33. Chapter 33
Chapter thirty-three
Erix
Keera’s relieved face was gone. My vision was pure white. My entire world was an extended scream. It was Kelvar’s voice, but the desert’s as well.
The Heart. My Heart is gone. You let them take it.
It was barely words, but I understood their terrible meaning, nonetheless. With the tiny fraction of my consciousness that remained in my body, I reached for my sash, where I carried the Heart.
But it was gone. The comfortable squeeze of the fabric around my ribs I was used to had loosened when Alza threw off our assailant. I had thought of nothing in the moment but ridding myself of an obstacle keeping me from Keera.
But now the Heart had fallen somewhere on this field of battle.
No. You let them take it.
Fingers clawed at my wrist, as if trying to pull it away from the empty fabric where the Heart had been tucked. I gasped, feeling the air filling my lungs in a desperate rush as my mind snapped back into my skull with a violent crack.
“Are you hurt? Erix!”
Keera’s voice was breathy and panicked, but still nothing compared to the desperate scream of the desert. I dropped my hand, and a sigh of relief and confusion escaped her as she found no wound.
“Calix is here,” she said hurriedly. “We can end this here and now if we kill him.”
Instead of relief though, her words only deepened my dread.
“The Heart is gone.”
Her eyes widened, and she spun around. Following her gaze, I found that she was right—Calix waited in a circle of guards awaiting his fleeing troops. A rider broke from the rest, racing toward them.
“That man. He was the one who attacked you from behind,” Keera gasped.
My stomach dropped sickeningly, and the world tilted around me. We may have won the battle, but we had lost the Heart of the Desert.
Keera let out a sharp cry, and Daiti leapt into motion. The stallion crashed through the remnants of the battle, galloping straight toward where Calix stood with his guard. As the man joined them, Calix took something from him and raised his hand in the air.
Crimson glittered in the sun: A taunt. Then he turned his horse with a sharp tug on his reins and began to ride away
With my own wild roar, Alza leapt into motion, tailing Daiti.
Keera was right. If we could reach him before the Heart disappeared behind the walls of Kelvadan, we could end Calix’s threat today. He may sit atop a horse of the desert, but he did not ride like we did.
I leaned over Alza’s neck, echoing Keera’s posture as her silky mane tickled my face. We moved as one as the air pulled at my hair with warm fingers. Wind whistled in my ears, but the screaming was not loud enough to block out the clamoring panic in my mind—both my own and the desert’s this time.
The peace I normally felt on horseback was nowhere to be found. Just blind determination—pulsing need to get the Heart back from Calix. The alternative was unthinkable.
Keera and Daiti had a considerable head start, and no other horse could match the stallion for explosive speed.
But Alza was long and lithe. Her head bobbed as she lengthened her stride.
It barely seemed like her hooves touched the ground at all as we flew in hot pursuit.
The distance between me and my quarry was still long, but I knew Alza would not flag.
Her urgency echoed my own, and her own heartbeat thundered in my chest. We were one in a way Calix never would be with his stolen mount.
We could not let him have the Heart, for he would never understand this feeling—the brutal beauty of the desert and her creatures.
Just as he commanded his horse through ruthless force, he would try to abuse the desert’s power through her Heart, but our goddess would not stand for it.
Her retribution would be swift and decisive, and in her rage, all might be lost. I narrowed my eyes against the burning wind in my eyes and grit my teeth.
Alza and I pulled astride Keera and then inched ahead. Once, we had raced each other like this in brutal competition, but now it didn’t matter who was in front. Just that one of us reached Calix and put an end to his miserable existence.
My vision narrowed to the back of his retreating head, close enough now that I could make out his nauseatingly perfect windswept hair.
I would crush his skull beneath my boot and darken that hair with blood—for poisoning Keera.
For nearly driving us apart. For stealing the desert’s Heart. For taking my heart.
Red closed in around the edge of my vision as my awareness of everything but pounding hot rage faded.
Keera shouted again from just behind me, this time in fear instead of rage. I looked up just in time to see an arrow arcing through the air, fired by one of Calix’s retreating guard.
I didn’t have time to steer Alza out of the way, and I braced for the impact as it aimed squarely for my chest.
Then I was falling. I tumbled through the air disorientingly, although I didn’t even feel the pain in my chest. Breath exploded from me as I hit the ground and rolled.
As dull aching spread across my ribs from the fall and stars danced in my vision, I screwed my eyes shut, waiting for the piercing sensation of an arrow in my flesh.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, a scream that sounded like it was from my nightmares tore into my brain. The pain was in my mind, but it wasn’t mine.
