41. Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Erix
The dark quiet of the stone halls made the screaming of the desert’s magic even louder.
With all of Calix’s men fighting in the courtyard, the palace was all but deserted.
The sound of screams and clashing steal was muffled as the heavy wooden doors slammed shut behind us.
Where the din of battle and bloodshed had drowned out some of the pounding madness of power in my head, now it was amplified.
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
“He was on the terrace,” Keera whispered, as if she too were disconcerted by the sudden quiet.
I nodded, but I knew I didn’t need to. She could feel my agreement in our tether as strongly as I could feel the desperate hope driving her forward.
Back together again, with the fibers of magic around us congealing into one massive, tangled knot, and the channels of our power blown open with the fever of battle, I could scarcely tell where her thoughts ended and mine began.
It was hard to believe the bond between us had been all but severed so recently.
We darted through the hallways, headed toward the winding central stairs that would take us up to where she had seen Calix. While the halls were devoid of people, they were not empty of the ghosts in my mind.
I tried not to picture my mother and father walking these halls, concentrating instead on finding Calix and the Heart, but it was difficult. My father’s laughter seemed to echo off the walls and the taste of lyra leaf tea lingered on my tongue.
It was as if time and memory were collapsing in on themselves alongside the desert.
The ghosts were so loud that I almost didn’t hear the scuffle at the far end of the hallway, in the opposite direction of the stairs leading up through the tower.
Keera sucked a breath in through her teeth, and her hand landed on my arm as she halted.
Her fingers were warm and strong, and I zeroed in on the touch.
It was the only thing that felt solid and real in the darkness.
The shuffle came again, and when I squinted I could just make out a figure creeping past.
“Calix,” Keera hissed. He must have slipped down the stairs before we entered, hoping to evade us.
His dark silhouette shot across the hall, giving up the game of secrecy now that he had been discovered. Keera dived past me, pounding down the hall after him, and I followed hot on her heels.
The sound of our boots against the stone echoed through the hall along with our ragged breathing.
We skidded around several corners, and I banged my shoulder as I took one too sharply.
The thud of pain running through my body did nothing to dampen the growing dread I felt as I realized where Calix was leading us on this chase.
Breathy laughter bounced off the walls as we chased him, taunting us as we crashed down a flight of stairs in hot pursuit, into the base of the mountain. The walls switched from smooth to roughhewn, and bile began to burn the back of my throat. But I could not relent.
I had conquered the fear of my madness; I would conquer this as well.
I had to, for the desert. For her Heart.
As Calix rounded the last corner and crashed through a hallway that haunted my dreams, Keera and I skidded to a halt just outside it in unison.
Our anxiety bounced back and forth in kaleidoscopic reflections as we stared into the tiny stone cell.
All I could think of was the oppressive silence and the feeling of suffocation—it should have been a reprieve from the maddening voices in my head, but instead, it made me feel like clawing my own skin off, and I would leave having screamed myself hoarse.
I could feel the rawness of my throat and the blood crusted under my fingernails from clawing at the walls even now.
The stone room wasn’t empty, though, like it was in my nightmares.
Calix stood in the center, wearing a self-satisfied smile and holding the Heart in his hand, palm up, like a gift. I would have expected his expression to seem oily and conniving, but even after all the horror he’d wrought, he managed to exude an air of open charm. It made my blood boil.
Keera shivered beside me.
“That does not belong to you,” she growled.
Calix cocked his head. “Is that why it doesn’t respond to me?”
“The desert’s Heart is her own,” I said. I found myself leaning forward, pulled toward the Heart. It was right there, but my feet were rooted to the ground. My body would not let me enter the space where so many of my nightmares lived.
“And yet she is the sister to my own goddess, who takes her power from my people—my family—more with every passing generation.” Calix looked down at the fractured gem in his hands with equal parts wonder and frustration.
“The magic of the ocean is faded to what can be found in relics and heirlooms but this… the Heart holds the power of the entire desert. Surely it can restore the power of the ocean.”
“It—” My voice broke off in frustration, as I wanted to tell him that it was not his to wield. One who had chained the horses of the desert and enslaved her people would never understand the freedom and the sacrifice she required.
“It cannot restore any magic while it is broken,” Keera jumped in.
“And you know how to fix it?”
Keera nodded. I swallowed. The honesty of a high lord who led with a sword and action suited her better, but apparently the strategic bargaining she had learned as a queen had not truly left her.
Calix pursed his lips as if deep in thought, but I knew he had already played this moment through in his mind. It was exactly why he had led us down here—to the one place we might hesitate and give him a chance to bargain.
“If you heal the Heart and let me leave here alive with it, I will remove my armies and never return again,” he offered magnanimously.
Keera nodded her assent and reached out her hand. “Give me the Heart and we will heal it.”
Calix smiled again. “I know you will kill me and take it as soon as I step out of this room. I have read in the old king’s scrolls how this room affects people like you. Come and get the Heart yourselves. Both of you.”
Calix wanted to force us to give up our power—to confront us on an even playing field.
