Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Keera

I f I did nothing, in a matter of seconds, the Viper’s threat to Kelvadan would be over. Even if Lord Alasdar and Clan Katal remained set on seeing the Great City fall, the heaviness at the base of my neck from knowing facing down the Viper was inevitable would be gone.

As the tips of his black gloved fingers dipped below the quicksand, I glanced toward the banner. The green rider and Axlan were engaged in a skirmish to see who would emerge with the flag and advance their team in the Trials. I grabbed Daiti’s neck, ready to haul myself on to his back and run for the flag. If the Viper was gone, there was no reason I couldn’t hope for the red team to emerge victorious and continue in the Trials.

Before I could stand, the Viper’s mare caught my attention, prancing at the edge of the pit of sinking sands. The screams of distress at the disappearance of her master tugged at my gut, a wave of nausea rolling over me.

I froze, glancing back and forth between the fight on the horizon and the earth where the Viper had disappeared moments earlier. It looked like Axlan was gaining the upper hand in the fight. In a split- second decision, I began unwrapping the long fabric of my hood from around my head and shoulders.

“Sands.” I was really doing this. May the desert forgive me.

With deft movements, I tied one end of the fabric strip around Daiti’s neck. Then the other end looped around my left palm several times before also being knotted off, somewhat clumsily with the use of only one hand to maneuver. I wished I could tie it around my waist, but the fabric of my hood wasn’t quite long enough for that, and this would have to do.

“Don’t let me die in there,” I muttered to Daiti, my heart attempting to leap up my throat as I stared down into the pit in front of me.

Daiti stamped and snuffled, as if insulted by the suggestion that he would ever let me meet my end while he had anything to say about it.

Before I could second guess myself, I took a deep breath and jumped.

The sands sucked me under with a crushing pressure. It swallowed me much faster this time as I had gone in feet first, with less surface area to slow my descent. My world went dark, and I thrashed around clumsily, movements slowed by the gripping sludge around me as I tried to locate the Viper.

I had done my best to land right next to where I had seen him disappear. All I felt around me though, was the suffocating pressure of wet sand. A blinding fear started bubbling up, and I had to remind myself not to open my mouth to scream.

Just as my thrashing turned from searching to panic, I encountered something solid. I reached out and traced the solid limb up to a thick torso. I had found him. As I reached out, wrapping my right arm around his broad chest as tight as I could, a newfound strength filled me.

The desert would not claim me today.

I tugged sharply on my left hand, gripping the fabric connecting me to Daiti in my fist. At my signal, a tug began on my arm, Daiti using his considerable bulk to pull us free.

The sand around us resisted, as if sentient and gripping us tighter with the thought of our escape. I strengthened my hold around the Viper as he began to slip away, straining to keep his considerable bulk with me. As it was, the tension between the weight of the Viper and Daiti’s insistent tugging threatened to pull my arm straight out of its socket. My shoulder screamed as loudly as my lungs after holding my breath for so long.

Try as I might, the Viper started slipping from my grasp. I squirmed, trying to grab on to him with my legs as well. Then he surprised me.

Apparently still conscious, his arms came to wrap around me, clutching me with surprising strength. In a few seconds that stretched forever as my enemy and I wrapped ourselves around each other, my head crested the surface. I gasped for air, my lungs demanding oxygen even as I coughed around the sand in my mouth. As Daiti backed up inexorably, I crested the edge of the pit, blinking away the grains that clung to my lashes, as hopeless as the idea of ridding myself of the sand covering me was.

Seated on the edge, I used my elbows under the Viper’s arms to continue pulling him free, as he was too busy coughing and regaining his breath to be able to climb out himself. With a sudden slurping sound, like the quicksand was protesting relinquishing its prey, he fully emerged from the pit.

Without the sand pulling him down, the Viper lurched forward, knocking me back and pinning me beneath him. I froze. While his broad shoulders dwarfed me, he seemed strangely fragile as coughs continued to shudder through his frame, hunching over me weakly.

I took a deep breath despite the sand in my nostrils, ready to quell the uncontrollable swell of quivering magic that accompanied even a small amount of human contact—it was sure to be devastating with the Viper’s whole body pressed against me.

The wave of mind-rending awareness never came though. My magic only gave the slightest quiver, like a hunting caracal completely tense but totally still. Instead, the scent of sweat and metal, and underneath it all salt and sandalwood, overwhelmed my senses.

The moment shattered as the Viper rolled to the side, removing the pressure that grounded me in place. He turned his back to me, hunching over as gloved hands scrabbled at his hood, yanking it off and pulling at the straps that crisscrossed the back of his head. Seeing his bare head in sunlight, I realized his hair wasn’t black as I’d originally thought, but a dark brown that might even shimmer with streaks of chestnut if allowed to bleach in the sun.

A shuddering gasp, followed by enthusiastic spitting, told me he had removed his mask, having been suffocated by the sand it trapped against his face. A sudden urge to grab his arm and wrench him around struck me—to look into those unnerving silver eyes and demand to know why he was doing this and why we kept tangling together.

Instead, I turned away, squinting at the horizon to determine the fate of this challenge. A wave of numb acceptance rolled over me as Axlan sat proudly on his roan mare, brandishing the large red flag over his head in victory. Both the Viper and I would be moving on to the next round of the Trials.

I gritted my teeth in frustration; the fact that I had cast aside this chance to eliminate the Viper from the Trials once and for all was tinged with annoyance at myself for not being entirely disappointed that I would be moving forward as well.

