14. Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Keera
Iwas alone.
Even Daiti was gone, but I didn’t even remember dismounting.
I hadn’t seen the mist before it swallowed us, and now it pushed in on all sides.
It almost felt like hands running over both my body and my mind and making me feel horribly exposed.
I drowned in the feeling of emptiness that came from being able to see or hear nothing around me.
“Keera!” A voice called out, something out of both a nightmare and a dream. I whirled toward it, only to find a darkened silhouette disappearing into the silvery fog.
“Wait!” I shouted, dashing after it. The figure was just a darkened silhouette in the fog, and although it didn’t appear to run, I never grew closer. I pumped my arms and churned my legs in the sand, trying to reach it until my lungs felt like they were about to burst.
Finally, I fell to my knees on the ground, panting as tears stung the back of my eyes.
I was utterly and truly isolated in a way that I hadn’t been since the day that Erix stumbled upon my oasis.
He was gone, and I didn’t even know how to begin searching for him, although I sensed that wherever I was, geography made even less sense than it normally did in the desert.
Even if my friends were right beside me, they might as well be leagues away in this fog.
I did not know who I had chased, but a deep sadness filled my chest that I hadn’t been able to reach them. I had failed in my chance to save myself from loneliness. The back of my eyes burned. I would die here the way I had spent too much of my life: Alone.
“Keera.”
I spun on the ground, heart leaping into my throat.
Then it stopped as I stared into a familiar face, all too similar to my own—heart-shaped with a strong brow, although deep brown replaced my own golden eyes.
“Mother?”
“I found you,” she started, and although her tone was neutral, the words plucked at something I had thought lost within me. I scrabbled to my feet, only to nearly topple to the ground again when she spoke again. “I’d hoped you had died.”
Her dark gaze was steely, and I swallowed. “Why?”
I hated how my voice sounded—it was that of a young girl, so far from the queen and warrior I had become.
I tried to stand tall, telling myself she was just an apparition of the fog, but she seemed too solid.
Details that had faded in my memory with time and the warped perspective of youth were sharp and perfect. Perhaps she was really here.
“You’re destined to be alone,” my mother said. “You will fail everybody that tries to accept you. And even if I know I was right to leave you, I had hoped you wouldn’t suffer.”
I bared my teeth. “You’re the one who deserves to suffer.”
She didn’t speak again, instead turning away and walking into the mist. I stood frozen for a moment, watching her leave me in isolation for the second time in my life.
The bone deep sadness I felt though was washed away by a tide of anger, rising up from the well in my gut until it almost drowned me.
My sword came free of its sheathe with a metallic shink, the sound nearly swallowed by the heavy silence of the mist. I charged into the fog after her, ready to vent all my fury and frustration upon her.
I ran, but once again, her receding shadow grew no closer.
I pushed harder until my muscles screamed, only for my foot to hit something hard and unexpected.
My breath was punched from my chest as I sprawled across a hard stone floor, and my saber flew from my hand.
It skittered loudly across the ground, only to be stopped by a brown leather boot.
I looked from where I lay on the floor, dread making it hard to regain my breath. My gaze trailed over a loose white shirt, unlaced just a little too far, to a smiling face that made my blood run cold.
“Calix,” I spat.
“It’s King Calix now,” he responded nonchalantly. “Sounds better than prince ever did.”
I shook with fury as I pushed to my hands and knees, and he chuckled. The sound was as warm and friendly as ever, making me hate him even more. Even when I knew he was the enemy, I couldn’t read the menace in his behavior.
“I always knew you would bow to me in the end,” he observed, nodding at my position.
I snarled. “I would rather die than let you remain on the throne of Kelvadan.”
He picked my saber up off the ground as I struggled to my feet, pointing it at me.
I was inclined to make good on my promise.
After all, my own mother had said she wished me dead—maybe I could die in a way that proved I didn’t deserve to be alone after all—in a way that would be remembered more favorably than I was when I was alive.
I leapt forward, ready to strangle Calix even if it killed me—but a strong hand on my shoulder held me back. It gripped impossibly firm, but somehow also gently.
I whirled around, ready to find my mother again. To point out to her that this is what she wanted.
