44. Chapter 44
Chapter forty-four
Keera
My eyes opened to the same silver gaze they had closed on, but this time, filled with joy and wonder instead of unimaginable sorrow.
Physical sensations returned to me in a rush, far more urgent and present than they had been in the strange dream state with the goddess of the desert: The warmth of sticky blood coating my torso.
The salty itch of tear tracks on my cheeks.
An aching in my ribs as if I had been kicked by an angry horse.
I reveled in each and every one of them, for they meant that I was alive.
I sat bolt upright, making my head spin, but I couldn’t regret it. My muscles responded to my commands, and that meant I could throw my arms around Erix’s shoulders and bury my face in his neck.
My heart hammered oddly in my chest, but I didn’t care, just breathing in deeply the smell of salt and the ocean that lingered under the coppery tang of blood.
A chuckle to the side caught my attention.
I twisted so my cheek was pressed to Erix’s chest instead of my forehead, half expecting to see the goddess again.
Instead, the sight that greeted me took my breath away.
Kelvar and Alyx both kneeled on the floor across from each other where I had just laid.
They were smiling at us, but then their gazes slowly drifted to each other.
Tension filled the room as they stared for long moments.
I did not want to hold my breath after so recently regaining the ability to breathe, but I found myself doing so anyway.
Then Kelvar sprang to his feet and closed the distance between them in one long stride.
Alyx didn’t have the chance to stand up, but it didn’t matter, because he simply picked her up off her feet and covered her lips with his own.
Her gasp was one of surprise and delight as he swung her around in a circle.
The gold nightgown she wore rippled and reflected the sunlight streaming into the room, so it danced in sparkling pinpricks, contrasting beautifully with the silver of her hair.
Alyx was all soft joy and quiet strength, while Kelvar was hard lines and brutal force. The beauty and the danger of the desert all at once.
When Kelvar finally put Alyx down on her feet, she looked back at Erix and I, still cradled in each other’s arms on the floor, and smiled.
“Thank you, for reuniting us.”
Kelvar nodded his agreement, his mischievous smile fading into an expression of the utmost sincerity. “You are stronger than I ever could have dreamed of. I’m proud to leave the desert in the hands of such successors.”
Erix’s heart thundered beneath my ear, and his breath stuttered. He made a choked sound as if he didn’t know what to say, but Alyx and Kelvar didn’t seem to require an answer. Instead, Alyx slid her hand into Kelvar’s.
“I think you promised me eternity,” she remarked.
Kelvar’s expression melted into a smile again—the same sly look that decorated his statue in the courtyard. “And I make good on my promises, even when they are delayed.”
They turned to the doors, and the light streaming in from outside.
It seemed to grow as they took a step toward it, growing so bright that I was forced to shut my eyes against its intensity.
When I opened them again, they were gone, leaving just Erix and me sitting on the floor in a room that had once been a tomb but was no longer.
Together, Alyx and Kelvar could be at peace.
Finally, I pulled back to look at his face in wonder.
My fingers drifted up to brush his cheekbone.
I had memorized these angles just minutes ago, thinking it was my last chance.
Now, I stroked them with the intent of doing so every day, filled with the hope for the first time that I would get to watch them change and soften through the years.
Although, with his strength in the desert’s magic, it was likely to be decades before he showed any signs of age at all.
“You healed me.”
“Alyx helped,” he admitted, pushing my hair back from my face, several curls having escaped their braid in the chaos.
“But the power was yours.” I spoke with certainty. “I feel it.” I laid my hand over my chest. Now, the tether between us was different, but stronger and brighter than ever. It ran directly from beneath by breastbone to his own chest. Our hearts beat as one. They were one.
“I gave you my heart in every sense possible,” he admitted, putting our foreheads together. “I can only hope we do not pay for it the same way Kelvar and Alyx did.”
I shook my head. “We won’t,” I promised, before telling him what the desert had told me while I lingered between life and death. It was not my death, but our willingness to sacrifice that had healed her.
“So, it worked?” Erix asked. “The desert is whole again, even though the gem remains broken?”