Acid burned the back of my throat, and a dizzying combination of fire and ice washed over my skin in alternating waves. I had known Calix would force me into this room the moment he had led us down the stairs, yet my mind had still attempted to skate around the reality of it.
“We still have our swords,” Keera pointed out.
“Last time you were in this room, you were not in a fit state to use it. I had eyes all over this palace, and I saw what happened when you ordered your guard friend to shut you in.”
I remembered it too. The way I had completely lost the presence of Keera in my mind, even more intense than when I had tried to rip our bond out by the roots, but stubborn strings had remained.
Now though, Keera sheathed her saber, leaving just her short sword drawn in her left hand.
Instead, she interlaced the fingers of her right hand with mine and gave a gentle tug.
We would not lose each other completely if we went in together.
Our touch had been the key so many times, and it could be again.
I clamped down on her hand in a vice grip so strong, I was almost surprised I didn’t break her fingers, but Keera didn’t protest. Instead, she took a deep breath and stepped forward. I moved in unison. If she was going to step into this hell, I would not let her go alone. She would never go alone.
As we passed under the doorframe, shoulder to shoulder to fit side by side, I fell to my knees.
The bite of pain in my shins as they hit the floor hard enough to break skin was not enough to cut through the horrible heavy sensation that filled my head.
The world shifted and heaved around me, and the only thing that was solid was Keera’s hand in mine.
I clamped my eyes shut and tried to focus on her touch—the rasp of her calluses and the warmth of her skin—but the ground still shifted and heaved.
I snapped my eyes open as a rumble filled my ears, where being encased in stone usually only brought silence punctuated by the sound of my own screaming.
The shifting was not just in my mind. A crack ran through the ground before me, all the way up the wall and into the ceiling.
Rumbling and the clacking of shifting rocks filled the air, as if the mountain tried to collapse around us.
It was like a lodestone had suddenly disappeared, and now everything around us tumbled and shifted without its support.
The desert had reached her limit.
Keera had fallen next to me, and Calix was sprawled on the floor before us as well, thrown off his feet by the sudden earthquake. But more important than his vulnerability were the two halves of the Heart, fallen on the ground before him, dropped in his effort to find his balance.
I wanted to flay Calix alive. To peel him limb from limb and watch him bleed out for what he had done to Keera and the desert. But that wasn’t important right now. Not when the Heart lay between us and the desert had begun her final collapse.
I dragged myself forward on my knees using one hand, the other still tightly interlaced with Keera’s own fingers. She was of a like mind, scrabbling forward until we each grabbed a piece of the Heart.
My hand closed around the smooth edges, finding it warm as if it were living flesh.
I clutched it so hard the edges bit into my palm, reassuring me it was real, before I pushed myself backward, trying to struggle to my feet and out of the horrible stone room.
Calix was already blinking the dazed expression from his eyes, the haziness replaced with fury.
Keera and I didn’t wait for him to regain his senses, though.
The desert’s magic crashed back into my mind as we found our way back to the hallway.
I gasped, the force of it almost enough to drive me to my knees again, but there wasn’t time.
Where it had been a growing heat and anger before, now it was the white-hot fire of blinding rage.
The moment we had stepped into the room beneath the mountain, the desert had reached the final stages of her unraveling.
But Keera and I were in the palace, and we had the Heart.
It was not too late. We alternated tugging each other forward as we staggered and ran, fighting against the rumbling and shifting of the ground beneath our feet.
It was so loud that I didn’t hear the pounding of footsteps until it was nearly too late. I swung around, slashing out with my sword with a wild cry. It caught Calix across the chest just before he could tackle Keera from behind.
He yelped as he fell back, failing to catch himself with his hands and banging his head on the ground. Keera whirled around as he blinked dazedly, her blade held high.
As much as I wanted to kill him, I staid my sword as she stepped forward.
I felt the anger at him pouring into my mind from hers in torrents—not just for what he had done to Kelvadan, but how he had made her feel like it was all her fault.
The guilt and the fear that she should be alone that he had dredged up from the depths of her soul.
We had purged those feelings on a distant beach, but the pain they had wrought was very real.
As real as the pain of the desert shattering around us—the pain of a broken heart.
Keera stepped forward, her golden eyes flashing as Calix scrabbled backward on his hands, kicking out with his feet as he tried to put distance between them.
I held my breath as I waited for Keera to drive her saber through his chest. She had done the same to free me from Lord Alasdar’s torture, but now she hesitated.
The anger flowing from her direction hadn’t cooled, though. It took a long moment before I heard what she did: A cracking and grinding like dry bones coming from the hallway into the mountain. The desert was shredding and the creatures of her fury could no longer be contained.
“You wrought this,” Keera said, lowering her sword. “The desert cannot be contained or controlled, and neither can I. You will know both of our fury for trying to own her power.”
The clattering and scratching grew louder as the shadowed shape of twisted masses appeared at the end of the hallway.
The many limbs of the largest bone spiders I had ever seen waved and writhed as they scuttled down the hallway.
Calix’s eyes widened with fear, but Keera didn’t even give him the chance to beg.
She just turned and grabbed my hand, hauling me up the stairs as Calix’s dying screams of horror and pain chased us.