Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Viper

M y blood rushed under my skin with a frightening intensity, even as my chest refused to expand with my next breath. I was completely at the mercy of the woman who cradled my head in her lap. She rested her fingers on my cheek so lightly, it was as if she thought I might shatter.

She might not be wrong.

The first time we had ever touched, skin to skin, was my hand on her throat. It was the first time in too long that I had felt any sense of stillness within me. I had thought it was some anomaly, the shock of human contact, but now I knew I was wrong. That same stillness ran through me now, although now that I was paying attention, I could feel that quietness undercut with a slight vibration. I was a bowstring pulled taught, ready to leap forward, if only at Keera’s command.

I opened my eyes, gaze finding hers instantly.

Her fingers started to pull away, and without warning, my own hand darted out, grabbing her by the wrist. I had the flickering thought of wishing I wasn’t wearing my gloves. Even through them, I could sense her pulse fluttering rapidly beneath her skin.

She didn’t resist as I pulled her hand to my face once more. This time she flattened her palm, letting the entirety of it rest against my cheek, cupping my face. I breathed in slowly through my nose, holding it before letting it out to brace against the feeling of my soul flying out of my body.

“Why do you wear it?”

The words were quiet in the tenuous silence between us, but they echoed as loud as a gong.

“Because it’s easier to pretend there is nobody underneath the mask.”

The words rang truer than they had any right to.

“I see you,” was Keera’s only response.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

My sanity was slipping out of my grasp like the frayed end of a rope at the continued warmth of her skin on mine. I was admitting things I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t think straight with another human—with Keera—touching me with an intention other than to injure. It needed to stop. I wanted more. So much more.

I turned my head away, breaking the contact, and the spell was broken. I groped around on the ground next to me, and Keera handed me my discarded mask without my asking. I slipped it back on, feeling equal parts like I was replacing an integral part of myself and that I was losing something valuable.

“Your head,” she started.

I waved her off. “It’s fine. Just stunned me more than anything.”

In all honestly, a dull throb had settled in my skull, but I could barely focus on that when I still felt her hand on my face, hotter than any brand Lord Alasdar had ever burned into my back.

“The Sichat?” I asked, looking around for the creature that attacked us.

“A Sichat? But those are just myths.”

“Just like the lava wyrm we are on our way to fight and the bone spider I encountered a few months back,” I pointed out. “What happened to it?”

“I threw a rock,” Keera admitted sheepishly.

“With your sling?”

“With magic.”

I looked around curiously and found a boulder lying on the opposite side of our horses. She hadn’t been able to move the smallest pebble in our hours of practice, but in the moment I fell from Alza, her magic had cooperated. The earthy smell of unleashed power still lingered on the air. I distracted myself from the train of thought that might lead me down.

“So, I am a good teacher,” I said instead.

Keera’s lips quirked in the slightest smile, and she stood. She reached her hand out to me to help me to my feet, and I took it, letting her haul me up, once again marveling at how strong she had grown in such a short amount of time.

I had spent the last several months feeling as if I had been training double, and here she was halfway a warrior when I had found her frail and feral at that oasis. I shoved that information away with the rest of the thoughts that I didn’t want to dwell on right now.

Keera walked over to the fallen Sichat and stared down at it. Just like the last one, the creature was large and vaguely feline, all black but for the patch of silky white fur on its chest in the shape of a star. Dull purple eyes stared lifelessly up at the sky.

“I’d say we had a successful hunt, but…”

I knew what she meant. Waves of distinctly unfriendly magic came off the corpse, a distinctly visceral reaction rolling through me at the thought of eating the creature.

“Leave it. We will see if Zephyr found some smaller game.”

Back at camp, Zephyr had indeed been successful at catching two black tailed jackrabbits. I let him tear into one, while Keera picked up and efficiently began skinning and cleaning the other with a practiced hand.

She was quiet as she did so, which wasn’t unusual for her, but I sensed a turmoil in her silence that distinguished it from what we had established as our normal companionable cooperation.

I observed her out of the corner of my eye as I built the fire on which to cook our meat. Eventually she paused, bloody knife hovering above the skinned carcass .

