Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology) by Addie Thorley (best beach reads .txt) 📗

he knew his nemesis was sleeping on duty. I consider walking around the pen to wake him, but I save myself the trouble. It’s a long way, and Iree wouldn’t have seen Ziva and Yatindra.

After muttering a curse, I continue edging along the fence line, collecting threads of night to sharpen my vision. Would it have been that difficult to wait for me once they got down here? Or at least make themselves easier to locate?

Unless they don’t want you to find them….

My feet hesitate and unease grips me. For half a second I consider turning back. I can pray by myself. I don’t need to traipse around the marsh for them, especially if they can’t be bothered with basic consideration. But then I spot a flash of movement up ahead, just beyond the sheep pen, and I banish my worries with a shake of my head. Yatindra’s apology was sincere. Even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t use the Lady and Father to bait me. No one is that blasphemous. I won’t be ruled by suspicion and fear any longer.

“Ziva? Yatindra?”

“Over here!” Yatindra answers, and I exhale with relief. “Ziva is cloaking us in darkness for privacy.”

I frown down at the filaments of night in my hand and give them a little yank. There’s no resistance on the other end. And no matter how I twist the tendrils, Ziva and Yatindra don’t shimmer into focus.

“Where are you?” I demand, stumbling in the direction of Yatindra’s voice.

Without warning, my feet drop out from under me and my shout becomes a scream. My good leg sinks into a hole that’s been hacked into the root pathway, and when I try to catch myself, my bad leg wrenches painfully. I scream even louder as I crash into the lowest rung of the fence.

The plank immediately snaps, and the adjoining posts wobble and groan—the wood too wet and bent, and the construction too quick and shoddy, to withstand the blow. One by one, the posts tumble, the cross-planks falling with them. In the space of a breath, the entire structure collapses.

The frightened herd stampedes past me, charging down the pathway and into the murky night.

Burning skies!

“What have you done?” Iree shouts. He’s wide awake now and on his feet, gaping at me as if I released the animals on purpose.

“It was a t-trap!” I stammer. “Yatindra cut a hole in the pathway, knowing I’d hit the fence!” I gesture to the thigh-deep hole still swallowing my leg.

Iree looks like he wants to murder me as he unties a bullhorn from his hip and fills the sleeping marshlands with three trumpeting blasts.

Lights flare in our barracks. Within seconds, a swarm of shepherds barrel across the platforms toward the call. Sleepy-eyed Namagaans pull back their drapes and squint at the waterfall of frenzied shepherds, but none of them leave their homes or offer help—despite the “goodwill” and “unity” we’ve supposedly been currying.

“Enebish destroyed the fence and the animals escaped!” Iree announces as the first of the reinforcements arrive.

“I didn’t destroy the fence!” I counter. Even though, technically, I did. But “destroy” makes it sound like I demolished the fence on purpose. “It was a setup!”

No one hears me over panicked shouts and thundering hooves.

Serik stumbles onto the walkway with the rest of the shepherds, and his eyes immediately widen when they land on me in the hole. “What happened? What are you doing down here? Aren’t you supposed to be with Ziva and Yatindra?”

“They lured me into a trap!”

Serik stares at me for an excruciating moment.

“You have to believe me. I swear to you—”

“Not now.” He summons an orb of light, which he holds overhead like a torch, and pulls me out of the hole. Then he jogs into the sticky darkness. “We should head toward the saw-grass clearing,” he calls to the shepherds. “It’s the first place the animals will go—their food source.”

With a nod of agreement, the shepherds fall in behind Serik, splashing frantically through the muck. I follow, my steps slow and stumbling, made worse by the hot tears pulsing in my eyes.

Why would Yatindra and Ziva do this now? When we were finally unified?

“Did you hear that?” Serik slams to a halt, causing the shepherds behind him to collide.

“The only thing I hear is my brain rattling around in my skull,” Lalyne grumbles.

Serik holds up his hand. “Shhhh!”

I have a hard time believing he can hear anything over the shepherds’ hysterical moans, but then he turns and plunges into the nearest thicket. We follow, stopping every few minutes while he listens and readjusts course. To my astonishment, the sound of far-off bleating grows steadily louder until we reach a small clearing. Unlike the saw-grass clearing, where the flocks graze, this field is made of mud, and long, twisting plants undulate on top of the water like snakes. Shadows move on the far side of the meadow. Most of the group freezes or scrambles backward, but Serik snatches a bucket of feed from the nearest shepherd and shakes it while clucking his tongue.

A tiny black lamb stumbles into view through the murk and trots happily toward the feed bucket. The shepherds weep and hug as they call for the rest of the herd. But as more sheep emerge from the trees, the threads of darkness resting in my fist pull taut, flailing and lashing like a banner in a windstorm.

A second later blackness engulfs the marshlands.

“Enebish!” Serik roars, trying, and failing, to summon an orb of light.

“It isn’t me!” I insist.

“What do you mean it isn’t you?”

“I didn’t blacken the sky!” My fingers tremble as I attempt to reel in the darkness, but the threads pull back, more stubborn than an ornery camel.

Ziva isn’t strong enough to hold the night with such a firm grip, which can only mean one thing: It isn’t Ziva’s darkness. It’s mine—the darkness Kartok stole in the xanav.

I wind the smoky shadows around my palm faster. Faster. Heart pulsing in my throat as my vision sharpens, revealing a