42. Chapter 42
Chapter forty-two
Keera
It might have been more merciful to kill Calix cleanly, but as we dashed up the stairs through the palace, I had no regrets. It seemed as if the world was ending around us—and perhaps it was. Dust rained down from the ceiling as everything trembled. Even the air seemed to dance with heat and magic.
We didn’t waste any time taking in the chaos, though, instead sprinting down the hallway toward the winding stairs up to the spire.
I started up them two at a time, desperate to reach the spire at the top as fast as humanly possible—faster even.
But just as I reached for the magic of the desert that might propel me forward like the wind, I hissed and drew my mental fingers back from the flowing magic around me.
It felt like touching a pan that had been over the fire—too hot to grab on to, let alone wield.
Erix gasped behind me, and I knew he felt it too.
But the tether between us was as strong as ever, almost the only thing keeping me on my feet as we climbed and climbed.
As we reached a landing, I chanced a glance out of the window.
My heart, which had been furiously trying to beat its way out of my ribcage, plummeted all the way back into the stone cell below us.
The sun shone blood red in the sky, the light intermittently blocked out by circling gravehawks.
Bone spiders and lava wyrms burst through the stone ground to roam the streets.
Dark splotches painted the ground beyond the city where the force of the earth’s trembling had caused it to cave and split.
We were all but too late.
The stairs spiraled around and around until I was dizzy, but I kept my focus on Erix’s breathing behind me. We were together, and we could do anything. Alyx lay just a few stories above us. If we could free her from her deathless sleep, this could all be over.
The leg I had thought healed throbbed and I thought I tasted blood in my mouth from the force of my panting by the time we crested the last rise in the stairs. The doors to Kelvar and Alyx’s chambers lay open. I prayed that Calix hadn’t moved or disturbed Alyx and Kelvar’s bodies.
Erix and I crashed into the room, and it was as if all the sound had been sucked out of the air.
The scream of gravehawks and the rumble of collapsing earth melted away, and even our own heaving breaths were muted.
There was something different about space and time in this room—even the way my senses interacted with the world around me.
I felt, more than I heard or saw, a presence in the room with us; it was the ever-present power of the desert, amplified to previously unimaginable heights. The goddess was here, and she watched us.
I strode up to the edge of the bed, reaching out for Alyx’s face, but I stopped short. I didn’t know what I intended to do. but disturbing her still felt wrong. She did not breathe, and no pulse fluttered in her delicate throat, but she was not dead.
Instead, I laid my half of the Heart on the pillow beside her. Erix quickly laid his half right beside it, touching, but not quite whole yet.
The answer that I had hoped would appear when I arrived at this point still eluded me. But the goddess did not appear interested in making us wait.
I give and I take.
Her voice was everywhere, both inside my head and out. I gasped and blinked past the watering in my eyes as its intensity drove me to my knees.
You took what was not yours, and now you must give. A life for a life will heal my Heart.
The voice was so loud that the meaning of her words didn’t fully penetrate my mind, but Erix’s reaction was instantaneous.
“No,” Erix’s voice was a choked gasp, but he didn’t sound surprised.
“Yes,” an unfamiliar voice said with sad resignation. Still on my knees, I whipped around so quickly I almost toppled over.
Standing next to his own skeleton, was Kelvar. I blinked at the odd sensation of feeling like I was seeing Erix twice. Then Erix’s face contorted in hurt and anger, while Kelvar’s just held grief, and they couldn’t have looked more different.
“One of our lives?” I asked. Erix’s anger poured through the air, not even needing the tether between us to be felt. I waited for my own rage at the horrible truth of the situation to rise to meet it, but instead something else came. An odd quiet.
Somehow, I knew the words that were going to come out of Kelvar’s mouth before he spoke. It was a strange thing to feel you had accepted something you didn’t even know yet.
“Her life.” Kelvar nodded at me.
With a broken roar, Erix jumped forward, striking down with his sword, but it sliced through Kelvar like water. While his image looked as solid as ever, there was nothing for Erix to strike down. No more enemies to fight.
“There’s no other way?” I asked.
Kelvar shook his head solemnly.
“You knew. You knew this whole time,” Erix accused.
“I had my suspicions. But I was not certain until the desert finally broke free and made her demand,” he admitted.
