8. Chapter 8 #2
A shadow appeared on the horizon. I eyed it warily at first, but my shoulders slumped as I found that the plains were giving way to rocky ground with small cliffs and buttes that would hide scrub and vegetation. Hopefully water.
We would not be vulnerable in the dark like we had been the night before.
I glanced sidelong at my companions as they too spotted the changing landscape and relief painted their expressions.
Guilt ripped through me as I watched Dhara sitting slightly hunched to guard her injury and took in the shadowed hollows under Aderyn’s eyes.
Despite Erix’s assurances that I had made the right decision with the information I had, I couldn’t help feeling like I failed my companions at every turn, putting them in harm’s way.
Just like I had failed Kelvadan.
I had risen all the way to queen in the Great City I had hoped would be my belonging, only to fail so miserably as to be left without a home once again.
Now, I feared it was a pattern I was destined to repeat again and again.
Every time I failed to force myself into the exact shape of the leader or warrior the desert and my friends needed, I felt the ache of abandonment like a phantom limb.
Like I knew the pain that would inevitably come if I continued down this path.
I chewed on my chapped lips as we drew closer to the rocky crags and the group looked around for a place to make camp. The sun was far from setting, but after the events of last night, we needed time and safety to regroup.
“There.” Elion gestured to a rough hole in the ground, gouged as if by sharp hooves—the telltale sign of a natural well dug by wild horses and other animals.
When we reached it, I dismounted, and the others followed suit. As they began untying packs from their horses to let them rest properly, I spied Dhara still sitting on her mount out of the corner my eye. She stared down at her hands in her horse’s mane and scowled as if they had offended her.
Casually, I walked over, my hands shoved in my belt. I had seen how loathe she was to accept help from Lord Elion on several occasions and didn’t fancy being on the receiving end of her sharp bite.
“You have a lovely horse. He’s very tall,” I commented instead, cocking my head and squinting against the sunlight as I looked up at her.
Dhara huffed, like an unamused laugh. “It’s a trait I admire in him when my leg feels less likely to give out under me the moment I hit the ground.”
There was no fooling her.
“I’ll catch you,” I offered.
Now she turned the full force of her scowl on me. I looked to the side and shrugged.
“The first time I got to Kelvadan, I collapsed right off of Daiti’s back and into Aderyn’s arms,” I admitted. “And she is much shorter than I am, which I’m sure made it a much more awkward affair than me giving you a hand.”
Dhara sighed, and glanced at Aderyn, who indeed only came up to about my chin, although her shoulders were a few inches broader than mine still.
Then, Dhara swung her uninjured leg over her mount’s back so she faced me.
I reached out as she slid down, catching her by the shoulders, so she could land lightly, almost all her weight on her good leg.
Her lips still flattened in discomfort as she stood, and she braced one hand on her gelding’s shoulder, patting him gently in thanks.
Then, she jerked her chin toward a flat rock.
We walked over to it, and while she trembled as she tried not to put too much weight on me, she kept her grip on my arm.
With a sigh, she sat down on the rock, extending her injured leg in front of her as she did so as not to jostle it.
I sat beside her. We would need to clean and bandage her wound, but for now I let myself enjoy the first moment of anything even close to peace since we had stopped to camp last night.
It was somewhat interrupted by the pulsing, shivering tension spilling down the tether in my gut from Erix’s end—something that had become chronic over the past weeks. My gaze slipped to him, as it so often did when there was an idle moment, like he was the lodestone to my focus.
Right now, he was looking over Alza’s legs and hooves—meticulous as always in checking his mount, even when I could sense the shuddering unrest under his skin.
I admired the way his broad hands and long fingers ran over her midnight coat with care and the sharp angle of his jaw as he nodded as if satisfied with what he found.
I wondered if I would ever have my fill of looking at his lethal beauty, although it seemed unlikely.
With the pain and confusion I felt as a constant undercurrent in my belly with his rising madness, I found myself looking at him more and more often, as if he might disappear if I looked away too long, like a mirage.
The thought made me shudder.
Dhara’s shoulder brushed mine, jolting me out of my contemplation.
“I envy the way it seems easy between the two of you,” she said.
