my conversation with the queen, I had admitted my exile status to Aderyn and Neven as well, bracing for their wrath for lying to them when they had shown me incredible hospitality.

“I know,” was all Aderyn had to say with a firm clap on my shoulder.

Neven piped up at my crestfallen expression. “You were so clearly shy of people, it was hard not to guess. Still, you risked yourself to warn Kelvadan, so we weren’t going to press the issue.”

Now, he helped me bring Daiti to the palace stables where Aderyn’s mount and those of all Kelvadan riders members and trainees stayed. When we entered the courtyard outside the palace, we turned toward a row of structures to the left instead of heading forward toward the main palace. From the smell of hay and the low whickering of animals, I could tell we had arrived.

“Kaius!” Neven stuck his head through the doorway of the nearest stable and called out.

A man with tanned skin and enough lines around his mouth to show he enjoyed smiling as much as he liked spending time in the sun emerged. He wore a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and clapped Neven on the shoulder in an easy greeting.

“It’s been too long, Neven! I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to catch up with you at the festival the day before last, but it turned out to be rather eventful.”

Neven cleared his throat and jerked his head toward me.

The man, Kaius, didn’t miss a beat. “And there is the event herself! I was told I would be seeing you soon, although nobody mentioned such a magnificent animal.”

Daiti pawed the ground and tossed his head as if he understood the compliment and wished to show himself in the best light .

“I’m Keera, and this is Daiti.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet both of you. I’m Kaius, Queen Ginevra’s husband.”

I stammered a touch before inclining my head and placing my fist over my heart in respect. “I didn’t realize you were the king.”

Kaius chuckled. “I hold no such title, although Ginevra would love it if I did. However, it turns out that I’m much better with horses than people. I told her I would only marry her if I could be consort and royal horse master only. She was so desperate for me, that she accepted my terms.”

“That’s not how she tells the story,” Neven said in a teasing tone.

“She gets all sorts of ideas into her head after a few cups of laka .” Kaius waved a hand dismissively, but his tone held nothing but affection. “Now let’s get this magnificent beast settled.”

Kaius reached toward Daiti. Neven and I both drew breath to warn him, just as Daiti’s teeth closed around where Kaius’s hand had been a moment before.

Unperturbed, Kaius cooed gently and reached out again; Daiti shied back for a moment before eventually letting Kaius lay his hand on his forelock. He patted gently and muttered a bit more nonsense. I looked on in surprise as Daiti leaned into the touch and whickered gently. While the horse had never been anything but patient with me, he had turned out to be a bit of a menace to all others.

“How…”

“You’re not the only one outside of the royal family to be touched by the desert,” Kaius said with a crooked smile, producing a treat from his pocket that Daiti gobbled up greedily. “Not all of us were lucky enough to have as flashy of powers as you, but having a way with horses suits me just fine.”

I shrank internally at the mention of my unintended display of magic at the festival. The queen obviously told her husband what happened. Outwardly, I smiled as Daiti continued to revel in Kaius’s attention, acting much more like a kitten than a warhorse.

Neven murmured in my ear, “I have to be getting back to work, but Kauis will get you and Daiti oriented and point you toward where the riders train.” He set off back toward the house as Kaius led me and Daiti further into the stable.

Once he had shown us to the stall that was to be Daiti’s, he went to fetch some fresh arrowgrass, leaving me to settle the horse in.

“Glad to see you well.”

I started at the voice, nearly smacking Daiti in the nose as I spun around. I hadn’t heard footsteps behind me despite the floor being stone, as it was everywhere in the city.

A familiar man stood in the opening to the stall, hands shoved into the sash at his waist, holding closed his leather vest. His smile was broad and easy in his round face, giving him an open and friendly look.

“I’m Dryden. We danced at the festival a few days back,” he said when I continued to stare.

“I remember.” I shook myself from my silence but stayed partially behind the solid shield of Daiti’s body. I didn’t know how to explain my behavior, and part of me hoped that if I stayed silent, Dryden would leave.

“You seemed to have a stressful evening. I wasn’t sure if you would remember the minor details.” A friendly smile split his face as he rubbed a hand over his close-shorn hair sheepishly.

I inched out from behind Daiti. “I’m sorry I ran away. I was… overwhelmed.”

“ I’m sorry that I was being too forward. I hear the magic of the desert can be hard to control.”

“No!” I held up my hands placatingly. “It wasn’t that. You were being incredibly kind. I’m just… not from the city. I’ve never been around so many people before. The crowd and the noise—” I broke off as his words struck me. He knew about my magic.

My wide eyes and slack-jawed expression must have signaled my shock.

“News travels fast in this city, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Plenty of people carry a touch of the desert’s magic. I’m just glad to know that it wasn’t me being overbearing after too much laka .”

