5. Chapter 5
Chapter five
Erix
While the desert had tested us today, she now seemed happy with our performance and so granted us a reprieve. We found an oasis surrounded by high, rocky walls, at which to make camp.
After the storm, we were all in need of a chance to bathe and rest. Alza’s midnight coat was heavily crusted in dust, and Keera had a set of long scratches on the back of one of her shoulders that needed tending to.
Still, as we all dismounted, I was sad to climb from Alza’s back. The fugue of battle was slow to loosen its hold, but riding helped. Something about the freedom of being on horseback had always helped center my mind, and I was loathe to give it up when so little seemed to ground me.
“We will need fresh supplies,” Dhara said, cutting through my thoughts.
“If there is water, there is also likely something to be hunted nearby. I’m going to see what I can find.
” She pulled her bow and a quiver of arrows from her supplies and headed out from the shelter of the cliffs surrounding the oasis.
I rested my forehead on Alza’s side, trying to let her scent comfort me, but found it muted by the layer of dust that covered every inch of both me and my horse. Fingers weaved between my own, and Keera tugged on my hand insistently.
“Let’s bathe,” she prompted. “I need your help cleaning the cuts on my shoulder.”
That did finally draw me from my thoughts, although to my shame, I was urged to follow her by the idea of seeing her bare flesh under the fading sunlight as much as by her need for my aid.
We undressed quickly, and it felt like an entire dune’s worth of sand fell out of my clothing as I let it drop to the rocks at the edge of the pool. A snort of amusement came from my side as Keera’s pants fell to the ground, sounding far heavier than the light linen had any right to.
“I felt almost naked from the lack of sand in Kelvadan,” she mused. “Like I was missing a layer of skin without it. I think I may have missed it a bit too much.”
I glanced over at her to tell her that I understood—that I found the city almost sterile without the constant grit carried on the wind.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight of her. I hadn’t seen her naked outside of the tent we shared at the encampment or the confinement of her rooms in Kelvadan in too long. But nothing compared to the way her skin looked, glazed in the golden light of the sun as it neared the horizon.
She didn’t seem to notice my staring as she waded into the water, letting out a blissful sigh as it rinsed the grit away from her skin.
The rest of my clothes were ripped from me in a matter of seconds, before I all but dived into the pool after her.
The roar of the earlier battle in my blood returned in force, and I was sure that the only thing that could quell the fire scorching in my veins was the feeling of her soft flesh under my hands.
She turned as I approached, opening her mouth as if to say something. I caught whatever it was in my mouth, covering her lips with my own. I devoured her and her hands came up to tug at my hair.
I knew I should be softer—gentler. She had been wounded today. She couldn’t possibly be as feral for me as I was for her right now.
The voices in my mind drowned out all semblance of reason, though, demanding more and demanding it now, even though her touch normally quieted them. I used my hands under her thighs to lift her up, and she wrapped her legs around me.
I didn’t bother carrying her to the edge of the pool to set her down. Not when my already hard cock brushed against her soft sex and pure animal instinct overtook me. I pushed inside her, and she gasped sharply at the sudden intrusion.
“I’m sorry,” I grunted into her neck, even as my fingers tightened on her thighs, digging into her muscles as they trembled. The tether between us was blown wide open, and I could feel the pleasure dancing on the edge of too much that had overtaken her body.
“It’s all right,” she said, her voice raspy. “I want it. I want all of you.”
She tried to roll her hips in emphasis, but had very little leverage, suspended in the air as she was. It didn’t matter, though, as I was already thrusting into her.
I took her hard and fast, lifting her up and dropping her onto my length with single-minded intensity.
It was raw and savage. In barely any time at all, Keera was crying out, and I was biting down on the juncture between her neck and shoulder hard enough to taste blood.
It was with copper on my tongue that I emptied myself inside her as Keera shook through her own violent release.
I blinked back to myself, the reality of the moment crashing in on me all at once.
My mind, loud and chaotic since the battle, finally quieted enough to hear my own thoughts.
I pulled back from Keera’s neck after pressing a kiss of apology to the bloody mark I left there.
Gently setting her on her feet, I still held on to her as her knees trembled and I looked her over.
Sand and grit still clung to her messy hair, and her eyes and cheeks were red from chafing wind.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured again, “I just… I needed you. The desert is so loud and you…”
Keera chuckled, although the sound was hoarse, and laid her hand over my heart. It pounded beneath her fingertips but started to slow under her touch.
“You’ve calmed my storm with your touch more than once.”
“Just a simple touch wasn’t enough today,” I said guiltily.
“I don’t mind giving you as much of me as you need.” She pressed a kiss to my sternum, right above her fingertips.
I swallowed. Hopefully there would always be an amount of her that could bring me back to my sanity, even as my need for her seemed to be beyond reason.
“Let me help you with your shoulder,” I said, nudging her so she turned around and showed me her wound.
She did as I asked, and with my mind newly settled, I was able to focus on cleaning and bandaging her wounds and helping her wash and rebraid her hair.
By the time that Dhara returned with two rock squirrels in her grip, we were clean and dressed and I had built a pile of kindling that would serve for our cooking fire for the evening.
