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

mind is so white and frost-covered, it’s like a clouded windowpane. I can’t see or hear anything other than one word.

Wait.

The command is stern. Inarguable. So I raise my chin and glare defiantly at my cousin.

Right before Serik lays my throat open with his fiery saber, blackness slams down around me, more crushing than the Zemyan Sea.

I flatten my body against the frozen dirt as blades whistle over my head and hands whoosh past my sides, all of them missing their target, thanks to Enebish and her shield of darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ENEBISH

I WATCH GHOA DODGE SERIK’S BLADE THROUGH THE sudden mist of darkness.

Ziva’s darkness.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I scream at the girl.

At the exact same moment, Serik yells at me. “Why’d you intervene? Ghoa deserves this! She’s never going to change.”

I, of course, know that.

But Ziva, apparently, doesn’t.

“You’ve ruined everything!” I shout at her, hiding like a coward behind a cluster of shepherds. I’d thought it was strange, how quiet she was during the confrontation. How little she had to say when she always has too much to say. “I never would’ve trained you if I knew you were going to sabotage us!”

I curl my fingers around the threads of darkness and try to yank them from Ziva’s grip. Serik and the others need their sight if they’re going to gain the upper hand. But Ziva refuses to let go, and she’s much stronger than she used to be—thanks to my training.

“Stop!” I bellow.

“This isn’t sabotage!” Her face is set with determination, her eyes aflame with scorching desert heat. “I think they’re telling the truth about Kartok and the gods and the Kalima.”

Of all the things I expected her to say, that was at the bottom of the list.

Why? How? What would possibly make you think that? But there isn’t time for questions. I have to make a decision. Ghoa and the Zemyan are stumbling their way across the street. Out of our reach. Either I side with Serik and my fury—backed by a lifetime of evidence against Ghoa and the Zemyans. Or I choose Ziva and her audacious but earnest declaration. Yes, she’s young, but she’s fiercely devoted to Verdenet. She wouldn’t have made such a bold claim, or backed it with equally bold actions, unless she had good reason.

The shattered part of me that’s been betrayed too many times to count insists it’s all a lie. Don’t make the same mistake again. But I can’t get the image of Ghoa, dropping to her knees, out of my head. My heart and gut clench.

Serik’s going to kill me.

I drop the threads of darkness, allowing Ziva to maintain the cover of night, and mutter, “You’d better be right.”

“Enebish! Stop this!” Serik and dozens of irate shepherds beg, but they’re easy to avoid, since they can’t see.

Once we’ve isolated Ghoa and the prince, Ziva and I tackle them to the ground and secure their arms and legs with rope we stole from the flailing shepherds.

“Cooperate and we’ll spare you,” I hiss. For now.

Ghoa stops thrashing at the sound of my voice and the Zemyan follows suit. “You came,” she marvels. Either her relief is truly genuine or she’s gotten much better at feigning gratitude.

“Ziva believed you. She is to thank for the darkness,” I say, tightening Ghoa’s rope with a merciless jerk. Hearing Ziva out is very different from siding with Ghoa. Or forgiving her. And I want to make sure she knows the difference.

Serik’s skin is so hot, it pulses with eerie orange light. He refuses to speak to me, or even look at me, as we drag Ghoa and the Zemyan prince into the abandoned home we’ve been squatting in. He stomps down the narrow hallway and up the stairs. I let him go. He needs space if we’re ever going to have a civil conversation.

I lead the rest of the group into the kitchen, where we stuff Ghoa and the prince into a windowless pantry. Neither of them fights or attempts to retaliate, and it sets my teeth on edge. Ghoa could have frozen us all where we stood, just as she did to the caravan of traders at Nariin. But she didn’t. And I need to know why. Even if their warnings about Kartok prove to be true, Ghoa could have an ulterior motive.

Once several guards are posted outside the pantry door, Ziva and I slowly ascend the stairs. Several rooms branch off either side of the hallway, but it’s easy to tell where Serik went. Billows of heat pour out from beneath the farthest door on the right.

“Your reasoning had better be sound,” I say to Ziva before I open the door.

She swallows hard, tucks her wild curls behind her ears, and shoves inside ahead of me.

Serik paces back and forth along the far wall, looking for all the world like a prowling sand cat, and it transports me back to the day Ghoa returned to Ikh Zuree. When she offered to let us take the Sky King’s eagles into Sagaan. The day that set all of this in motion.

The rest of our makeshift council is already here: Iree and Bultum sit on opposite sides of the room—one on a bed that’s still neatly made, the other leaning against a chest of drawers. Lalyne stands between them with her arms crossed. And old Azamat sits on the bearskin rug on the floor, grinning fiendishly, as if this is the most fun he’s had in years.

Before I can even part my lips, Serik erupts and the flare of heat is so intense, I half expect him to spit actual flames. “Why in the skies would you spare them? You know they’re going to ruin us. Ruin everything. This was our chance to gain a true advantage!”

“I didn’t spare them.” My voice comes out twice as loud and ten times more defensive than planned. “At least not initially …” I add softly. I need to douse Serik’s rage, not stoke it.