“I think I’m the one who had too much laka .” I offered him a wry smile, which he returned. I didn’t tell him that I likely suffered from more than the “touch” of magic he was accustomed to. His friendly demeanor eased the tension in my shoulders a bit.

“So, you’re keeping your horse in the riders’ stable now? Are you joining up?” he asked, turning his attention to Daiti. The horse stamped his feet and blew a breath out through his nose.

“It was the queen’s idea. She said I could start training today and that she might be able to help me with…” I gestured vaguely. It seemed almost too good to be true that I might be able to control my magic, making my hope hard to articulate.

Dryden nodded knowingly. “I’m glad you’ll be joining up with the riders. I myself am in training right now.”

At that moment, footsteps sounded as Kaius rounded the corner, huffing as he hauled a bundle of arrowgrass for Daiti.

“I see you’ve met Dryden,” he commented as he set down his burden. “That means he can show you where the riders train, and I can stay here with the animals.”

“Be careful, or we might start to think you like horses better than people,” Dryden commented.

“I’m not trying to make a secret of it,” Kaius grumbled, but his smile betrayed him.

Dryden led me out of the stable and around to a set of stairs that carried us to a large flat terrace. About a dozen others, a mix of men and women, milled about, some stretching or doing various exercises while others chatted animatedly. As I looked around to get my bearings, I furrowed my brow.

“Are we… are we on top of the stables?”

Dryden nodded. “With a city built into the side of mountain, you have to take advantage of vertical space. There’s not a lot of room to spread out.”

I nodded as Aderyn walked into the courtyard. She only acknowledged me with a small nod before putting her hands on her hips and looking the group over with a critical eye.

“All right, recruits, you know the drill.”

At her command, the others immediately dropped into a series of calisthenics they already seemed to know by rote. I followed along as best I could, but within minutes, sweat poured off my body, dripping down my overheated skin to create a puddle on the ground around the spot I had claimed for myself. Panic gripped me at the site of so much lost moisture, but I reminded myself of the constant trickle from the spring in Aderyn’s bathroom. Water was not in short supply here.

After a few more minutes, my muscles began to shake in the effort to keep up with those around me. As I followed along, using my arms to lower and lift my body from the ground, I narrowly missed breaking my nose as my arms failed to hold my weight and I pitched headfirst into the stone.

I struggled back up into the position, arms as wobbly as the legs of a newborn oryx; I looked up to catch a glance of Aderyn watching me. She offered me a brief nod and continued pacing between the rows of other recruits. Something about her stoic acknowledgement of my effort, even if I’d failed miserably, gave me the strength I needed to get through the rest of the grueling exercises. If I could prove worthy of a spot among the recruits, then perhaps I could truly find a home in Kelvadan. My time in the city may already be softening the sharp protrusion of my bones, and years of hunting had kept me spry, but my muscles still had a lot of catching up to do.

“Now that we’ve warmed up, it’s time to move on to our forms,” Aderyn proclaimed.

I put my hands on my knees and panted in despair. This was supposed to get me warmed up, and yet almost every inch of my body felt more like it was on fire.

“Dryden, go ahead and lead us through the first form. Keera, come to the front and watch. Try to memorize the movements,” Aderyn barked.

I gratefully plodded up to where Aderyn stood, turning to face the rest of the recruits who positioned themselves in a ready stance. Wordlessly, Aderyn handed me the skin off her belt, and I took several grateful gulps of water as the recruits began their forms.

They moved rhythmically, looking somewhat like they were fighting although they had no weapons or opponents. Dryden, standing at the front of the group, wobbled often, but wore the look of utmost concentration. The deep furrow between his brows, and the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips as he focused, sweat shining on his deep skin in the rising sun, made me smile.

I did my best to commit the movements to memory, but they moved from the first form, to the second and the third, before repeating the movements with blunted sabers in hand. Eventually my brain couldn’t hold any more, and I focused the best I could on the way each of the recruits moved. The patterns looked familiar, like something I had watched the riders of Clan Padra do when I was young and scampered off to the horse enclosures next to where the riders practiced.

After finishing the fourth form , Aderyn indicated they were going to be moving on to sparring with blunted sabers before turning to me. “The queen is waiting for you in the main courtyard. You have some other training to attend to.”

I nodded before trotting off down the stairs, thinking hopefully of the cool shade of the palace after standing in the sun, still flushed from my earlier exertion. The queen greeted me in the courtyard before leading me through the grand doors into the palace. I found it odd that an exile would be treated so personally by the queen, but I reminded myself that Kelvadan was different from the clans. As we passed the statue, I looked at it again, this time in a slightly different light, knowing Kelvar’s fate was to be driven mad by his power.

Instead of heading up the stairs like we had the last time I visited, the queen led us down a winding stair cut into the stone. I repressed a shiver at the weight of the mountain pushing in on me from every side.

