6. Chapter 6 #3
“It does,” he admitted, “but I know it affects you. You nearly dragged me with you when you lost control halfway across the desert from me. Before you even knew what you were doing. Now, you feel the same restlessness that I suffer from. At least one of us has to be sane to restore the Heart.”
He was not wrong—my magic pulled against me like a willful horse, nearly painful in its power every time he appeared to be fighting with apparitions and voices. I would take on even more of his madness if I could, though, if it would give him a moment’s peace.
“We will both restore the Heart,” I insisted. “We’ve helped each other before. We can do it again.”
Even as I said it, panicked guilt panged deep under my ribs.
I had failed Kelvadan and had squandered the chance for a home there I had been desperate to hold onto after so long alone.
I ached to save the city, but after being so intimately involved in its destruction, I feared I would not be able to.
Erix was my true home now—one I had promised in blood that I would not fail.
“I can control the visions. I can keep them from affecting you,” Erix promised, sounding almost as if he were trying to convince himself more than me.
“I’ll help you. We will fight them together.” My words were firm, but a hint of desperation twisted in my chest. I had lost Kelvadan, and I could not lose Erix too, even if I didn’t deserve him—even if I couldn’t save, only destroy.
Erix nodded, but the motion was stilted and jerky. “Let’s go back to the fire. We need to speak with Aderyn and Elion and figure out why the desert reunited us and how we should continue on.”
We turned back toward the warm flickering light, away from the shadowed darkness of the night.
I slipped my hand into his and interlaced our fingers so the scars across our palms brushed.
At the sensation, he squeezed, and I tightened my grip in return.
He had bandages around his fingers—he must have injured his hand in today’s rescue when I was too distracted by helping Dhara to notice.
Aderyn looked up as we rejoined the group, and I didn’t miss the worried hollows under her eyes, exaggerated by the flickering firelight. Their journey must have been as harrowing as ours so far.
“Do you have any idea why the desert brought us together?” I asked her without preamble. It was the question we had all been wondering, but I hadn’t wanted to burden Aderyn and Elion with unanswerable questions about the desert’s will until they had a chance to recover from dangling over a canyon.
She pursed her lips. “We were riding every day with the intention of finding the remaining clans. The only logical explanations are that their encampment and the ocean are in the same direction—or that the desert wanted us together.”
“Would…” I chewed my cheek, fearing that Elion and Aderyn’s journey would be longer than I had anticipated. I had hoped the clans would be united long before Erix and I reached the ocean. “Would Izumi lead her clans across the desert to the ocean?”
It would be a horrible journey for such a large caravan and would cost many lives—the sick and injured. But we hadn’t seen the clans since stealing into Izumi’s tent to steal the missing pages of Kelvar’s journal several months ago.
“Izumi’s fervor for healing the desert was only outstripped by my own,” Erix said grimly, “And she did not know of the Heart. She would take any action, no matter how extreme, if she thought it were necessary.”
“If she doesn’t know about the Heart or the temple there, what answers could the sea possibly hold?” Dhara asked.
I scrubbed a hand across my face. “Perhaps there is an illogical answer for how we found ourselves together once more.”
“Perhaps the journey to the ocean is one better not taken alone,” Elion chimed in.
“We weren’t alone,” Lord Dhara said, her voice sharp. “There were three of us.”
Lord Elion shrugged, I thought I saw his brow furrow in disappointment. With the dim light and the bandage wrapped around his forehead to cover his head wound, it was hard to say.
“Our journey has not been easy so far, and we would have died today if we had not found each other,” Aderyn admitted. “Perhaps we should continue on together.”
I looked around the group—five of the finest warriors in the entire desert. Three of my four companions had already saved my life on more than one occasion. And Elion—despite my habitual difficulty reading people, something told me he would not hesitate to lay his life down for Dhara.
I swallowed thickly. My instincts told me that traveling together would be safer and give us a better chance of reaching the ocean. My instincts had brought me to ruin recently, but in the wilds, I had no choice but to trust them.
“Let’s ride together.”
My heart stuttered as I said the words, hoping this wasn’t the wrong choice for Kelvadan—that I wasn’t pulling Aderyn and Elion away from the city under occupation.
“We better get some rest,” Erix pointed out. “It’s a long way to the ocean.”