19. Chapter 19 #2
Chaos reigned around me, and only a fraction of my mind remained focused on the swing of my sword and the bunch of Alza’s muscles beneath me.
Instead, every fiber of my being zeroed in on the approaching catastrophe.
Horses, panicked by the raging storm, had broken free of an enclosure and now stampeded through the camp, heading straight for where Keera knelt.
Aderyn desperately tugged at her, trying to haul her to her feet, but Keera’s pain was too great as the storm I had unleashed in the air boiled under her skin. I was the reason she had been captured, and now my lack of control was the reason she would be trampled to death.
Time stretched. A voice I recognized—clearer than it had ever been before—echoed in my mind.
You must let go.
For years, I had fought against the whispering of the desert and Kelvar in my mind, but now his tone was comforting—sad, as if he understood and felt for me.
Lightning flashed and panic roared as loud as lightning, and it was all so much I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.
Just Kelvar’s. The only thing I was sure of was that I needed to free Keera from the pain of my madness, so she could be safe.
With a strangled cry, I shoved my mental fingers into the tether that ran between us and ripped.
Fire seared through every cell of my body as I tore the bond between us in two, and suddenly I understood the pain of the desert’s broken heart.
Keera screamed and her face shot up, not contorted in pain but in horror.
The last thing I saw was utter terror written into every line of her face, but relief flooded through me as she immediately shot to her feet and began to run.
She’s safe.
I could finally hear my own thoughts again as the world went utterly, terribly silent and a blinding white overtook my vision.
The place where I lay was strange. I didn’t remember falling to the ground, but I lay on my back in the sand. The shadows of the encampment lingered around me, but it was all in pale grays and whites making it seem strangely distant. I was where I had been before, but somehow also slightly removed.
I sat up and looked around, almost jumping as I saw Kelvar seated on the ground next to me.
“I’ve been waiting,” he said without prompting.
“No, you haven’t,” I accused. Indeed, he had insisted on interrupting too many nights, even when I tried to hold him at bay.
“We haven’t been able to talk like this before,” he pointed out. “Your bond was too powerful. I suppose it runs in the family.”
I frowned at him, but he was right. His voice was clearer than it had ever been. No more overlapping shouts and garbled syllables. I could understand him as clearly as anybody that hadn’t been dead for decades. His words reminded me of what I had done, and I swallowed thickly.
Without Keera’s presence, I was truly and utterly mad. But I had no choice—I’d rather rip out a piece of my own soul and let myself bleed to death than let her come to harm. And so, I had saved her but sentenced myself to true insanity. Reality was gone, and so was I.
“You aren’t mad,” Kelvar said, as if he had heard my thoughts.
I jerked my chin up to stare at him.
“I thought I was mad for a long time too, when I heard the voice of the desert and no one else did. We’ve been trying to speak with you—to tell you—but spilling blood and hurting yourself drove us further away. And the power of your bond with Keera… not even I could overcome that.”
His words were slow to take hold, the sounds meeting my ears long seconds before their meaning became clear.
Although I wasn’t sure why I bothered to try to make sense of them, if they were all the conjuring of my own mind.
The mention of my amputated bond made my head ache, like it had been struck by a hammer.
I stared down at my hands in my own lap, as if they might hold the answer.
Kelvar reached out and laid his hand over my own, and I jolted. His touch was as solid as any I had ever felt. The roughness of a scar cut diagonally across his palm, just like mine from marrying Keera.
“I’m here, and now we can finally talk.”
I stared. “What have you been trying to tell me all these years?”
“I broke the Heart, and I need you to help me fix it,” he said solemnly.
“I figured that much out on my own,” I sniped.
Kelvar’s mouth twisted wryly. “But you did not figure out that the key to healing it is not here at the ocean. The key lies with Alyx. I tried to break the world to bring her back from death, and I almost succeeded. The world shattered, but I could not bring life. Only prevent death.”
“Prevent death? What do you mean?” I asked, but I feared I already suspected.
The perfectly preserved body of Alyx—not really a corpse at all—was seared in my memory.
The tragic way her perfectly preserved fingers had laid mere inches from Kelvar’s on the bed.
It was as if she wasn’t really dead, even if she no longer drew breath.
“The effort killed me as I realized my mistake, and I had no time to undo what had been done. I tipped the balance of the desert. But you can set it right,” Kelvar urged, the heaviness in his expression at odds with the mischievous smile in the statue of him that had always haunted me.
His dark eyes were as sharp as his broken blade.
“Now, there must be a reckoning. What was stolen must be paid back. Only then will the Heart be healed.”
My head spun with the speed of my racing thoughts—Alyx had been stolen from death, and she must be returned to it.
But the darkness in Kelvar’s eyes set my teeth on edge.
There was more. Another price to be paid to restore the delicate balance between life and death.
The desert giving and the desert taking.
What would it take? It had already taken my sanity, but I supposed she could have my life too.
Anything to save the desert—to save Keera.
I opened my mouth to ask him what the price might be, but the ground shifted under me. I looked down to find myself sinking into the sand. The sensation of it beneath me had been soft, as if in a dream, but now the wet coarseness of it assaulted my senses as I began to be sucked down.
I looked back up, but Kelvar was gone. Only his voice echoed in my head as the ground beneath me turned to quicksand.
“Pay the price, or the desert will continue to take it from you.”