Chapter 20 #3
“Don’t,” I cut him off, the single word a door slamming.
If I let him keep going, I might break, and I’ve already done enough of that in front of him. His sorry doesn’t unmake his choices. It doesn’t pull out the knife after it’s already sunk deep.
“You’ve spent your whole life chasing the version of you your parents decided was worth keeping.
Always selling. Always winning. Always putting on the perfect show.
” I let my gaze drag over him, slow and cold.
“Grow up, Declan. Stop worrying about how Daddy sees you and whether your mommy is happy. Maybe then you’ll figure out love isn’t something you can close like a deal. And if it were, you just lost mine.”
There’s a heat in my chest that has nothing to do with the Tower or this kingdom’s magick, a sharp sting that settles in places I don’t dare touch.
It feels hauntingly familiar. Pieces of my life playing out the same way over and over again.
But everything I think is real is always just another performance.
I shove the ache down deep, sealing it inside the container I know best. The one I can always reach for. The one that’s never failed me. The one labeled I’m fine.
I turn my back to Declan, brush sand from my skirt, flick grit from my lashes, and sweep sticky strands of hair from my temples.
Behind me, the Tower’s rim gapes. The columns glow slate gray, casting strange shadows across the curved sand walls.
Below, dunes roll away like a black ocean under the half moon.
The kingdom’s torches stitch a line of fire across the horizon.
Farther down the ridge, the guards’ torches bob like angry stars.
Figures I’d end the night on the verge of being arrested. The cherry on top of this shitstorm of a sundae.
“Ahead!” Dav’s voice booms up the ridge as the guards break into a run, boots kicking up arcs of silver-dusted sand.
The feeling in my chest hits harder. This time I know it’s otherworldly, the magickal thread that’s attached to my heart, and right now it’s knotting around my lungs, squeezing them tight. “I can’t let the guards find the Tower.”
Declan clears his throat, the cool, disconnected edge from our first meet up back in his voice. “Why can’t they see it? Wouldn’t the kingdom finding out it’s here—knowing it’s real—help you do what Fortune said you were brought here to do? To heal it?”
For a second I’m furious in a way that feels embarrassingly small.
Declan should know better than to question me right now.
The Tower is mine, the kingdom revealed its magick to me, and I don’t want anyone else messing with it or taking it from me.
I want something I can keep. Something I can believe in.
I drop my hand to my sternum, fingers flat against the hot, steady thrum there.
I breathe into it, let the rhythm steady my breath.
The sharp, broken edge softens. When I actually listen—not to the frantic voice in my head that keeps me stuck but to the Tower’s magick under my ribs—the meaning shifts.
This isn’t a warning to hide. The wheel is turning. Change is coming.
Declan’s expression hardens. “What will they do to us if they drag us back? That’s the more dangerous question.
” He glances down the slope, then back at me, shoulders squaring.
The set of his jaw says he’s about to do something reckless and chivalrous, and I don’t need or want any grand gestures that prove how he feels.
“You’re not seriously thinking of fighting them.”
He doesn’t answer, which is its own answer.
Dav’s voice thunders up the dune. “By command of the Kingdom of Wands, halt and yield your weapons!”
I lift my hands. “Dav, we don’t have any weapons.”
“Then yield your designs!” he calls, stopping a few feet below us and drawing his sword with a flourish. “Confess you were sent to spy upon our great kingdom for Cups. Skulking off before your report is due, are you not?”
“This again?” Exasperated, I shake my head and toss a glance back at Declan. His arms are crossed, jaw set, teeth grinding like he’s chewing rocks. Heat flares in my cheeks. He doesn’t get to be angry. He’s the one who lied.
Tarek jogs the rest of the way up the ridge to meet Dav, panting, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead.
Three more guards are at his heels, palms resting on the hilts of their swords.
He wipes his brow with the back of his hand and grins.
“Accusing them of espionage again, are you?” he pants, bent over and breathless.
“Like I said, I gave Thorne directions to the Everspring. They deserve a bit of a respite as much as the rest of us.”
Dav’s blade glitters in the moonlight. “They are not at the Everspring, Tarek. They are here—in the dunes—attempting to flee.”
“Well, perhaps,” Tarek says breezily. “But I’ve shared many words with Thorne.
They will not escape to Cups. They have no route and scarce provisions.
They’ve merely…” He shrugs. “I don’t know…
gotten lost. One wrong turn is all it takes.
Out here, the dunes look the same until the caravan fires show the way. ”
Dav narrows his eyes. “Do you listen to yourself?”
“I do, actually.” Tarek replies, chin lifted. “I find myself charming. My mother often says—”
“Your mother is a cur,” Dav snaps.
Tarek straightens to his full height, which is admittedly not that impressive, but he pulls it off with the indignant stance of someone six inches taller. “Take that back.”
Dav lifts his chin. “Make me.”
The guards behind them shift, trade knowing glances, then collectively take a half step down the slope.
“Can you two just shut up?” I press my fingers to my temples. “It’s been a really long night, and I would love to get whatever this is over with. Tarek’s right. We weren’t skulking off to Cups or committing treason. We were—”
“Scheming,” Dav interjects. “Plotting. Sabotaging.”
“Taking a break,” I bite out. “As Tarek said.”
“In the dunes, under cover of night?” Dav’s lip curls in a slow sneer.