A bark of laughter so loud and abrupt that it startled the horses exploded out of me. “Easy? We must have different definitions of the word.”
Dhara looked at me quizzically. “The first time you arrived at Clan Otush’s encampment to fight the lava wyrm, you worked so seamlessly together, even though I know now you fought for separate causes.”
“Ah, yes, you missed the part of our story where we spent months trying to kill each other.” Even as I said it, an ache filled my chest—a visceral longing for those times, before Erix twitched and tossed his head as if trying to dispel a fly buzzing around his head.
I knew he did it in response to the voices that constantly plagued him, and it was more difficult to swallow each time I witnessed it.
“Well, a true battle seems far preferable to dancing around underhandedly needling at each other. I prefer to face my adversaries head on with a blade in hand.” Dhara mused. Her gaze caught on Elion as she spoke, and I cocked my head.
“I don’t think he wants to be adversaries,” I said, knowing we were no longer talking about me and Erix.
Dhara pursed her lips. “Lords are supposed to be pictures of strength. The weak do not survive in the desert, and they certainly don’t stay lords.
His trying to help me—protect me—at every turn, makes me look weak.
It undermines the image I need to serve my people.
To give them faith in a time of so much uncertainty. ”
I chewed my tongue. Even after months as queen, the posturing of a leader didn’t come naturally to me. I had kept Erix at a distance in public to strengthen my rule, but it had ached like a knife to the chest.
“I denied my heart to be a better queen, and despite it… maybe even because of it, I failed.” My throat burned. “But maybe you have the right of it. You have been lord far longer than I managed to remain queen.”
Dhara looked pensive but clapped me on the shoulder.
“I do not think your time for being a leader has passed. Survival is the highest law of the Ballan Desert, and it seems you have survived more than most. You’re still fighting, and you should know that the winner in most battles is determined by who can stay on their feet the longest.”
My eyes fell to Dhara’s leg, wound still visible and angry.
“Well then we better get you patched up if you are to be winning many battles soon,” I commented, before standing up to find some water and bandages, Dhara’s words heavy on my heart.
“We should spar.”
I glanced up at Aderyn from where I sat on my sleeping mat, cleaning my sword.
“Have the past weeks not been enough action for you?” I asked.
While nothing in the past fortnight had been as harrowing as the bone spider attacks, our trek across the sands had been far from easy.
Predators were everywhere and hunting was difficult.
I would have been tired even without the restless nights I had been suffering from.
I woke often to find my sleeping mat empty as Erix rose and prowled through the darkness in agitation, leaving me cold with a soul-deep ache in my chest. My own nightmares roused me nearly as often—visions of Kelvadan crumbling from the mountainside or the desert falling into the sea. My stomach roiled, and I cringed.
In the present, Aderyn shrugged. “We’ve had plenty of practice fighting beasts and the elements, but when we reach our destination, we might have to face human foes.”
I grimaced. We still hadn’t been able to puzzle out why the desert had brought Aderyn and Elion the same way as us in their quest to find the enemy clans, but it seemed likely we would encounter Izumi and the other lords at some point.
“I wouldn’t mind testing my leg out before the next time my life is in danger,” Dhara chimed in. The deep wound on her thigh had healed to an angry red scar by now, and she had avoided using it too much until her skin knit back together.
I stood, picking up my saber. “All right, if you’re so desperate to hit something, I suppose it might as well be me.”
“Care to join us?” Aderyn asked Lord Elion, who sat on a boulder near the oasis we had found, persuading us to camp earlier than usual today.
He shook his head but smiled broadly and leaned back on his hands. “I wouldn’t want to miss the show.”
I wished for a moment that Erix could join us, and the tether in my belly twitched in response to my thought of him.
He had stalked out on a hunt as soon as we had stopped for the day, refusing my offer to accompany him.
The frenetic energy that poured down the bond and made me fidgety made me reconsider—perhaps taking up his sword against a friend right now would be counterproductive.
Dhara leaned from side to side with her hands braced on her hips and grimaced. “You two start while I limber up. My blood takes longer than I would like to get flowing these days.”
Aderyn and I approached an open patch of earth, and we each drew our sabers. We would have to pull our blows, as we didn’t have blunted weapons. I eyed her blade curiously.
“No sickle blades today?”