“It looks like Aderyn put you through your paces today.” The queen made conversation as we walked.

I pushed back the tendrils of sweaty hair that clung to my forehead and neck, considering how savage I must look, sweaty and panting, compared to the queen’s effortless grace.

“I’m not sure I’ll make much of a rider,” I admitted. It was true that I hadn’t even made it through half a day’s training.

The queen looked over her shoulder at me knowingly. “You might surprise yourself once we get another month or two of solid meals in you. But having you become a rider isn’t the only reason I asked Aderyn to train you. There is something about exhausting the body that makes learning to control the desert’s magic easier. ”

Now we walked down a long corridor, and I got the impression that we walked straight into the mountain. Something inside me suffocated, and I chided myself for my claustrophobia. I was just not accustomed to being surrounded by stone and would get used to it in time.

Looking at the walls to distract myself, I noticed they seemed roughhewn, unlike the flawless cuts that formed the rest of the city. I reached out and ran my fingers over the walls, finding many lips and jagged edges.

“This wasn’t part of the original palace,” the queen explained, seeing my curiosity. “My father, Kelvar’s son, built this when he started finding the desert’s magic overwhelming and feared the same fate as his father.”

I tilted my head as I considered. It was odd to think of Kelvadan being ruled by one family for two hundred years, when in the clans, lordship shifted regularly as power waxed and waned. I wondered who would rule when Queen Ginevra died, as I had heard no word of her having children. Although, if she were to be blessed with the same long life as Kelvar, it wouldn’t be a concern for decades to come.

At the end of the hallway, the queen stopped and opened the door to a room. It was more a stone cube than a room really, with only two cushions sat across from each other at the center. I cocked my head at it dubiously.

Queen Ginevra settled herself onto one without hesitation and gestured for me to take the one across from her. I folded myself onto it, mirroring her cross-legged position.

“My father, King Torin, built this room for meditation. One of the most overwhelming parts of the desert’s magic is the ability to feel everything happening, as if you yourself inhabit the entirety of the desert.”

I nodded, remembering the sudden burst of awareness threatening to drown me before I unleashed a whirlwind at the festival. It wasn’t all that dissimilar to the eerie and deafening quiet that washed over me before the lightning storm at Clan Katal. That thought sat uncomfortably in my belly, but I tucked it away to examine later.

“This deep in the mountain, the stone blocks out most of that sensation, helping you concentrate as you tame the power inside of you,” the queen explained.

“Do you use this method to control your magic?” I asked .

“Along with other things, although it is not as difficult for me as for some. I have not been as touched by the desert as many in my bloodline. Most of my power seems to lie in diplomacy.” She gave a wry smile. “Still, my father taught me his methods in case I needed them some day.”

“I’m glad he did.”

“Now, close your eyes.”

I did as she asked.

“Picture how you felt at the festival, before you unleashed your power,” Queen Ginevra prompted in a soothing voice. “Think about the awareness that connected you to all the living things in the desert.”

I pictured the burrowing fox I felt that night, and the whispering of coarse grasses. The sensations felt choked and muted, but I held on to them.

“Follow those sensations to their source, deep within you.”

I did as she asked, finding the threads of sensation leading me to the part of myself that felt suffocated by the walls around me. It was a force in myself that had been asleep for years, until the fateful night the Viper came across my oasis. My breathing quickened as I prodded it with my consciousness, claustrophobia returning. I tried to focus on the queen’s words and control my heartbeat.

“Once you locate that source, imagine constructing a barrier around it. Something firm and hard, to keep it from leaching into the rest of your being. Something unyielding enough to control the wildness of the desert’s magic—as solid and permanent as the walls around you.

“You won’t be able to build the entire barrier today, but try to create the image of it, firm in your mind.”

I struggled with the queen’s directions, imagining burying that seed of power within myself under a mountain as tall and imposing as the one we sat within. In protest, the seed within me started to grow, sending tendrils through the foundations of my mountain. I tried to push back but it writhed and squirmed with the fervor of a wild horse who refused to be tamed.

My magic burst forward from the scaffold of the enclosure I sought to build around it, not silent in my head this time but screaming. The feeling washed me away for a moment before something caused the tendrils of magic coursing through me to retreat. My eyes snapped open as a loud crash echoed through the room.

The door behind the queen had been blown off its hinges, cracked in two straight down the middle. The queen bit her lips, looking me over carefully.

“I–I’m sorry. Was that…” I stammered.

She quickly schooled her face into a calm smile, but not before I saw a flash of something familiar in her eyes. “My fault. I underestimated how feisty your magic would be and dove in too fast. We should just start with some breathing exercises first.”

We spent the rest of our time doing simple meditations, but I left feeling less centered than when I’d entered. The muscles in my shoulders gripped steadily tighter as the feeling of inescapable rock surrounding me grew more oppressive by the second.

