Chapter Thirty-One
Glamours were first used by witches hundreds of years ago as a technique to spy.
However, with time, they found ways to work around it by using magic that would immediately dispel the glamour, a magic that would erase any traces of fraud the moment one stepped over a special ward.
But as usual, that never stops us from finding ways around such things.
It is in our nature. To defy. If we are told no, then we shall find a way to twist the arm of the one who has spoken. And if that doesn’t work, well…
We just cut the arm off.
Tabitha Wysteria
Kai knew they were running out of time. The procession descending from the mountain was drawing ever closer, its presence already pressing against his nerves.
Arena and Isla had hurried ahead in a desperate attempt to buy them a few precious moments, to reach the king before steel or magic could be drawn.
Alina had watched them go without a word, her posture rigid, her spine straight as if held there by sheer force of will.
Nearby, Dawn lowered herself to the sand with the air of someone bracing for an ordeal she would rather avoid. Mareena knelt beside one of the satchels, retrieving a slender needle and a small vial that caught the light.
‘Breathe in and out,’ Mareena said gently. ‘It will be over in a moment.’
Kai lingered close, then dropped into a crouch at Dawn’s side, unable to look away as the needle pierced her skin. His jaw tightened, a sharp flicker of anger crossing his face.
‘There’s no need to glare at me like that,’ Mareena remarked, her calm edged with a quiet warning. ‘I’m not killing her.’
Kai hadn’t even realised how openly hostile his stare had been. He didn’t care. Trust did not come easily where phoenixians were concerned, nor their kingdom.
When Mareena finished, she rose and stepped aside. Kai immediately rested a hand on Dawn’s arm, his fingers brushing gently over the small mark left by the needle.
‘Does it hurt?’ he asked, his touch careful, almost reverent.
‘I don’t bruise easily,’ Dawn replied.
Of course she didn’t. Dawn was forged of something else entirely, something sharp, resilient, and quietly dangerous. Kai couldn’t help the soft chuckle that escaped him.
‘You find this amusing, commander?’ she snapped.
Before he could answer, her hands lifted and green smoke coiled around her fingers.
She shoved his touch away, and in a heartbeat her beautiful face dissolved, reshaped.
Sharp, pale features settled into the likeness of a wyverian woman. Kai leaned back, frowning.
He hated it.
He hated the glamour itself, but more than that, he hated the way the light in Dawn’s eyes dulled every time she changed her face, as if each transformation took something from her that never quite returned.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, rising and offering her his hand.
The words seemed to catch her off guard. A faint crease appeared between her brows before she swatted his hand away and stood on her own.
‘For what, exactly?’ she asked, clearing her throat as she checked herself over, ensuring the glamour held.
‘I’m sorry you have to keep changing your face.’
He saw the instant her body went rigid. Instinctively, he wanted to reach for her again, to brush the pain from her expression, to coax back a smile, or even a laugh.
‘Stop pretending to be kind,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
‘I’m not pretending.’
She rolled her now-black wyverian eyes and scoffed. ‘If you say so, commander.’
Kai turned fully towards her, making sure she could read the truth etched into every line of his face.
‘I never pretend with you, Dawn.’
She froze, lips parting as if a dozen words were fighting to escape. But before she could speak, Alina cleared her throat, casting them a look sharp enough to freeze the desert itself.
Kai had a dozen sharp words ready for Alina, each one burning to be spoken, but they died in his throat the moment he noticed Arena and Isla.
They stood at the front of the formation now, flanked by the king himself and an overwhelming tide of desert folk fanning out behind him. Kai swallowed his retort whole.
‘Alina Acheron, we meet again,’ King Siroc said, tilting his head before letting his pale eyes rake slowly over each of them. ‘Here you stand upon the land that birthed my daughter, Hessa. The very soul you slaughtered.’
Kai watched Alina closely. Her expression did not so much as shift.
Behind her, the dragons stood in disciplined formation, vast and terrible, their presence humming with restrained violence.
Only a stretch of sand separated the two sides.
Sand thin enough that, with a single word from Alina, dragonfire could reduce the king and his people to ash.
‘You wished to see me, King Siroc,’ Alina said at last, her tone measured, ironclad. ‘Here I am.’
‘I want you to pay for your crimes.’
Alina’s control fractured then. ‘The crime of loving your daughter?’ she snapped, the words sharp with fury. A bitter laugh tore from her throat. ‘Very well,’ she said, voice ringing across the sands. ‘Let me pay for such a crime.’
Kai let his attention settle fully on the king.
He was young, strikingly so for a man who carried an entire desert on his shoulders.
Handsome and broad-built, with dark hair cropped short, though streaked through with threads of white that caught the light depending on how he turned his head.
His skin held the warm, sun-kissed brown of his people, and his eyes were pale and luminous, white as moonstone, unreadable and ancient despite his youth.
