36. Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
Keera
The small tent was crowded, even though only eight of us were present. I stood close enough to the pitched canvas wall that I had to duck my head to avoid bumping it.
Dhara sat on a sleeping mat in the center, propped up by cushions but still looking supremely uncomfortable.
Her dark brows were knit together with pain, and a sheen of sweat coated her skin.
Thick swatches of bandages were wrapped around her middle, and she was pale with cracked lips.
But the fire in her eyes was even brighter than I remembered it—as if it had intensified to compensate for the weakened state of her body.
Elion kneeled in the sand next to her, while a collection of the bravest people in the desert gathered around: Badha and Izumi, Aderyn and Neven, Erix and I.
Elion offered a dagger hilt-first to Dhara, and she took it in a trembling hand.
My eyes burned at seeing her so weakened yet utterly determined.
She drew the blade decisively across the palm of her hand, letting the blood well up before dripping onto the blankets below.
She didn’t seem to care—it wasn’t the first blood to adorn them.
Elion took the blade back and did the same, before sticking the knife into the ground and reaching out.
As they clasped hands and their blood mixed, the flows and eddies of magic in the air shivered.
It was as if it wanted to celebrate the union and the offering of two bloods made one but couldn’t quite manage it in its broken-hearted state.
I echoed the sentiment as I felt myself smile although my throat was still tight. The scar on my own palm tingled.
Dhara spoke her promises first, her voice hoarse.
“I vow to fight by your side with all my fire and all my strength until all my blood is spilled and my last breath leaves my body.” Her solemn expression softened with a hint of mischief.
“And I want everybody assembled here to know that I actually didn’t lose count.
I killed forty-seven enemies yesterday.”
I exhaled heavily through my nose in place of a laugh. Two more than Elion. She had won the bet after all.
Elion smiled, and despite the direness of the situation, the expression was bright as the sun, as if he couldn’t imagine his luck at marrying Dhara even in such circumstances.
“And I promise you that I would happily give you command of all that I have and all that I am, as long as I get to ride by your side. I love you in my very bones, and I will ride to my death a happy man knowing that you are my wife.”
The heaviness returned to the room with the force of a hammer hitting an anvil. We would ride to whatever doom awaited us tomorrow. Even if we were victorious, many would never return.
And if we failed…
It wouldn’t be long until the desert was truly uninhabitable, and all people of all clans would be lost.
That was tomorrow’s battle though. In the gathering twilight, Elion leaned forward and pressed his lips gently to Dhara’s. He couldn’t jostle her too much with her wounds, but I saw tears glimmering on her long, dark lashes.
“If I do not return, I hope you will do what you can to protect the women and children of my clan from whatever fate awaits the desert,” Elion murmured to her after they separated.
“All those that cannot fight and will stay behind will look to you in our absence,” I pointed out.
Dhara nodded. “All my life I’ve fought, and now the greatest challenge I have ever faced will be staying behind while others do the fighting for me.”
“It’s because you’re such a competent rider that the desert had to lay you a different challenge,” Badha said.
Dhara let out a humorless laugh that quickly turned into a gasp of pain as she jostled her wound.
Elion reached out to support her shoulders, laying her back down gently.
She let out a noise of pain and Elion reached out to soothe her.
The rest of us turned away and filed out, knowing how much it pained Dhara to have others see her this way.
She had let Elion past her prickly exterior, and I was glad that they would at least find comfort in each other.
They needed rest now, and so did we.
We all paused outside the healers’ tent as if waiting to say something, but words didn’t come.
Everything felt too much and simultaneously not enough on the eve of such a battle.
After a moment, we all broke off and headed in the direction of our separate tents.
Erix slid his hand into mine as we walked, and I squeezed it tightly.
While we both had gotten more comfortable speaking since our first journey together, tonight, we let the quiet that had so often been a comfort between us stretch.
As we stepped into our tent, it filled the space with all the promises we could not speak.
The promises that it would all be all right, and that the ones we loved would survive the coming days unharmed.