Erix looked toward the ceiling, shouting into the air. “Take me. I’ll die instead.”
No. The failure to accept death lies in your own blood. You must make the sacrifice.
The whole tower seemed to shake with anger. Even in the odd quiet that blanketed the room, I could hear the intensity of the chaos crecendoing outside. We were running out of time.
I had faced a sacrificial death at Erix’s hands once before; then, something had told me to be still.
To wait. It had seemed to tell me something more important was coming.
That feeling filled me again. For a fleeting hysterical moment, I wondered if none of this would have happened—if Lord Alasdar was right all along—and Erix sacrificing me to the desert that night would have healed it then and there.
It might have been easier, not loving him yet, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret any of it. Not a single moment of pain, or a single drop of blood spilled. It had all been worth it to have the time we had shared. But now it was at an end.
Something had driven me to survive for years in exile, and I realized now that it was because my death was to have a grander purpose.
“Erix,” I murmured, looking up at him from where I still knelt on the ground. He turned away from Kelvar, looking down at me in horror.
“It’s all right,” I assured him.
I had known before I set out for this battle that I may never return.
Dying here, looking into Erix’s eyes was a far better death than I may have faced on the battlefield.
One flick of Erix’s wrist and everybody would be safe.
Aderyn and her baby, Elion and Dhara, Badha and Izumi—and Erix.
He would live on without the madness of the desert consuming him, and that would be worth it.
I would die for the home I had always dreamed of.
“No,” he insisted.
But I grabbed the tip of his sword that dangled by his side after his futile attacks against Kelvar, and I brought it to my chest. I placed the tip right beneath my breastbone. Kelvar stood silently behind him, giving us this time, but I knew it couldn’t last forever.
“We knew there would be a test,” I said, and despite how sure I was, my voice shook and tears began to burn behind my eyes. “You yourself have said before that you felt like the desert was testing you to let go of me.”
“You said together. At the ocean, I promised I would never tear us apart again. I won’t.” He insisted, trying to pull his sword out of my grasp, but I held firm, even as my hand shook and blood welled between my fingers.
I could do this. I could be brave enough for both of us. “This is different. This is my choice. We’re not being torn apart; it’s letting go.”
“I cannot let you go. I’ll let the whole world collapse around us before I kill you,” he declared, but now, screams were penetrating the peaceful bubble of the tower, and his words wavered.
The horrors of the desert wreaked havoc outside, and every single citizen of the desert would perish if we didn’t do something.
The answer was clear, as painful as it was.
I shook my head and tears spilled out of my eyes, to roll down my cheeks from the motion. “You’re a better, stronger person than you’ve always liked to believe. It is why you had to hide your face to do evil—because it wasn’t you.”
Now Erix’s hand was trembling, but as I let go of his sword, he didn’t lower it.
His eyes were as bright as the stars and his jaw was tight.
I traced the lines of his face with my gaze, hoping I’d be allowed to keep the memory in death.
And if not, then my blood would remember, and when the desert drank it and was sated, she would remember it forever too.
“It was worth it. Thank you for giving me the chance to live again, after just surviving for too long. I go to my death knowing I am loved, and that is the greatest gift of all,” I told him.
“I can’t” he murmured, his voice barely more than a gravelly rasp forced out of a tight throat.
“I’ll help you.”
Erix knew what I was going to do. The storm raged under his skin and spilled into the air around him—the grief and anger pulling him apart. But he didn’t lower his sword.
“Live, so that your love for me can live on too,” I commanded him. And then I fell forward onto his saber—Kelvar’s saber.
I braced myself for pain, but it didn’t come. Instead, an odd sort of numbness overcame my body, creeping out from my chest to my fingertips. Erix’s face twisted in horror, but his voice came muted, as if from the end of a very long tunnel as he called my name.
The world twisted sideways, and I realized I was falling over, but Erix let go of his sword to catch me in his arms. I could still feel them around me, but it was as if the feeling were muffled by a cloud, soft and fluffy.
I looked dazedly up at his eyes as cold overtook my skin. So much of the desert’s anger was hot; it was odd that death would be the opposite. Bright tears filled Erix’s eyes as he cradled me, spilling over his cheeks like drops of silver.