If Dhara sensed what had happened in her absence, she said nothing.
Although, there was no way she could have missed the red indentations from my teeth on Keera’s neck.
I opened my eyes to stare into the embers of the dying fire.
The odd lightness of my limbs and haziness of my surroundings seemed like a dream.
I immediately looked around for Keera, wondering if our sleeping consciousnesses were linked again, despite our close proximity in the physical world.
My gaze caught on her sleeping face, which was notably slack with unconsciousness and lacking any of the various expressions she wore openly on her face in wakefulness.
I frowned. She wouldn’t be asleep in a dream.
A rustle sounded behind me, and I turned, half expecting to find Lord Dhara moving around the camp or Alza having wandered closer in want of company. The taste of copper on my tongue and a strange tingling in my throat, though, set the hairs on the back of my neck on end.
I met an unexpected pair of dark eyes and froze.
Kelvar.
I blinked rapidly and scrubbed at my eyes, but he did not disappear. Instead, he sat cross-legged just beside my sleeping mat with his elbows braced on his knees. It wasn’t a threatening posture, but my hackles rose anyway. I sat up quickly, reaching toward the saber that lay next to me as I slept.
“What do you want?” I hissed.
To help.
I winced. Kelvar’s mouth did not move, but his voice was deafening, coming from both outside and inside my own mind.
Almost as if every fiber of my being shouted the words at once.
It was still difficult to understand, but I could pick out meaning in the overlapping shouts in a way that I hadn’t been able to since his last appearance.
“Driving me mad is not helping,” I whispered. I wasn’t totally sure if this was a dream or not, but I didn’t want to awaken my traveling companions. My stomach clenched at the idea of them finding me speaking to thin air.
You’re no madder than I am.
I opened my mouth to argue that this was not reassuring, as his own insanity was legendary—as pointless as it might be to argue with a figment of my own imagination. Before I could speak, Kelvar’s eyes dropped to the bedroll next to me, landing on Keera.
My throat tightened as the sheets rustled. Keera shifted in her sleep and made a quiet noise, almost like a whimper, as if a bad dream had taken over her mind. The sound might as well have been a scream for the way it cut into my soul. My madness didn’t only affect me.
I reached out as if to comfort her, but my hand hovered mere inches over the join between her neck and shoulder where her skin was decorated with bloody teeth marks.
I had hurt her, albeit minorly, in my frenzy.
But I hadn’t missed the way she could barely focus on her own magic during the sandstorm over the cacophony that spilled from my end of the bond, or the way her touch had been slower to calm me after our fight with Calix’s men.
“Stop hurting her,” I hissed through my teeth at Kelvar, my fingers still lingering just inches from Keera. My muscles shook with the effort of holding myself back, and my chest ached with my need for her closeness.
Kelvar’s voice echoed in my head—the words I already feared.
I’m not the one who’s hurting her.
I couldn’t turn to her touch. Not for this. Not if it pulled her into madness with me.
Instead, I reached for the saber once more. I did not bother with the handle, grasping the blade in my fist and squeezing. I gasped as fire bloomed across my fingers, hot blood bubbling up between my knuckles.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, diving into the sharp sensation, before opening them again.
Kelvar was gone.
I knew I was hallucinating. I had seen Kelvar’s skeletal remains with my own eyes, and it only seemed logical that these apparitions would join the voices that had plagued me my whole life.
Still, he seemed so real. I reached out with my uninjured hand to touch the sand where he had sat, finding it smooth, with no indents from his presence. The grains were rough and cool under my fingers, having grown cold without the searing light of the sun or the heat of a body resting on them.
With a shudder, I let go of my saber. The sting of the cuts across my fingers was sharp, but the bitterness of guilt cut through the overwhelming physicality of my hurt too soon.
I gritted my teeth. I had promised Keera I would not do this—turn back to Lord Alasdar’s ways of controlling my magic.
The thought of breaking her trust left my chest as hollow as a drum, but her offered alternative of using her touch to push the visions away began to come at too steep a price.
She had thought her own power a curse and doubted her own worth because of it for too long.
I could not bring myself to be the reason her magic slipped her control and left her fearing herself once more.
She would say she was willing to bear the risk of madness for me.
But that would destroy me faster than any of my own pain.
While trust came slowly to Keera after so long on her own, once her loyalty was earned, it was as unbreakable as blood glass.
She had torn her own heart out and stomped on it to try and serve the people of the city that had taken her in.
But these were my burdens to bear, and I would not let Keera break herself trying to carry them for me.
I swallowed painfully as I reached for my pack, finding a length of cloth I could use to bandage the cuts and hide them from Keera. We were still a long journey from the ocean, and I had to make it there with my mind intact enough to puzzle out how to heal the Heart.
Once my wounds were covered, I laid down beside Keera and tried to even my breathing.
With my own visions banished, I hoped no more nightmares would plague her during the night.
Fighting the legacy of my bloodline was nothing new to me.
I had managed it for three decades, and I could hold on for a little longer.
Repeating this to myself until belief started to soak in, I tried to rest.
It was long minutes before sleep took me.