Dawn of Cobalt Shadows (Burning Empire Book 2) by Emma Hamm (free novels to read TXT) 📗

homeland again. Couldn’t he feel it as well? The hope that lit a fire deep inside her.

He let out a grumble. “It’s very green.”

Leave it to Nadir to say the only thing which was obvious when he was given a gift of emerald lands. She leaned back and huffed out a breath.

“It’s more than that,” Sigrid replied. “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Bymere is that.”

“Bymere lacks color.”

His laugh made her ears hurt, which didn’t seem possible considering it was in her own mind. “Sigrid. Bymere is filled with more color than this! Did you not see the rainbows of silk hanging from every street corner? The vibrancy of my palace?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking about man-made things. Bymere is filled with sand and that’s the same color no matter where you look.”

“And Wildewyn is filled with green as far as the eyes can see. I don’t see the difference.”

She wanted to argue with him, but in a way, he was right. She just loved this place so much her eyes couldn’t see what he could see. This was her home. More than that, it was a piece of her soul which burned deep inside her.

Nadir tilted his wings, gliding closer to the ground than before.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Can’t you smell that?”

She couldn’t really smell anything when the wind was blasting her face. There were too many scents on the wind for her to pick through them and name exactly what they were.

Sigrid screwed up her face and tried again. Moss, decaying leaves, the scent of a few animals below them who were running away. Nothing that made her worry, and nothing that would have made him change course.

“We’re going to Greenmire Castle,” she reminded him. “You’re not going toward the castle right now.”

“They’re not fighting at the castle.”

“That’s where Raheem said the armies were heading. We don’t have any reason to think they would have changed course.”

“They would if they had to,” he growled.

Then, she smelled it. The scent of fire on the wind and ashes in the air. A plume of smoke rose in the distance, joined by another and another until she couldn’t tell where they originated. A wall of shadows and smoke in the distance.

Destroying her homeland.

Sigrid leaned forward on his neck and urged him forward. “Nadir.”

“I see it.”

“What have they done?” She didn’t care who had started the fire. Wildewyn was careful to make sure they didn’t start. Dead leaves filled the forest, covering the ground and far more flammable than most would have given them credit for. A single spark could set the entire forest on fire, and they’d never be able to stop it.

That’s what they were looking at. A fire which refused to die down and would destroy so much more than just trees and animals. It would destroy homes, people’s livelihoods… the future of Wildewyn.

Nadir beat his wings against the air and shot toward the smoke. They reached it in record time, only to see the destruction had already been done.

An entire village had been reduced to nothing more than smoldering ash and blackened wood homes. A few people stumbled below them. They searched the rubble for their families or anything they might take with them toward Greenmire Castle who would hopefully give them sanctuary.

Sigrid wasn’t so sure that was possible. Tears filled her eyes as she realized what this would mean for her kingdom. They were all going to fall apart at the seams, and there was nothing she could do to save them.

She had failed them.

“Sigrid,” Nadir said in her mind, his voice gentle.

“Not yet. Don’t say anything yet.”

They flew over the destruction of Wildewyn in silence. Smoke choked the air, billowing from the ashes of ruin that arrowed toward Greenmire Castle. There were so many dead bodies littering the ground. So many children on their knees next to parents who wouldn’t wake up. So many dead animals lying on the ground where they had tried to run from the smoke and the flames.

Tears slid down her cheeks freely. She hadn’t thought…

“People are capable of many things, Sigrid,” Nadir interrupted. “Even good men do terrible things when they think it will lead toward their own happiness.”

“I brought them,” she whispered back to him. “I was the one who told them they would be safe here, and I was the one who destroyed my home.”

“You can’t know it was the Beastkin.”

But she could. No one from Wildewyn would be foolish enough to set a fire like this. They didn’t even carry torches on hunting parties for that reason. The Bymerians wouldn’t have known that fire would do this. She’d seen campfires start a flame, and they didn’t do this. Earthen folk knew how to take care of those mistakes, it wouldn’t have spread like this.

That left only one group of people who would have used fire. One group of people who knew how much it would hurt Wildewyn, and how much of a distraction it would cause for those armies.

How could her own people do this? They who had grown up in these leaves and had looked down upon it from the safety of the castle?

Nadir darted through the air until they could hear the sound of battle. The clanging crash of sword against sword. The strike of metal and steel, and the screams of enraged animals.

“Sigrid,” he muttered, his eyes seeing farther than hers. “We may be too late.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It needs to be said. I don’t want you to think we can save everyone when—”

“Please.” She couldn’t hear these words. Not yet. She couldn’t think that her entire homeland was destroyed because she had hesitated to wash a man who didn’t need cleansing or healing. Sigrid would blame herself for the rest of her life if she had somehow been the person responsible for the destruction of Wildewyn.

“This is not your fault,” Nadir continued. Though brutal, she knew he only wanted to make her feel better. “Those who started this war. The