“Ohhhh,” Tarek breathes. His eyebrows shoot up, and he elbows Dav with a ridiculous grin. “They were taking a break.”
The words punch the air out of me, sadness pressing down until it’s hard to breathe. The moment we shared in the Tower felt like everything, and it all shattered so quickly.
Push it down. I’m fine. I’m fine.
Behind me, Declan clears his throat in a way that promises trouble.
Dav’s gaze lifts over my shoulder. “What’s the matter? Can’t find your tongue without your handler’s permission?”
Declan steps forward, fists clenched. “You don’t want to fuck with me right now.”
With a smirk, Dav tightens his grip on the hilt of his sword and starts to close the distance up the slope like he’s been itching for an excuse. “It’s in this very moment I should most delight in crossing you.”
The guards flanking Tarek draw their swords with a sharp hiss of steel as Declan takes another step forward, sand shifting under his feet. The air crackles with the tension between Dav and Declan. One spark and the whole dune will ignite.
Declan’s mouth curls into a cold smile. “If you want a fight, Dav, you’ll get one.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You two want to whip out your dicks and measure them? Better yet, maim each other. Prove which one’s the biggest through violence. I’ll wait.” I throw my hands up and step back, giving them plenty of space to square off.
The tension holds, the guards’ torches snapping light across steel, every man waiting for the first strike.
“Most convenient,” Dav drawls, circling Declan, “that you slipped away just before your performance.”
Declan squares his shoulders, eyes fixed on Dav. “We didn’t run. We don’t need to.”
“We were going to come back!” I shout, my voice carrying down the slope.
“But then we got held up. Not by some espionage mission. By that.” I stab a finger toward the Tower looming just beyond the lip of the dune.
From a distance it could be mistaken for the slope of a collapsed ridge, the shadow of a cloud pressed into the sand.
It’s easy to mistake unless someone knows what they’re looking for.
“Your kingdom is rotten with secrets, and you’re too stubborn to see them. ”
“A convenient tale,” Dav sneers. “Or a trick.”
Tarek bounds the few paces up the ridge to the edge where the Tower plunges into the earth.
“Tarek!” Dav’s smirk breaks as he points his sword up the dune. “Get away from there. This reeks of ambush.”
Eyes wide, Tarek drops to his knees, leaning over the rim, torchlight painting his face burnished gold. He’s silent save for the breath whooshing from his lungs, and then he presses one hand to his heart like he feels the same magick that’s been beating in mine.
“It’s not a trap,” he says, voice soft enough that the wind almost swallows it. “’Tis a legend risen. The Tower of Fire, called back from the sand. The very thing the old songs sing of.”
The guards murmur, shifting uneasily, their blades wavering in the firelight. One even lowers his torch, craning to glimpse what Tarek sees.
“Enough,” Dav snarls. In two strides he’s beside me, his hand lashing out. He seizes my arm and yanks it behind my back, pulling until pain sparks up my shoulder.
“Ow!” I twist against his grip, teeth gritted. “What the hell are you—”
“By decree of the Queens of Wands, you are under arrest for defiance of the Festival of the First Flame.” A cold cuff snaps shut around my wrist, the metal biting into my skin.
“Get your hands off her!” Declan roars, his voice ripping through the night.
“Cuff him,” Dav barks. “Before he injures himself on my sword.”
I wrench around in time to see Declan meet one of the guards with a brutal right hook that cracks loud enough to echo across the sand. The man crumples, and another lunges. Declan catches him by the throat, slamming him backward into the slope.
He looks unstoppable—rage and muscle and sheer will. But there are too many.
The first guard staggers back to his feet and drives a fist into Declan’s gut. He doubles over with a sharp gasp, knees buckling, and they seize the opening. Three guards pile on, forcing his arms behind his back. Another pair of cuffs clanks shut.
Declan grits his teeth, chest heaving, sand clinging to his sweaty skin. His gaze never wavers from Dav. “Touch her again,” he growls, voice low and ragged, “and that sword won’t be enough to stop me.”
My heart squeezes so hard it hurts, but instead of letting it show I go sharp, biting. “Very knight-in-shining-armor of you. Too bad we’re both handcuffed like criminals.”
Dav smirks and tightens his grip on his blade like he’s hoping for round two.
“Well!” Tarek claps his hands once, the sound loud and absurd in the tension.
“What say we all take a breath and not end one another before we reach camp?” He flashes a grin.
“Besides, the queens will want their tongues before their blood. A legend risen from the sand? That’s worth more than bodies left to the dunes. ”
He steps in and gently relieves the guard of me, looping his arm through mine like we’re heading to a ball, ridiculous as it feels with my hands chained behind my back.
Dav’s groan is deep and long-suffering. “For the love of the sun, Tarek. They defied the Festival of the First Flame. They vanished during their ordained hour. The queens and their court will decide their punishment.”
Tarek winces then gives me a sidelong glance. “The queens will be merciful,” he says like he’s trying to convince us both. “Probably. Maybe.”
The guards shift formation, flanking us with swords drawn but lowered. Declan is kept a few steps ahead, shoulders taut, fury rolling off him in waves under the silver wash of moonlight. Together, cuffed and bound, we’re marched back across the dunes toward the heart of the Kingdom of Wands.
Back to face the queens. Back to face judgment.