I sat upright so quickly my head swam, but it didn’t matter. Alza reared in front of me. Her bucking had thrown me off, not the force of an arrow. Instead, the shaft was embedded deep in her own chest, right where her front leg met her muscular torso.
She tried to lower herself down to all fours, but the leg on her injured side gave out and she crumpled to the ground.
Now the screaming filling the air was mine.
I scrabbled toward her on all fours. I laid my hands on her neck feeling the rasp of breath in and out of her body as she panted.
Foam bubbled from her lips as her own panic and pain trickled into my mind.
My heart almost shattered though as a foreign sort of relief—deep and instinctual—came from her mind. She knew she had saved me, and that brought her comfort, even as she struggled on the ground.
My vision blurred as tears welled up in my eyes, and the back of my throat burned so intensely, I could barely draw in breath.
I needed to soothe her—to do something—but I just trembled.
All the comforting words I had whispered to her in long years together, trekking across the desert with just each other for company, slipped from my memory.
I was lost. I could barely remember what we had been chasing. Just the pain building in my chest, making it impossible to breathe.
Then arms wrapped around my shoulders, bringing with them just enough calm for me to suck in a rattling breath that escaped me again in a sob.
“I’m here,” Keera murmured. “I’ll stay right here.”
And so, she sat there, with her arms wrapped around me as I gently tangled my fingers in Alza’s mane and tried to impart to my horse what little comfort I could.
The shadows were long by the time the horse master arrived.
Despite the clans’ victory, they were in disarray as the injured were tended to and the two forces joined into one.
Keera and I had ridden off with no explanation, and it was a while before anybody found us, kneeling in the sand just out of view of the oasis.
Keera was good to her word, not moving from my side, but Daiti had ridden off, eventually returning dragging a harried looking Aderyn with his teeth in her sleeve. She blanched immediately when she saw what had befallen us, before dashing back to the camp for help.
Clan Tibel’s horse master returned with her a few minutes later, immediately falling to his knees at Alza’s side.
While I had spent the indeterminate stretch of time at Alza’s side focusing on matching my breaths with hers—slowly in and out as I tried to keep her calm against the pain—now it caught at the look in his eyes.
He looked up at me with pinched brows, and I bared my teeth.
“I won’t kill her. And if you try, your family won’t even have a body to burn.”
Keera’s arms tightened around my shoulder, and a shudder ran down the bond between us, thick with both pain and memory.
I’ll help you.
Those were the words uttered by Clan Padra’s horse master before he killed Keera’s beloved horse. I wanted to soothe her against the memory, but all I could manage right now was a dull tug on our tether.
“I will do my best,” he promised. “But we have to move her. There is little that can be done here.”
Alza’s muscles twitched under my hand, and I knew she understood. I chewed my lips.
“All right,” I struggled to my feet, legs nearly devoid of feeling after kneeling in one position so long.
Automatically Alza started to thrash, trying to rise with only the use of three legs.
Her snorts and squeals of pain were like daggers in my heart.
Keera rushed forward, and together the three of us were able to get her to her feet.
She stood, panting, on three legs for a long moment.
Then, with one hand on her shoulder, I took a careful step forward, and she followed.
It was a long, arduous hobble back to the oasis where the clans rebuilt their encampment. Alza hopped and limped, continuing to make noises of distress, even as I could tell she tried to suppress them.
She had learned too many lessons from me over the years. Daiti trailed us too, keeping the slow pace and whickering gently, despite his notorious lack of patience. It was as if he were trying to comfort his friend, even as Keera walked stalwartly at my side.
I didn’t fully release my breath until we reached a newly erected enclosure, and Alza limped through the opening in the fence and promptly lowered herself to the ground. A pained sigh escaped her, and sweat coated her sides.
“We can remove the arrow now. I just need to fetch my tools,” the horse master declared.
I just nodded.
There was a bustle of activity around me, but I could barely take it in. A few figures approached as if to ask questions, but Keera quickly put herself between me and them.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” she said, still managing to sound like the high lord she had been on the battlefield today, even when I felt the hurt and despair in her own chest echoing mine.
Then her hand landed on my shoulder. “Stay with her. I’ll handle the rest for now. Daiti will watch over you.”
I laid my hand over hers and squeezed. I ached to be by her side—to lead alongside her as I promised we would.
“Thank you,” I rasped.
A lick of golden warmth drifted down our bond, just cracking the cold that had surrounded my heart. Then she was gone, and I settled in to soothe Alza through her next ordeal.