Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Viper

S creams tore through the air, the sounds whipped away by the unnatural storm, centered around me and Keera. Lightning danced through the cloudless sky, striking somewhere nearby, making every hair on my body stand on end. Footsteps pounded as people fled, but my gaze was fixed on the woman before me, the epicenter of the chaos.

Her eyes were screwed shut and she vibrated with energy, although she remained motionless. If she was aware of the world around her, she showed no signs of it, likely wrapped up in the deafening cacophony that poured in when one opened themselves to the magic of the desert with no filter.

I had known she was powerful the moment I felt her magic threaten to tug mine until it snapped earlier, but this—she was just lightning trapped in human skin. Even now something soft and unfamiliar washed through me at the recognition of what it was to barely feel like you owned your own body sometimes.

I pushed forward to where she knelt, fighting against the whipping winds that pulled at my clothes and flung sand at my face. Without thinking what I was doing, I reached out for her, prying her clenched fist open to entwine her fingers with my own gloved hand .

The touch seemed to bring her back to her body some, and the pitch of the wind’s howling lowered, but thunder continued to rumble far too close. I squeezed her hand and after a moment’s hesitation, she squeezed back.

I closed my own eyes, opening myself up ever so slightly to the flow of magic around us, an overwhelming torrent that would have carried me away were it not for years of discipline and Lord Alsadar’s training. Instead, I followed it back to the woman before me and traced it down to the one thing planting her in reality: my hand in hers.

Still caught up in the flow of the desert around me, I pulled on that connection, growing it as much as possible, trying to give her something to latch on to. A guide to follow back to her own body when she couldn’t even remember where she was.

The howling of the wind stopped, and the world became quiet, the air still in the way it is only after a terrible storm. I peeled my eyes open to find that I had knelt down before Keera and pulled her into my arms. I clutched her to my leather tabards, arms tight around her trembling form. Her eyes were still closed, her face tipped up toward mine, but her arms wrapped around my waist in return, clutching on to me as a lifeline.

Her eyes fluttered opened, and for a moment neither of us moved. Then, I stiffened and jerked out of her grasp, pulling my arms back. Golden eyes, that had held something intensely soft upon opening, narrowed in confusion before shuttering.

I sprang to my feet, backing up a few steps, but she stayed on the ground, shrinking in on herself as if she wished she could sink into the sands beneath her knees. I looked away, rubbing my gloved hands harshly on my arms, as if it could scrub clean the fact that I, the Viper, had held my opponent just moments ago.

Turning my attention to the chaos around me, it appeared that not many had noticed my antics, fleeing as they had been from the epicenter of the storm where Keera and I knelt. Now, the guard who had been announcing the duels stood in close conference with Aderyn and the queen, whose hair had been ripped from its elaborate twist by the storm. Beams from the wooden scaffolding that had been erected for the announcer lay splintered and scattered across the windswept ground .

With the air calm once more, the spectators inched forward, murmuring quietly among themselves. Finally, Queen Ginevra nodded grimly and walked away from the group into the center of what had once been the fighting ring. She raised her arms, and the crowd went quiet. It was a moment I had once dreamed of as a child, standing in the dueling ring of the Ballan Trials as the queen announced the next Champion of the Desert.

The grim look of resignation she wore was a far cry from the look of pride I imagined on her face as a boy, but I knew what it meant now.

“Keera of Kelvadan has forfeited the duel by using magic after pledging to win only through the strength of her own body. The rider of Clan Katal will be crowned the next Champion of the Ballan Desert.”

While I sat far from the main bonfires of the encampment, the celebrations sounded subdued. The climactic end to the Trials seemed to have left the revelers unbalanced, but I was sure once the laka was flowing, the feasting would quickly turn into dancing and storytelling of Trials past. Parents would recount the Trials of their youths, while younger competitors would bemoan their losses or brag of their victories. Although this year, the revelry would be stilted by the threat of looming war. Even if the significance of my victory wasn’t common knowledge, the tension in the air was clear to all.

Even though I had won, fulfilling my mission and bringing me one step closer to healing the desert, I did not feel the urge to celebrate. Kelvadan must fall for the desert to survive, and it would bring me satisfaction to see the walls crumble as the lies of the city were unraveled. But thinking of the coming war brought me no joy. Instead, a heavy weight lay over my shoulders, making me hunch down and seek out solitude.

I sat on the ridge of a dune a way out from the encampment. The flickering of braziers, only an orange glow at this distance, did little to chase away the thick dark of night or dull the stars. Zephyr fluttered back from wherever he had been hunting, landing at my side and pecking at the lizard he caught himself for dinner.

A dark silhouette broke from the edge of the tents and made its way across the sands toward me. Part of me had wondered if Keera would seek me out, but my heart still jumped as she approached.

She stopped before me, but I made no move to greet her or turn her away. The magic of the desert danced between us in the silence.

“Why?” Her voice was quiet but steady.

She could be asking me any number of things, but something told me she was asking why I had helped her when we stood on opposite sides of an inevitable war.

“I had already won anyway,” I responded, evading the question.

She exhaled loudly through her nose in what might have been frustration. The silence stretched between us, a tangible thing.

“I don’t know,” I finally admitted, although it was a half-truth. In the moment, I hadn’t had a reason when I reached out and grabbed her hand in the middle of the storm. The whispers of the desert in my mind had left me no choice.

I had realized as I sat here in the dark though, that I recognized something in that confused outpouring of power. It was the same frightening madness that had driven me out into the desert when the walls of Kelvadan closed in around me as a child. The rush of power that made everything in my old bedroom burst into flames in a moment of frustration. The same overwhelming sensation that led me to Lord Alasdar’s tent to burn another line on my back just to drown out the deafening roar.

“And now you will unite the clans and march on Kelvadan.” It was a statement, but Keera’s voice rose at the end like a question.

“Yes.” There was no point in lying to her.

“I’m surprised you haven’t ridden out yet, now that you got what you came for.”

“I’m waiting to be crowned,” I admitted. I had originally planned to leave without waiting to receive the Champion’s circlet, but I was sure news of the circumstances of my victory would spread to the clans. I didn’t want to leave any doubt that I was the true Champion when I went to claim their allegiance for Lord Alasdar. If I could present the Champion’s circlet, adorned with the blood glass of the first man to ever cross the desert, there would be no denying me .

“So, you’re going to sit here and sulk in the dark through all nine nights of feasting?”

“I hadn’t noticed you joining in on the festivities.”

“The last time I let loose in a crowd of people, it ended a lot like this afternoon,” she admitted in a quiet voice.

“My offer to help you find control still stands.” Now that the Trials were over, her outbursts costing me my own restraint was less of a concern. Still, the same impulse that led me to draw her into my arms when she lost herself to the desert during the duels made itself known in my quiet offer.

“You’ve already told me I shouldn’t trust you,” Keera said.

“And if I were trying to trick you, I wouldn’t have told you that,” I argued. “Maybe learning the true nature of your power will convince you of how wrong Kelvadan is.”

“I doubt it.”

Without another word, Keera turned and marched back to the encampment. With a slight shudder, I realized she hadn’t flat out refused me.