“Why are the sichats and lava wyrms returning? They disappeared after the desert was conquered.”

I hesitated, not sure how much to divulge to somebody that might still be an adversary. But my own words, partially in jest before, played back to me with a ring of truth. Perhaps she would no longer be my enemy if I taught her what I knew.

“The desert is angry and rises against us. Kelvadan is an insult toward the way the clans have lived since the first rider crossed from the mountain to the ocean and won the right to call the Ballan Desert home.

“The desert values strength and survival above all else, and the clans embody that. The strong rise to power, and the weak fall. Their warring ways offer the desert death and blood in exchange for the life she gifts us. But Kelvadan… the peace brought by the city is just weakness by another name. Even worse, the city looks beyond the borders of the Ballan Desert, welcoming those to our home who don’t respect or even believe in her power.”

I started with the part that Lord Alasdar told the clans to win them to our side. But there was another layer to the story he did not share.

Keera frowned. “Kelvadan is my home.” She said it almost too firmly, as if it was something she was telling herself as much as me.

“My great-grandfather’s legacy is one of failure as much as victory.” I couldn’t help the bitterness in my tone as I thought of the burden I had been yoked with, both from his successes and his sins.

Keera stared at me, tilting her head in curiosity as she waited for me to continue.

“Kelvar was the Champion of the Desert, more powerful than any could remember. He carried within him the power to shape the desert to his will, and he did. That type of magic comes with a cost though.”

“It drove him mad,” Keera murmured. Her eyes held something soft and vulnerable that I didn’t dare place. I plunged on with my story.

“It did, and worse. The legends say that the Heart of the Desert should be conquered by whoever crosses her from the mountains to the ocean. If you survive the tests that journey would pose, then the magic is yours to command.”

“That’s how the first lords of the clans tamed the sands and were the first to harness the magic of the desert so that it might be a place where we could live,” Keera volunteered, as if it were a line recited from rote. It was a tale all clans people would have heard around their fires, engrained in their heads from the time they were born.

I shook my head. “It’s not just that though. While Alyx herself carried strong magic within her, it wasn’t on the scale of Kelvar, and she began to sicken with age before him. Despite all the power within him, he could do nothing to stop it. As the madness slowly took him, he devised a plan. If he could claim the Heart of the Desert—then he would have the power to keep Alyx alive.

“So, he crossed the desert and stole her Heart to bring back to Kelvadan. But he was too late, and Alyx had died while he was gone. Now the desert is without her Heart, and she shreds herself apart.”

Keera frowned. “The Heart of the Desert isn’t something you can steal. Besides, Kelvar wandered into the desert after Alyx died and was never seen again.”

“Have you been to the doors to Kelvar’s rooms?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you will have seen the tapestry above the entrance, showing the Heart. The red gem that grants all the magic of the desert to whomever should possess it.”

Doubt began to creep into Keera’s eyes where they had been sure before.

“Maybe Kelvar went after the Heart, but we don’t know if he succeeded. He wandered out into the wilds, never to be seen again,” she argued.

“I know he succeeded because I have crossed the desert myself, and I have seen the empty temple where the Heart should be.”

Keera dropped the knife, sitting back on her heels and looking up at me. She rested her bloody hands on her knees, seemingly uncaring of the stains she was leaving on her pants.

“So why wage war on Kelvadan?”

“Because the Heart of the Desert is locked in the rooms at the top of the palace, and I intend to restore it to its rightful place. Only with Lord Alasdar’s help can I open the chamber and retrieve the Heart. Just as Kelvar’s madness is mine to bear, so are the consequences of his legacy, and I must set things right.”

“Then restore the Heart.” Keera’s hands balled into fists on her knees as she stared up at me. “But Kelvadan doesn’t need to fall for that to happen.”

“The monument of Kelvadan is a lie!” I snapped. “Everybody calls it a testament to everlasting love that Kelvar built for Alyx, but that same love is what drove him to risk the destruction of everything we know. Kelvadan needs to fall, to protect everyone for repeating the sins of the past.”

Keera stayed silent, but I hadn’t wanted a response anyway. I turned around and stormed toward Alza, leaving her kneeling in the bloody sand.