It was my mother, but it wasn’t. It looked nothing like her at all, but somehow mother was still the first word that came to mind.
She was impossibly beautiful, but I couldn’t describe how she looked if I tried.
From her hair color to her eye color, her features seemed to shift every time I tried to focus on them, but I knew I looked at the most breathtaking and most deadly woman I had ever seen.
“Your death will not be in vain,” she said. It was a voice I had heard before, but I didn’t know where. Her tone was both deeply comforting and carried a great threat. “You must find him before all is lost.”
Then she was gone. I blinked, seeing only mist. I pivoted on my heel, seeing no sign of the strange woman or Calix or my mother.
It was as if they had never been there at all.
When I thought back on Erix’s tales of crossing the desert before—his stories of harrowing visions of the desert falling into the ocean at his hand—I realized they likely had only existed in my own mind.
Still, the warmth of the woman’s touch on my shoulder lingered, and I rubbed at it as I bent to pick up my sword where it now lay on the ground.
That’s when I heard it. Shouts in the distance, growing louder and more desperate. I had no doubt this voice was real. The impression was only reinforced by the tether I could feel quivering to life in my belly after being silent through the whole ordeal.
Erix.
I plunged into the mist again, this time pulled forward by the invisible string that drew me toward the other half of my power. Erix’s shouts were wordless and wild, as if he were in great pain. My heart leapt in my throat, desperate to reach him and ease whatever suffering he faced.
His dark silhouette appeared in the mist, his broad shoulders and powerful build unmistakable even in a hazy outline. His sword was drawn and he hacked viciously at something before him.
As I ran closer, words became discernable in his pained shouting. Or rather one word shouted over and over.
“Keera!”
“Erix,” I shouted in return, kicking up sand in my haste as I drew closer. It was as if he didn’t hear me, continuing to swing his sword frantically, again and again. He hacked at thin air.
Whatever demons the desert had summoned for him to face, they were not visible to me.
“Erix,” I said, trying to grapple on to the tether between us, but finding it slippery with panic and fear pouring from his mind. I skidded to a stop at his shoulder, reaching out and hoping my touch would be enough to bring him back from whatever visions gripped him.
The moment my hand touched his arm, he whirled around, free hand outstretched. Fire cracked from it like a whip, and I threw my hands up to protect my face. Pain bit into my flesh as the fire burned my forearm, and I screamed.
The tether in my gut—chaotic and frenzied a moment before—snapped into perfect clarity so violently it nearly drowned out the scorching heat. I lowered my hands and clutched my burned arm to my chest in time to see the look of utter horror on Erix’s face.
“Keera.” His voice had dropped from frantic shouts to a pained murmur in an instant. His hands gripped my elbows, following me down as I fell to my knees.
“I’m all right,” I bit out from behind gritted teeth.
Erix shook his head violently enough that his dark curls fell across his forehead and into his eyes. Carefully—the gentleness in his movements at jarring odds with his ferocity from a few moments ago—he pried my arm away from my chest.
A line of angry red ran diagonally across my forearm, already starting to blister around the edges. Still, it was thin, and I hadn’t been exposed to fire for long enough for it to burn my flesh down to the root.
Erix’s face was stricken, though, as he stared down at the mark.
“It’ll heal,” I said. “What’s one more burn?”
Indeed, half of my body still bore faded swirls and divots from the melting heat of the lava wyrm’s flesh.
“I did this,” he murmured, fingers hovering over the crimson mark. “I thought I was trapped, and I was trying to get to you—to help you—but I only hurt you instead. He was right. There is no way to stop me from hurting you.”
“Who was right?” I asked, trying to grapple onto his words through the urgent throbbing in my arm. I’d experienced worse, but Erix was right about one thing—the immediacy of pain made it difficult to focus on anything else. Even the vastness of the desert’s magic in my mind.
“Kelvar.” Erix swallowed. “He’s been speaking to me more every time I see him.”
The back of my neck prickled in apprehension. “If he said you would hurt me, it is only reflecting the fears of your own mind.”
Erix finally tore his gaze away from the burn. When his eyes met mine, they were so full of hurt that I nearly shattered.
