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

that I was the strongest Kalima warrior. Proof that my comrades were wrong to turn their backs on me. Even if Ashkar falls, everyone will tell stories of the last commander of the Kalima warriors, who killed two-thirds of Zemya’s rulers from within the dungeon.

I picture my parents, hearing the news. Receiving condolences that are actually declarations of praise. Commissioning a concerto in my name that will play forever after.

I’ll die knowing I made them proud.

That thought gives me the courage to leap.

I dive into the back of Kartok’s knees and my fingers dart through the folds of his cloak like a snake, coiling around the hilt of the sword. He’s heavier than I anticipated, but I manage to bring him to the ground. The impact knocks the breath from his lungs, giving me time to free the sword and roll away.

Kartok shouts something, but I can’t hear it over the roar of my pulse. It drums in my head. Faster every second. He reaches for me, his long, knobby fingers tangling in my hair. I swing the blade behind my head and sever my ponytail with a swish. Hoping Kartok’s fingers came off with it.

“What are you doing?” Ivandar cries. He looks completely bewildered. Like he honestly believed I’d perish without a fight.

With a roar that explodes from the depths of my gut—the place where I stored every hope and dream and ambition I had for my life—I drive Kartok’s blade into the wall.

The generál slams to a halt and clutches his stomach, as if I buried the knife in his flesh. Our eyes meet, and I expect to find fury, outrage, perhaps even fear, but he looks contemplative. Almost amused. He lifts a finger, and I flinch, expecting the enchanted blade to retract through the hilt and lodge in my chest. But it remains buried in the throne room wall. A second later there’s a monstrous crackle and the murals splinter into fragments, revealing the actual wall of glass behind the illusion.

Slowly, as if in a dream, spiderweb fractures spread through the pane. Beads of water race down the cracks and drip from the ceiling. The smells of brine and sand and victory fill my nose as the frothy green sea bears down on us.

Ivandar’s jaw drops.

Kartok is close enough and quick enough to tackle me, but he remains perfectly still and watches as I throw my weight against the splintered glass.

There isn’t time to contemplate why.

The wall explodes with a pop, and I laugh as the waves rush over me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ENEBISH

THE BLASTS FROM THE WATER CANNONS SLAM INTO OUR stomachs and fling us across the marsh like twigs in a raging current. I crash through the cypress trees, battered by their jabbing roots, and tumble through the wreckage of the sheep pen, colliding with too many shepherds and animals to count. My vision darkens with every impact. Pain detonates through my rag-doll body—crushing and suffocating and endless.

When the floodwater finally slows, the city of Uzul is no longer visible. Only a dripping expanse of trees and mud. Catching hold of a vine with my good arm—though neither arm feels “good” anymore—I drag myself onto a cluster of roots. As I cough up mouthful after mouthful of brown sludge, the current continues to swirl around me, littered with broken branches and leaves. Scattered with floating satchels and shoes and shawls. And strewn with battered, motionless bodies.

Sheep lie on their sides, mangled and soggy, their wool stained red and brown. Goats are bent and broken against the trees. And, most horrifying of all, are the people. The corpse of a shepherdess glides past, her eyes staring vacantly, her face bruised and bloated. Her long dark hair waves around her like the swamp reeds, and her hand is outstretched, fingers interlaced with those of a small boy, who is just as waterlogged and still.

My stomach turns itself inside out. I fling myself off the roots, desperate to get away from the woman and the child, but as I claw through the puddles in the opposite direction, another body floats around the bend. Then another. They move silently through the cypress trees—three gray-clad Shoniin and four shepherds. And these are just the bodies I can see. I’m sure there are dozens more scattered across the marsh.

So many lives taken because of Yatindra’s selfish deception.

And my stupidity.

I never should have accepted her invitation. I knew she couldn’t be trusted, but I was trying to “make an effort.” I wanted to prove I wasn’t too damaged to unite the Protected Territories and lead them against the Sky King and Zemyans. My doubt and mistrust had already ostracized and endangered so many. I wanted to be better and braver and stronger, but burying the past and moving forward proved even more disastrous.

There’s no winning.

Not for me.

“Serik?” I cry into the eerie silence. There isn’t a single note of birdsong. Even the relentless cicadas have stopped chirping, leaving only the gurgle of mud and the far-off sound of weeping. “Serik?” I shout louder.

Still no answer. Panic seeps into my pores. He was right beside me before the blast. Hands intertwined. Now he could be anywhere—crushed beneath a broken branch, dashed against a rock, the next corpse to drift downstream….

“Serik!” I stagger to my feet and wade through the slough. I don’t have a clue where I’m going—I could be stumbling in the wrong direction, wandering deeper into the maze of trees. My bad leg buckles every few steps, but I scrape off the grime and forge on.

He’s alive. I’ll find him. I refuse to accept anything else.

After what feels like years, my ears prick with the hum of voices, one louder than the rest. It doesn’t sound like Serik, but I follow it into a thicket of reeds, where the mud is even heavier and the plants jut from the ground like spikes. As I hack through the shoots, my legs give out for good. I lie there for a moment, the grime cold and