The world seemed quiet and bright around us, and while screams of horror and the cries of desert beasts no longer came from outside, I began to hear voices and activity again.
“Let’s go see.”
The walk down through the palace and into the courtyard felt like something out of a dream, as if I were seeing everything with fresh eyes.
Perhaps I was, having been born anew after being brought back from death.
And with this rebirth, I was not the child of parents who had abandoned me.
I was a daughter of the desert, and she loved me as fiercely as I loved her.
Erix kept his hand in mine, and we found ourselves leaning on each other for support as we stumbled down the stairs, side by side. The exhaustion of a long battle had caught up with us. We had fought from dawn until late afternoon, and then Erix had dragged me back from death by the heel.
I couldn’t bring myself to regret the bone-deep exhaustion that made my limbs feel like they had been filled with wet sand. The relative quiet told me it had been worth it. No gravehawks wheeled outside the windows and I could not hear the clattering of bone spiders climbing up the stairs.
I shuddered. With any luck, I would never hear the approach of another bone spider in my life.
I was doubly sure that it had all been worth it until we got to the courtyard and saw the evidence of our victory. Calix was dead, the Heart healed, but a great battle had been waging on when we dashed into the palace.
Finally, we shouldered through the double doors into the palace courtyard, and I squinted in the burnished-golden light of late afternoon approaching evening.
The angle of the sun cast elongated shadows across the courtyard, exaggerating the statue of Kelvar until it looked like he overshadowed the whole space.
But now, it was just an illusion. His sins had been cleansed, and his spirit no longer lingered, haunting Erix in the recesses of his mind.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I took in the sight of relative peace. The clash of swords and the cries of battle no longer filled the air. People still milled and hurried about, but I spotted riders of Kelvadan standing over knots of soldiers from Viltov, disarmed with their hands bound.
The reversal of the way this courtyard had looked when I was dragged from it, delirious with poison, made my new heart sing.
A cry still split the air. Not the angry shout of one engaged in battle, but a pure, almost joyous sound.
My eyes widened, and suddenly I was stumbling forward, my body trying to run before my exhausted legs could respond. Erix ran beside me as we followed the sound to an outbuilding to the side—a rider’s barracks right beside where we had left Aderyn, guarded by Badha and Izumi.
We crashed through the door, and immediately I was greeted by a sight that assured me that every bit of my sacrifice had been worth it—the scar on my chest and the tear tracks still staining Erix’s high cheekbones.
Aderyn was propped up on a nest of pilfered pillows, and in her arms, wrapped in mismatched blankets was a squirming bundle. The source of the screaming. Badha and Izumi bustled about her, as if they were consummate healers and not fearsome warlords.
I stood there, my mouth hanging open, finding absolutely no words.
Aderyn looked up, gleaming with sweat and eyes looking heavy with exhaustion.
Still, the beginnings of a smile were spreading across her face—a true smile, the kind she usually only reserved for Neven—only for her face to twist in horror.
“Keera.” Her voice was a rasp of terror, and for a moment, I was confused why she would be anything but overjoyed by this miraculous moment.
Then, as Badha and Izumi rushed toward me, I looked down at my clothes.
The entire front was coated with a waterfall of blood that had poured from the wound in my chest.
Hurriedly I waved them off. “I’m fine.”
“You look like you should be dead,” Izumi commented.
“It didn’t take,” I admitted.
The trio looked confused, but I shook my head. It was a story for another time. One I wasn’t sure I would even know how to tell.
The bundle in Aderyn’s arms renewed its screaming, as if upset the focus had moved away from him, even for a moment, and she looked back down to coo at it gently. It was such an odd noise coming from Aderyn, who usually only barked orders, that a short laugh of pure joy escaped me.
“You did it,” I said in awe, carefully approaching her side. I looked down to find a perfect, scrunched face and waving fists.
Erix stood behind me and peered over my shoulder, and his breath warmed my neck as it stuttered. It might have been a horrible thing, a birth in the middle of so much death and destruction.
But the desert had a sly way of restoring balance, and I saw her hand in this. A new life and a fresh beginning for the people of the desert.