“You saved me.” The measured voice of the Viper snapped me from my musings, although his tone gave away neither surprise nor thanks.

In a long moment of silence, I searched my mind for some explanation to give him as the Viper’s black mare snuffled through his hair in search of injury.

“I did,” was my only response. There was nothing else to say.

Drumbeats filled the air outside the city walls, pounding into my skull and forcing my heart to beat in time. Although tonight’s celebrations spilled between the tents and into the large open area in the center of the encampments, making it considerably less crowded, more people danced and drank than had been present at the Kelvadan festival months before.

I could still taste the bitterness of the lyra leaf tea on my tongue that I had swallowed hastily before heading out, and I let it reassure me that all would be well. My magic twirled sleepily in my gut, hazy and distant.

For now, I stood at the edges of the circle of tents, watching both competitors celebrating their victory and those drinking to forget their elimination. No other members of the green team had been successful in capturing a flag, and so their time in the Trials was over. The next event wouldn’t begin until the day after tomorrow, and so people threw themselves into the only logical pastime: drinking laka .

As if summoned by the thought, a brimming glass was shoved against my palm with such enthusiasm that some of the laka within spilled over my fingertips. I looked up to meet a friendly grin on a handsome face. Hadeon’s eyes looked oddly flat as he handed me the beverage, but I blamed it on the backlighting of the braziers and lanterns at the angle we stood. I shook off the cold shiver that washed over me at his expression, blaming it on the difficulty I still tended to have reading people’s expressions. He had never given me any indication of anything but kindness and warmth.

“You live to fight another day!” Hadeon congratulated as he raised his glass to me.

“And so does the Viper,” I added silently, but I peeled my lips into a smile and toasted back.

“It was a close call,” I admitted as I drained half my glass in a single gulp. The burn of alcohol crawled down my throat as I swallowed back a wince. Drinking too fast was a habit I had yet to break after a lifetime of scarce liquids.

“Well, I do appreciate a flare for the dramatic, and you easily stomping the competition wouldn’t be good entertainment,” Hadeon said. “Besides, I dare say it’s given you a little adrenaline to work off at tonight’s festivities.”

“More like too much sand to wash off before I was in any shape to show up,” I grumbled. I had stood under the trickle of water in Aderyn and Neven’s bathroom for what felt like hours, until my teeth chattered from the cold, but the rough chafe of sand still lingered on my skin. A buried part of me rejoiced at the feeling after months of relative cleanliness in a world of polished stone. Some twisted part of me missed the constant grit and the headachy feeling from squinting too long in the sun.

“Well, you cleaned up more than admirably.” Hadeon’s eyes drifted appraisingly over my outfit, my current posture pushing my leg out of the long slit in the side of my pants that hung loosely apart from where they gathered at my waist and ankle. I didn’t miss the way he smiled at the snake armband that I had thrown on at the last second.

“Finish your drink,” Hadeon ordered. “Then we’ll dance.”

“I don’t really dance,” I admitted, although I was already taking another large swallow of my laka .

“I’ll admit, this is very different from the dancing I’m used to back in Doran, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out together.” With that, he whisked away my empty glass before pulling me out into the center of the circle. His fingers on my bare wrist caused me to jolt as always, but his touch was warm and not altogether unpleasant. I clasped my hand in his in return.

Then we were dancing, and Hadeon smiled at me brightly as he bobbed disjointedly. I nearly laughed at his awkwardness. He clearly hadn’t been lying at festivities in his home country being different.

His grin turned sharp. “Are you laughing at my lack of coordination? I’ll have you know that I’m much more used to dancing with a partner.”

“You have a partner.” I gestured to myself as I swung my hips back and forth to the beat. While an odd effervescence filled me, it didn’t threaten to overwhelm me as it had the last time I danced. I could do this.

“I meant like this.” Before I could register his words, Hadeon’s hand circled my wrist once more and tugged me against him. I nearly stumbled as the front of my body pressed flush against his. My focus zeroed in on where my bare skin touched him—my hand that had come up to grab his shoulder in surprise. The bare inches in the gap between my pants and my cropped shirt pressed against his belly.

“Much better,” he commented, seemingly unaware of the sudden rushing in my mind at the contact as he started to sway. I joined him, helpless to stop as I tried desperately to quell the rising sensation in my gut. The sleepy feeling surrounding my magic was all but gone, burnt away by laka and Hadeon’s hand encircling the arm band he had bought me against my skin.

I opened my mouth to tell Hadeon that I needed to take a break, but as I breathed in, my mouth filled with the hot scent of smoke and spices, and I became too overwhelmed to form words. This was nothing like the stillness I had experienced when pressed chest-to-chest with the Viper just this morning. Perhaps I wasn’t as in control as I had thought, and now I would lose it again.

A sand slide barreled through my mind with the force of galloping horses, and I shook my head trying to clear it before I hurt the dense crush of people around me. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t make my mouth form words. Hadeon’s eyes narrowed at me, and his grip tightened around my arm—perhaps to support me, but it only made things worse.

It was a matter of seconds until I would explode, and I opened my mouth scream out a wordless warning.

A hand landed on the nape of my neck, and everything fell still. It was as if I were a kitten grabbed by the back of the neck, frozen but calm.

A familiar voice drifted over my shoulder, and I knew who the hand belonged to.

“Sorry to cut in.”