Even as I was glad to leave when the queen had to attend to other business, I eyed the broken door as I walked out. It seemed an ill-omen for my training.

Seeing where I was looking, the queen reached out to lay a comforting hand on my shoulder but stopped, perhaps remembering what led to my first loss of control.

“It could be worse,” she assured me.

I wasn’t so sure, but I decided to trust her. After all, nobody else would be able to teach me control. And without control, I would not be able to stay in the city that had offered me the home even my own parents had denied me. I would not—could not—fail.

Over the next month, my training with the riders proved to be much more promising than my work with the queen. While I knew proper rest and nutrition would change my body for the better, I was astounded how quickly I found myself able to complete the entire training routine. Muscles filled in my frame before my eyes. I would have suspected Aderyn was lacing my food with some sort of stimulant if not for her surprise as my progress.

While my body’s changes allowed me to keep up with the exercises, the saber forms were where I showed the starkest improvement. My body fell into them almost as if they were a comfortable habit, even after I’d only practiced them a few times.

After Aderyn had left us to our own devices for the day, Dryden watched me as he massaged a sore shoulder, head cocked to the side as I flowed through the movements.

“I don’t know why you’re still practicing. You already make the rest of us look bad,” he complained with no annoyance. After a couple weeks training alongside him, I learned that nothing really ruffled Dryden’s feathers.

“Yeah, and you’re already giving us enough bruises,” another female recruit, Nyra, piped up as she put away the blunted sabers we had practiced with. Her quip held more bite.

I just shrugged as I continued moving through the third form, this one especially challenging as it involved a series of deep lunges. While I had accomplished the balance most others struggled with in this form, the muscles of my thighs still struggled to hold the positions as long as necessary. The others had an advantage over me after years of using their legs to steer and hold themselves on their horses.

In truth, I practiced because it made me feel less like I was failing Queen Ginevra, and by extension, Kelvadan. This city and its leader had opened itself to me when all others turned me away. They went out of their way to help me and gave me a place to belong—something I hadn’t had in far too long. Even if learning to control my magic was slow at best, I could repay Kelvadan for opening its gates to me by fighting alongside its riders.

“Are you going to enter in the Trials?” Nyra asked Dryden as I lowered my arms with a long exhale, finishing the form.

“Of course! I know I’ll get my ass served to me on a silver platter, but it might be served to me by the next Champion of the Desert. That’ll be a story to tell my children.”

“That’s assuming you find anybody to procreate with you.” Nyra elbowed Dryden playfully in the side.

“I have my charms, don’t I, Keera?” Dryden retorted.

“I wouldn’t know. And the Trials?” I asked, happy to deflect Dryden’s flirtation. His manner was light, but I was still too busy working out how to exist around other humans to try to decode flirting.

“The Ballan Trials? They’re being held at the end of the dry season?” Dryden seemed incredulous that I wasn’t aware of the massive event about to descend on the city.

I blinked. I had attended the Trials with my parents when I was small, the only time I had ever seen Kelvadan before, and the skill of its riders were forever imprinted in my brain. My parents had both been eliminated early, but we had stayed through the days of feasting and watched the remaining events. It was hard to remember specifics, but I remembered the excitement in the air, even more palpable than it had been at the Kelvadan festival. I also had vague memories of my parents’ disapproving frowns as we rode away from the city. Perhaps they had been disappointed to lose so early.

Apparently, that had been twenty years ago. Now it was time for another generation of riders to compete for the title of Champion, charged with protecting the desert until the next Trials.

“I don’t know as much about them as I should,” I admitted when Dryden continued to stare at me. “I only vaguely remember the last competition, and… we don’t talk about them much outside of the city.”

“Kelvar himself was the last Champion before the Trials moved to Kelvadan, wasn’t he?” Nyra asked.

“I think so.” Dryden shrugged. “Since the founding of Kelvadan and the Trials moving to the city, they aren’t quite as brutal, and the title of Champion is mostly ceremonial. The duels aren’t to the death anymore, but the challenges are difficult enough that a few competitors still die every time. They’re a huge event, and some of more traditional clans take them very seriously. Do you think you’ll enter?”

I shook my head, although the thought of being part of such a competition—of being named Champion so nobody could deny that I had earned my place—was seductive. “We’ve barely started training to fight on horseback. I hardly think I’m ready.”

Nyra frowned. “They only happen every twenty years though, so this might be your best chance to participate. Plus, these will be the tenth Trials since the city was founded, and word has it that the queen is planning to make them a huge to-do. ‘A display of peace and unity’ they say.”

I had a feeling the queen’s desire to promote harmony stemmed from the growing threat of war from the clans. The words of Clan Katal’s lord were another source of motivation for my extended training.