To one side stood another man, a little younger than the king, clad in the garments of an advisor. His brown hair was kept in a ponytail. He stood proudly, chin lifted, shoulders squared, as if daring the world to test him.
On the king’s other side stood the Saqar, resplendent and unsettling in their presence.
Kai had heard of them countless times in stories whispered through long evenings, tales his younger brother Kage had once recited with reverence—stories Kai had half-slept through, yet remembered well enough now.
The Saqar were sacred to the desert. Holy women who did not merely advise, but decided.
They were entirely shrouded in flowing robes that concealed every inch of their bodies, leaving only bare feet, slender hands, and those eerie white eyes exposed.
They stood silent and unmoving, like living statues carved from devotion and dust, and Kai felt, deep in his bones, that their judgment weighed heavier than any blade or dragonfire ever could.
One of the Saqar glided towards the king and bent close, murmuring words meant only for him. Confusion flashed across his face before he nodded slowly and spoke aloud.
‘The Saqar foresaw an evil rising upon this land. They believe that evil is you, Alina Acheron.’
‘They are right,’ Alina said calmly.
A sharp gasp rippled through the gathered crowd.
‘There is an evil that crept into this desert,’ she continued, her voice steady and unflinching. ‘But it was not me. It was Saren. She killed Hessa. Not I.’
The Saqar leaned in once more to whisper to their king, but Alina stepped forward before they could finish. At once, her dragons shifted and growled, massive bodies tensing beneath their scales. The air thickened with unease.
Alina reached beneath her garments and drew something out, something Kai could not see at first. But when she lifted it high, the world seemed to still, as if even the desert itself were holding its breath. Kai stared, uncertain of what he was witnessing.
A necklace gleamed in the sunlight—a delicate golden chain bearing a smooth white stone, luminous and unmistakable.
The king inhaled sharply, the sound torn from his chest.
‘Hessa Waadi Al-Dunasi gifted this to me before her death,’ Alina declared.
Kai’s frown deepened. There was something in her tone, something practiced. A lie, perhaps, though not where one might expect it. He knew Alina well enough to hear the subtle difference between truth and deception, and yet he could not quite place it.
‘Do you truly believe I would have killed Hessa,’ Alina went on, her voice hardening, ‘when we were planning to marry?’
The Saqar recoiled with a sharp, hissing sound, retreating as though burnt by the sight of the necklace itself.
Kai noticed the advisor lift a hand to his other, fingers brushing the white stone ring that lived there like a talisman.
A quiet understanding settled over Kai then.
These stones mattered to the desert folk far more than he had first realised.
They were not ornaments, but symbols. Perhaps even sacred ones.
The king’s pale eyes glazed for a heartbeat before he cleared his throat, composure returning with effort.
‘It is your word against Saren’s,’ he said at last. He glanced towards the advisor, then back to Alina. ‘Until a truth can be uncovered, I invite you to remain with us as our guest.’
Kai braced himself, certain Alina would accept. Instead, she shook her head, unmoved by the offer, as though it held no weight at all.
‘I want Saren’s head,’ she said. ‘Where is she?’
The king startled, the question clearly not what he had expected. ‘Saren is not here,’ he replied after a pause. ‘She has travelled to another region. Far north.’
Alina inclined her head once, already done with the conversation, and turned towards her dragons.
‘Then I shall go to her.’
Kai took a step forward, instinct screaming for him to stop her, but Mareena reached Alina first. Kai watched the exchange with narrowed eyes as Mareena’s fingers closed around Alina’s arm. The two women held each other’s gaze in silence, something unspoken passing between them.
Scheming.
Always scheming.
Kai felt it the instant Dawn edged closer, her shoulder brushing his arm, her presence taut with unease. Her eyes narrowed as she watched Alina and Mareena conduct an entire conversation without a single word passing between them.
‘They worry me, those two,’ Dawn whispered, her voice barely more than breath.
Kai inclined his head in the faintest nod, careful not to draw attention. He watched Alina as she finally turned back to the king, and his body went rigid the moment he caught that smile, that sharp and wicked, almost fleeting smile, before it vanished behind her familiar mask of cool indifference.
‘Before I seek out Saren,’ Alina announced, her voice steady and measured, ‘my dragons must rest and be fed. And I wish to speak with you more calmly, King Siroc, about what truly transpired. So that we may bring justice to the desert and to Hessa.’
The king nodded once and turned away, his robes shifting as he strode off, the Saqar gliding after him like pale shadows.
Kai tilted his head, watching as Mareena slipped back to Alina’s side, her hand settling against the fire princess’s back with unmistakable familiarity.
‘I don’t trust them,’ Dawn muttered, unease threading her tone.
Kai did not answer with words. Instead, he found Dawn’s hand and squeezed it gently, a quiet reassurance pressed into flesh and bone. And in that small, steady gesture, he said everything he could not.