In the quiet of our shelter, Erix looked at me with silver eyes like molten stars, and I let my actions speak for me.
I stepped into his space, slowly and intentionally.
As I tilted my face up to his, he obligingly lowered his lips to meet mine.
My hands drifted up to lay flat on his chest as his fingers curled around my hips, pressing us flush together.
The heat between us still burned, but tonight, it wasn’t the white-hot flash of lightning but the low and steady fire that would keep you warm all night long. It dripped through my veins like honey as Erix devoured my mouth with the singular focus of a drowning man seeking air.
My head spun by the time I managed to gain enough focus to pull away from his kiss. His lips sought out my throat, but I held him back with a hand on his firm chest. I didn’t want to be distracted by the sensations he pulled from me as I undressed him.
He stood obediently still as I unwound his sash and pushed his leather tabards from his shoulders, only lifting his arms to allow me to remove his tunic.
When his skin was exposed to me, I took a long moment to drink him in—the lethal grace of his muscles and the scars of far too many battles for someone of his age.
The fresher marks that he had left over his arms and legs in his madness were mostly healed; he had not needed them since Kelvar finally relayed his message.
I trailed my fingers over Erix’s shoulders and down the divots of his abdomen, feeling the shift of muscle underneath as I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the handprint branded into his chest, right over his heart.
I wanted to kiss every scar on his body and count the lines burned into his back, but I knew that would only make me lament how little time we had had together compared to the amount of days he spent under Lord Alasdar’s influence.
With the desert’s favor, we might have more time to make up for those years, but nothing was certain right now except my love for Erix.
So, I let him undress me next, and he too ran his fingers over the divots and warped flesh left where my skin had once been scorched away.
As Erix lowered me to our sleeping mats, he pressed a kiss to the hollow of my throat, and my pulse fluttered beneath his lips.
As if reminding me that I was still alive, the way it had the first time he had ever touched me, and I had been reminded what it felt like to live and not just survive.
After exploring every inch of my body with gentle fingers, as if discovering it all anew, Erix finally slid his hard length inside me. I gasped and my eyes fluttered shut, but Erix stilled.
“Look at me.” He spoke for the first time since we had entered the tent.
Immediately, I opened my eyes to do as he asked. Without breaking eye contact, he began to move. My mouth fell open at the feeling, but I did as he asked.
“I want to remember every detail of this—the look in your eyes when you are overcome with pleasure,” he murmured, voice raw but quiet, as if he were telling me some great secret.
“If I fall and meet this goddess of ours tomorrow, I can carry the memory of you and tell her honestly that you are the one I worship.”
I wanted to tell him that he would not fall. I would not let him. I would throw myself between him and any danger. But a broken moan was all that came out. Instead, I poured all of my essence and love and pleasure down the tether between us.
Erix shuddered and fell down to one elbow in response. The bond connecting us grew brighter and stronger than ever, or perhaps it only seemed that way in contrast to the dullness of the other magic around us.
Either way, it was blinding in its intensity as I neared my peak.
Erix’s thumb found the point where we were joined just as the fingers of his other hand curled gently around my throat and I shattered.
My eyes filled with unshed tears, but I kept them open as I gasped through my release, watching Erix do the same.
We panted for long moments until Erix rolled to the side, pulling me with him so that I was curled into his side.
Our legs stayed tangled together, and my hand landed on his chest. I let myself be comforted by the hammering of his heart beneath my palm.
I counted the beats as if each one were something sacred. Perhaps it was.
After all, a broken heart was the cause of so much suffering.
“No matter what befalls us in tomorrow’s battle, I want you to know that I’m glad you found me at that oasis,” I whispered into the darkness. “All the years of loneliness were worth it for the chance to spend this time with you.”
Erix’s arms tightened around me. “This will not be all the time we have. Cutting the bond between us was one of the worst errors of my life and I promised I would never leave you again. Not even in death will I let us be separated.”
I nodded into his side, trying to let myself be comforted by his words. I fell asleep still counting his heart beats, imagining it was the Heart of the Desert, healed and whole once more.