“Plenty of people enter the Trials that don’t have as much training as they would like, since they come around so rarely,” Dryden added. “They get weeded out pretty early, before the challenges get really dangerous, but it’s about saying you competed.”

“What kind of competitions are there in the Trials?”

“They change every time,” Dryden explained excitedly. “Since nobody knows exactly what the events will be, riders must be prepared for anything. All we know is that the events are supposed to test all an individual’s skills, from survival to combat, even horsemanship. That, and the last event is always the same. The final Champion is decided by one-on-one duels.”

“The range of events are supposed to be best to discover who truly has the desert’s favor,” Nyra added on.

I shrugged, feigning casualness. It still felt unnecessarily bold to join the Trials when I had only been training for months, but the queen’s words about me being favored by the desert echoed in my skull. I had always thought I was cursed, but perhaps this would be a chance to prove the opposite. “Maybe I’ll give it a go then. Who was the last Champion?”

“That’s the thing, there wasn’t one.” Nyra leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m too young to remember the last Trials, but my dad says the last duel went awry, and the winner killed his opponent. The Trials are dangerous, but competitors aren’t supposed to fight each other to the death in the duels. After that, they didn’t crown a Champion. My mother is from the clans, and she gets upset every time they bring it up—says its bad luck for the desert not to have a Champion.”

“The clans are too superstitious.” Dryden waved a dismissive hand at Nyra, and she frowned at him.

I mirrored her expression. “I have to get going.”

I left them there discussing the coming competition, not wanting to leave Queen Ginevra waiting. As I passed through the palace doors, one of the guards flanking the tall arch told me the queen was waiting for me up on the terrace. It was a change from the tight stone box we sat in for an hour every afternoon, and my heart lifted. I had come to dread the feeling of layers of rock pressing in around me. Following afternoons shut away from the sky, I had dropped all pretense of sleeping in Aderyn and Neven’s guest room and set myself up a nest of rugs and cushions on the roof where I could see the stars.

As I pressed down rising panic every time I tried to contain my magic, I wondered if this was the only way. An image of the Viper casually lighting a fire with the wave of his hand flitted through my mind one afternoon as I attempted to meditate. He seemed able to use his power without fear, not forcing it down into a tiny box at the base of his spine.

At that thought, the image of his face came to me again unbidden—the way his eyes had gone wide, a tremor running through his body as he held his hand to my throat. The way he had asked me my name. For some reason, it was very hard to return my focus to meditating with that image in my head.

Today, Queen Ginevra sat sipping tea and reading a scroll when I finished my trudge up the stairs, my calves protesting the climb after the morning’s exertion. I gratefully sat on the chair across from her when she motioned to it.

“I thought we’d try something a bit different today.”

I nodded, a tendril of shame unfurling in my mind. Somehow, this felt like an acknowledgement of my failures to make any headway on the walls around my magic. While I hadn’t destroyed any more doors, every time I extended my consciousness toward the wild power deep inside me, it lashed out like a mother caracal defending her cubs. It always tamped down quickly as if snapped to heel by some invisible tether, but I still couldn’t come close enough to make any headway.

Queen Ginevra poured a steaming cup of tea and handed it to me. I nodded my thanks and blew on the liquid to cool it a bit. I tilted my head when I saw the liquid carried a strange bluish hue, overlaid on the surface with an oily sort of iridescence.

“It’s my own special blend,” she explained in response to my staring. “ It contains an infusion of the lyra leaf. While many people can drink it without feeling any change, for those with a connection to the desert, it can dull those senses.”

“It’s a sedative?” I asked warily.

She shook her head. “Only for magic. I wouldn’t drink it myself if it would impede my ability to rule.” She took a sip as if to demonstrate.

I followed her lead and instantly my features scrunched in distaste. I tried to hide the disgust in my expression, but the taste of the liquid, like pungent sulfur on my tongue, overwhelmed me.

“You get used to it.” Queen Ginevra laughed.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “You drink this often?”

“Every day.”

“I thought you didn’t have trouble controlling the magic?”

“Usually I don’t,” she admitted, “but I don’t like to take chances. My father preferred to wall off his magic but keep it available in case he ever needed to call on it. I prefer to take the temptation away entirely.”

“The temptation?”

She dabbed her lips daintily with a napkin, making me shrink back at my poor manners in comparison.

“I have come to think using the power of our bloodline to rule the city is a crutch. I endeavor to lead by being a good queen and not let any doubt seep into my mind that I only hold my position based on the power I was born with.”

I nodded my understanding even as my stomach clenched—probably from the bitter flavor of the tea slithering down my throat. Even though we had just celebrated this city’s origins through the overwhelming power of the desert, I supposed it was noble to rule the city through diplomacy and intellect alone.

“Now finish your cup and then we can try something.”