“It doesn’t make the threat any less real,” he pointed out. “I saw the way it pained you—the magic when we were fighting the bone spider. My madness hurts you.”
“I trust you.”
“I don’t trust myself,” Erix admitted.
Reaching down with my uninjured hand, I peeled his fingers away from my wrist and rested his hand on my sternum, right above where my heart still hammered from the urgency of my chase.
“I’m alive, and we’ve both made it through this trial,” I assured.
He nodded, although his expression remained unconvinced. “If only Alyx would appear in my visions, to show me how to heal.”
“It’s unfortunate that we’ve both been denied that power,” I agreed.
Erix pulled me close and rested his forehead against mine, and I took the opportunity to breathe in his salt and sandalwood scent. The tang of his sweat was soothingly real in a landscape of fears and illusions.
Remembering the visions that had plagued me, I tore my face away from Erix’s and looked around us.
“What is this?” I asked.
Erix grimaced. “Last time I crossed the desert, it was similar. I don’t remember the fog, but I remember being plagued with horrible visions.”
“What about the others?”
Erix clenched his jaw. “We found each other. We can find them.”
Together, we stood and gazed around us.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter which way we walk,” I pointed out. Erix shrugged, and we set out into the mist. My arm throbbed in time with my heartbeat as we trudged through the fog, but I tried not to let it show how much it pained me.
Erix reached down and interlaced his fingers with my free hand, and I didn’t know if it was a gesture of comfort or to make sure we didn’t get separated from each other in the dense mist. Either way, I squeezed his hand, and he gripped back even tighter.
After a few minutes walking in silence, my ears pricked to a quiet noise. I tugged on Erix’s hand, and we stopped, looking around for the source of the sound. It came again: A quiet squeaking, like that of a wounded animal.
We hastened our steps, racing in the direction of the whimpering until we came upon a form huddled on the ground, emerging from the cloudy gray landscape so suddenly I nearly tripped over it.
The body was curled in on itself, but the black lines inked over the head and hands made it unmistakable.
“Aderyn,” I murmured, falling to my knees beside her. Erix crouched beside me, his body a warm presence against the sudden cold that rushed through me.
My heart fractured like glass at the small desperate sounds coming from her as she trembled. From the moment I had staggered into Kelvadan, barely conscious, Aderyn had been a pillar of strength for me. Through hard battles to the trials of leadership, I had rarely seen her bend, let alone break.
Yet whatever the desert had shown her, it had driven the strongest woman I knew to her knees. I peeled her hands away from her face, finding her pale eyes unfocused and sightless.
“It’s not real,” I murmured.
Her eyes cleared slightly, and she twisted her hands until she gripped my wrists so hard they hurt. Aderyn’s nails dug into the edge of my burn and I hissed, but I didn’t try to pry her free. If she needed this from me, she could have it.
“Neven and the baby,” she murmured frantically, still not appearing to fully see me. “You have to promise me they’ll be safe. I left him behind where I can’t protect him. I can’t—” She hiccupped. “I can’t lose another family.”
“I promise. I’ll keep them safe. We’ll keep them safe.” I tried to make my voice firm, but it was tight with pain.
Something in my tone must have convinced her though as she blinked, appearing to come out of her haze. She stared at me, her eyes overbright. I breathed deeply. Whatever the desert had shown her, its hold appeared to be loosening.
Reality seemed to hit her all at once and she gasped, looking around. “Where are we?”
I looked around too, ready to comment that location seemed to be a flexible concept in the magical fog, only to find that it seemed to be lifting. I could just make out the gentle slopes of sand dunes and a hazy horizon.
Footsteps sounded behind us, and I twisted—not pulling my hands from Aderyn’s—to find two figures staggering through the fading mist.
Erix stood, taking a few steps forward to meet Dhara and Elion where they approached.
Dhara appeared to be leaning on Elion for support but pulled away as they reached us.
An ephemeral breeze rolled in, a contrast to the heavy stillness of before, lifting my hair from my sweaty neck and tugging at the loose ends of my hood.
As we all gathered in a loose circle, I looked around to find that the wind blew away the last of the fog. We had survived the desert’s test.