Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology) by Addie Thorley (best romance ebooks .txt) 📕

from leaf to leaf, branch to branch. Spreading toward the city of Uzul, less than half a league behind us.

Fear grips my stomach tighter than the vines encircling the trees. The shepherds scream and scatter, dodging the burning debris as they sprint back toward the city. Serik shouts curses. And I stand still, gazing up. The fire will devour the entire marsh if we don’t find a way to put it out. But the canopy is too high. And our powers are of little use: Serik’s heat will only feed it, and my power birthed it in the first place.

So I do the only thing I can. “I thought you didn’t want trouble with Namaag!” I whirl on Temujin and his Shoniin, who don’t appear the least bit rattled. Chanar even has the nerve to smile. “Don’t you care that Uzul will burn? The capital of one of the Protected Territories, which you’re supposedly fighting for?”

“Of course we care,” Temujin answers, “and we’ll do everything in our power to help them rebuild after this devastating fire caused by Enebish the Destroyer. It will be the foundation of our union, in fact. The thing that solidifies their ties with the Shoniin and Zemya.”

My heart leaps faster with every awful word. Temujin manipulated me. Again. Even when I know that’s his aim, he still manages to be three steps ahead. I run my trembling fingers through my hair. “You’re just as responsible as I am,” I babble. “You threw the second ball of starfire.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m not a Night Spinner. I can’t wield starfire.”

“I’ll explain the syphoning to King Ihsan! The shepherds witnessed the entire confrontation!”

“By all means, explain to King Ihsan until you’re blue in the face. I doubt he’ll be willing to listen to a word you say after his capital is reduced to ashes. You leave fire and destruction everywhere you go, Enebish: Nariin, Sagaan, and now Uzul. This is just another deadly outburst, and I will be the savior who arrives to clean up your mess.”

I want to reach for another ball of starfire. I want to incinerate Temujin and every last one of his traitorous Shoniin. But Serik grips my hand and tugs me back toward Uzul. “Arguing is pointless. We have to stop the blaze. Warn the people.”

I look over at Serik as we trip through the undergrowth—at his determined, stalwart expression and his hand, locked tight with mine—and sobs fill my smoke-filled throat. He could have turned on me like the shepherds. He could have blamed me for the broken fence and the stampede. He could have scolded me for falling prey to Yatindra’s betrayal or refused to believe me at all. But here he is. At my side. Charging with me into battle.

“We’ll never get there fast enough,” Serik pants.

“There’s another way to warn them.” I don’t know if Ziva helped Yatindra sabotage me, but right now it hardly matters. I shove my smarting ego aside and yank on the perpetual undercurrent of darkness connecting us, snapping the night like a whip until she responds with a groggy tug. I immediately send her an image of the fire raging toward Uzul and the Shoniin.

The tendrils pull taut. Ziva sends back so many frantic messages, they bleed into an indecipherable jumble of black. A distant scream rises over the roar of the inferno. Lights flash, winking like stars through the leaves and thickening smoke.

“Everything will be fine,” I chant as we run. The Namagaans must have a way to combat fire. They live in trees, for skies’ sake.

The flames snap behind us, consuming the leaves like an oiled wick. My mouth feels dry and blistered and tastes of burning sap. We stumble past the demolished sheep pen and Uzul sprawls above us, overrun with absolute mayhem. Bridges swing precariously as far too many Namagaans shove across, burdened by clothing and jewelry, paintings and tapestries and fine china. Everything they can possibly carry.

Meanwhile, Ruya and her orange-clad soldiers wheel carts bearing massive brass fittings across the platforms. Men and women crowd around them, helping to lift the fixtures and fasten them to the brass pipes running beneath the limbs.

With a shout from Ruya, and a creak like the turn of an ancient knob, silty-brown swamp water explodes from each nozzle. The torrent that blasts through the canopy is even more violent than the geysers in the Ondor Mountains. Just the runoff pelting my head feels stronger than a Rain Maker in battle. Limbs tear from the ancient trunks, and the holes that riddle the canopy look like they were made by actual cannons.

In order to douse the fire, the Namagaans have to decimate their forest.

I stand in shivering, dripping silence with Serik and the shepherds, who gradually emerge from the trees with their animals and gather around a different tree—noticeably apart from me and Serik.

We watch the water cannons beat back the blaze. After what feels like a hundred days of battle, the last of the embers die and the water cannons peter to a trickle. The Namagaans drop the hoses and wilt into soaking heaps, crying and coughing and hugging. The shepherds scratch at the doors hidden in the tree trunks like hungry strays, but the Namagaans don’t hear. Or they’ve chosen not to respond.

King Ihsan appears on a platform overhead and moves among his people. Once again, he’s wearing his dressing gown, and he looks as exhausted and worn down as everyone else, but he still manages to clasp hands and pat shoulders, offering quiet words of comfort to his people.

Murtaugh and Yatindra trail the Marsh King, and the sight of her teary eyes and quivering hands makes me see red.

“Breathe, En,” Serik whispers in my ear. “Lashing out now will only make things worse.”

Things can’t get any worse! I want to scream. I pull several deep breaths through my nose, waiting for King Minoak and Ziva to appear at the end of the royal procession, but they’re nowhere to be seen.

It