I gulped down the rest of the liquid as fast as I could, hoping I could forgo tasting the tea at all. It scalded the roof of my mouth, but I decided it was preferable to the flavor. Still, it sat in my gut like a nest of snakes, twisting and uneasy.

Queen Ginevra nodded her approval. “Now, reach down inside yourself, and see how your magic reacts. ”

I did so hesitantly, less easy about the way it might retaliate out in the open. As much as I hated being entombed in rock, it did protect others from the backlash of my magic. What I found was magic, still present but feeling languid and lazy. I reached a tendril of myself out to it and its reaction was that of a snake hissing in warning, coiled back to strike but not attacking yet.

“I think it’s working,” I admitted.

“Good. Now you can rest a little easier knowing you won’t lose control while we work on building your walls.”

I exhaled in relief that I wasn’t going to cause a scene on the terrace, magic exploding out unbidden. Still, with the power in my belly as close as it had been to asleep in over a month, part of me felt… barren. Like I was walking up stairs only for my foot to fall through space when there was one less than I expected. I shook away the thought. I just wasn’t used to the sensation of calm within me yet.

I stared up at the stars wheeling above me in the night sky and smiled. It took me a long moment to realize that I hadn’t just woken where I had gone to sleep on Aderyn’s roof, but far outside the city walls. The silence of the wilderness was deeper and held far more mystery than what passed for quiet in the city.

The only source of noise was the breathing of another, lying in the sand next to me. If I had been awake, I might have wondered how I got here, or been fearful at who had approached me while I rested, but the unknowable logic of dreams kept me stargazing peacefully.

“The city seems so different, but the stars look the same as they do here,” I observed to my unknown companion.

“You never see the stars in the Kelvadan. I hate it.” The dispassionate voice that responded was male. It seemed tired and… familiar.

“Do you think the stars would still look the same if you were to cross the mountains to the kingdoms beyond?” I asked.

There was such a long silence that I wondered if my companion was ignoring me .

Then—

“Do you want to leave the Ballan Desert?”

“No.” The answer came before I could process his question, but it rang of truth nonetheless.

“Me neither,” he agreed. “I think it would feel like…”

“The room under the mountain,” I filled in. A sharp intake of breath from my companion broke the calm spell of the dream.

In the shattered stillness, it finally occurred to me to turn my head. My gaze was met by molten silver eyes that I had last seen in the pits of a mask with a sword pressed to my throat.

My eyes snapped open to stare at the same stars I had just been observing, but now the unmistakable firmness of the roof pressed into my back, and the sleepy sounds of stabled horses and the collective breathing of hundreds filled the air.

Now though, the open sky brought me no peace. It was a long time before I slept again.

Aderyn smiled at me, and my stomach sank. That grin was never good.

She might have the occasional soft smile for Neven when she thought nobody was looking, but this expression was reserved for when I was about to be pounded into the dirt. She had been giving me many more bruises since we started adding on some extra training together after the other recruits left. These extended sparring sessions had come about naturally when she had seen me stay behind to continue practicing my forms. Now they were part of our daily ritual—my favorite part, to be honest. It was the only time of day my mind found peace, unable to think of anything but countering Aderyn’s lightning-fast blows, lest she dump me on my ass again.

Thankfully for my bruised behind, it seemed to be happening less often of late. In fact, yesterday Aderyn had been the one dumped in the dirt as we sparred, and I sensed I was going to pay for that now.

“I thought we’d try something a little different today,” she announced, turning toward the weapons rack on the far side of the open training area. When she turned back toward me, she held not the saber that I had become accustomed to, but a sickle blade, so curved it nearly formed a perfect half circle. She twisted the handle, and it split in two, revealing a perfectly matched set of blades.

I swallowed.

“Not everybody you fight is going to use as saber.” She twirled the weapons in her hands, and they blurred into perfect silver circles. “Especially if they’re not from Kelvadan.”

When the clans attack. The unspoken words hung in the air.

“You’ll need to be able to adapt to other fighting styles on your feet.”

I watched her swing the blades a few times as she adjusted to their weight in her hands, calculating my strategy. As curved as they were, she would have much less reach, but they would be lethal at close quarters. If I closed in too fast, I would lose my main advantage.

She squared off against me, and I raised my saber in an overhead guard. We circled around each other for a moment. As always, I lunged first.

It was one of the things I admired about Aderyn but never seemed to learn from her. Her patience in a fight was endless, always waiting for her opponent to move first—to give her an opening.

Luckily, I had learned through a few harsh bruises to protect myself when I attacked, and while she spun the blade in her left hand to deflect my attack, I ducked under the swing of the other with ease.

We fell into a pattern of quick exchanges, but while I never got close enough for her to slash me with the curved edges of her sickle swords, I soon discovered the disadvantage of my longer reach. While I could keep Aderyn at arm’s length, when she spun the handles of her blades in her hand, they created a virtually impenetrable shield of swirling silver. I chanced a thrust of my saber at her face, thinking I saw an opening. In an instant, she twirled the circled blades toward each other, trapping my sword and stopping my stab inches from her nose. We froze for a moment, a twinkle in her eyes, before I wrenched my weapon free.

I would have to get in close to force an opening.

With a side sweep of my blade, I knocked one of Aderyn’s swords out of the way, pushing in close. I kicked out, foot striking her forearm and knocking it aside to make my opening. I advanced, but she was no longer there .

Instead, she used the momentum from my kick to circle around me. Before I could turn, her blade was at my throat, her breath tickling my ear as she panted in triumph.

Raising my hands in defeat, I shook my head. “You’re incredible with those.”

Aderyn did an unnecessary flip with the weapons in her hand, giving them a fond look. “They’re my secret skill. To be honest, I needed to break them out today for the sake of my pride.”

“Your pride?” I echoed dubiously. Aderyn never struck me as somebody who struggled with confidence, her commanding demeanor projecting self-assuredness.

“You’ve been keeping me on my toes more than I’m used to,” she admitted ruefully. “It used to be that nobody—except maybe one person—could best me consistently.”

“I got lucky one time. That’s hardly ‘consistently besting you,’” I argued. “Besides, keep breaking out those sickle swords and you have nothing to worry about.”

“My father taught me how to fight with them. He was a clan rider when he was younger, before he married my mother and they settled in Kelvadan.”

I contemplated her. I knew she had been born and raised in the city, but I found myself curious.

“Have you ever considered joining one of the clans?” I asked. “With your skill, you could be named warlord.”

“And leave Kelvadan? Never.” Aderyn looked out over the edge of the stable roof that served as the training area.

Everywhere in the top tier of Kelvadan afforded a great view of the city…and the desert beyond. If I hadn’t experienced the endlessness of the sands myself, I could almost imagine the glimmer of the ocean on the horizon.

“I would miss the people, the energy on the streets,” Aderyn continued, gazing out at the buildings below, the colorful forms weaving between them looking small from this height. “Here, there’s always so much to see. A neighbor to visit or a new market stall to peruse. Out there in the desert, there’s so much… space. ”

She said the final word with a shiver of disgust that almost made me laugh, even as I found it odd that she would miss the constant crush of strangers and stone around her. I supposed you got used to it. Maybe I would too, with time.

Footsteps on the stairs interrupted our conversation. I tore my eyes away from the horizon to see one of the palace attendants crest the edge of the roof.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be right there,” I said, hastily mopping sweat from my brow. The queen and I had pushed my lessons back by an hour for the past several weeks so I could spar with Aderyn after training with the recruits. Knowing I could swing as hard as I liked after helped me stay in check and stick to the drills during training, although everybody but Dryden still avoided pairing up with me whenever possible. Although, his persistence picked at something in me even as Aderyn would raise her brows at me over his shoulder. Her expression clearly intimated a dare to act on Dryden’s flirtations, but I simply didn’t have it in me—not when casual touches still had me ready to fly out of my skin. Still, I appreciated his steadfast friendship.

The attendant shook her head, bringing me back to the present moment. “The queen requests both of your presence in the study this afternoon.”

Aderyn frowned. “She must have something to discuss.”

We hurried to clean up and put away our training weapons. In the palace, Aderyn led us farther up the winding stairs through the center of the structure than I had been before, past the terrace where the queen and usually drank nauseating tea together. My thighs already ached from hours of training and nearly burst into flames by the time we finished our climb.

It seemed that we wouldn’t be able to rise too much higher before reaching the spire at the top of the palace, but as Aderyn turned off a landing, several more flights ascended out of my view. She led me into a round room, where the queen already sat at a circular table in the center.

Around the edges were shelves, laden with scrolls, the alcoves between them adorned with stained glass windows. The bright afternoon sun filtered through the brightly colored glass, staining the room in refracting rainbows. I itched to approach each window and examine the different pictures wrought into them, but the queen looked up when we entered, and the dire look on her face stole all my attention.

She clutched a small rolled up piece of paper in her hand so hard it began to crumple between her fingers.

“Are you competing in the Trials?” she asked without prelude.

Aderyn frowned as she sat. “No. As we discussed, I thought it would be better for me to keep my undivided attention on the city’s security given the current situation.”

“And you Keera?”

I looked between the two women. I had increasingly considered trying my skills in the competition but kept talking myself out of it. Every time my magic lashed out, knocking over even the tiniest fence I managed to erect around it, I told myself it would be better not to risk it. As fast as my fighting progressed, I seemed to move backward in controlling the power dwelling within me.

“I hadn’t decided,” I hedged. “Why?”

“More is riding on the Trials than I thought.” The queen pursed her lips, turning back to the note before her. “A messenger hawk brought news from Oren.”

I sat up straighter in my chair, and Aderyn echoed my movement, leaning in close to hear the news from the spy.

“He has joined with the riders of Clan Katal, and he confirms that only four clans are united under Lord Alasdar’s banner currently, although they are training for battle. However, he overheard the Viper discussing with Lord Alasdar that a deal has been made with the remaining five clans. If the Viper is crowned Champion of the Trials, then they will join Lord Alasdar.”

My spine hit the low wooden back of my chair with a thunk as the breath rushed out of me. The Viper, who had taken up residence in my sleeping mind as much as I tried to evict him, would be coming to the Trials.

“You could always bar him from competing,” Aderyn suggested. “Wouldn’t a violation of peace like this warrant it? People have been banned from the Trials for violence before.”

The queen shook her head, the action so tired I was certain she had already run through this scenario in her mind a thousand times. “At the last Trials, I refused to crown a Champion when Lord Alasdar violated the rules by killing his opponent in the final duel and exiled him from the city. Now he is the one that leads an army against us. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”

“Then you will let him?” Aderyn asked, her voicing edging the closest to incredulity I had ever heard in the presence of the queen.

Queen Ginevra pressed her lips together in a thin white line, clearly as unhappy with the situation as Aderyn was. “The clans believe in the legend of the Champion of the Desert. As the granddaughter of Kelvar, the greatest Champion the desert has ever known, ruling the city that is the very proof of his legacy, I’m not sure I don’t believe in it either. The clans, and even the people within this city, feared what the lack of a Champion would mean twenty years ago.

“If Lord Alasdar is smart—and he has certainly seemed crafty enough so far—he’ll use that to his advantage to further turn the clans against me. If I interfere with these Trials, it may only turn them against us further.”

Now, Queen Ginevra turned toward me, and I blinked, unsure where I fit into this discussion. We had gone far beyond the meager information I had gathered on Clan Katal during my brief captivity.

“Perhaps, the desert has chosen her own Champion though,” she said, words laden with a meaning I didn’t process.

Only after several moments of blank staring did the full weight of her words hit me. I began shaking my head so hard I feared my brain might rattle out my ears.

“I only just got here,” I protested. While the months in the city had been kind to me, I was far from Kelvadan’s Champion.

“Kelvar was only nineteen when he carved the city from the mountain,” Ginevra pointed out.

I opened my mouth to protest but paused. He had been so young.

“There is no denying that you have been touched by the desert and delivered on Kelvadan’s doorstep by some odd coincidence just months before the Trials that only occur every twenty years,” Queen Ginevra pressed on.

“There must be somebody else,” I insisted, looking imploringly at Aderyn .

Something dark and sad flickered in her eyes, but it was gone before I could even be sure I saw it at all.

“I could make it pretty far through my combat skill alone,” Aderyn admitted, “but the title of the desert’s Champion has never gone to one who hasn’t been gifted with her power.”

I furrowed my brow. “I thought magic wasn’t allowed to be used in the Trials.”

During training, Dryden and Nyra had been discussing the possible events to be included in this year’s competition, and they had mentioned that particular rule.

“Even so, the desert chooses her winner,” Queen Ginevra explained. “When the last Trials ended in upset, I thought somebody might rise to the occasion and fill the role of Champion. I was wrong. But you brought a warning to our doorstep, and with it, our best hope for preventing the clans from uniting.”

I was pinned by two intense gazes, trapped like a jackrabbit in a snare. I could not let Kelvadan fall, and so I would face the Viper in the Trials.

I woke the next morning to a ball of molten iron burning in my gut. I rolled onto my hands and knees with a moan as a wave of nausea washed over to me. I feared a reaction to the liquor I shared with Aderyn the afternoon before, but when I glanced down my body, I found a far more innocent, if unexpected, culprit. Dark blood crusted the light linen pants I wore to sleep at the crux of my thighs.

Another wave of cramps shuddered through me, and I collapsed back onto my side and curled up in a ball. One of the few blessings of malnutrition had been freedom from my monthly cycle. While it had been disconcerting to be unable to mark the passage of time with my blood, at least it didn’t slow my hunting or cost me precious moisture after several months in exile.

Now it seemed the symptoms returned with a vengeance. After a few minutes of clutching my lower abdomen and trying to remember how I had ridden a horse in this state while I was younger, Aderyn clambered up to the roof to check on me, no doubt wondering why I hadn’t come down to breakfast.

Seeing the problem, she offered a crooked smile of sympathy.

“Has it been a while?”

I nodded, embarrassed to be laid out by something Aderyn likely walked off.

“It will get better with the passing months. Your body is just out of practice,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ll have Neven bring you some tea and give the queen your apologies.”

I rolled over and pulled the sheet over my head, preparing to endure the next few days.