Dawn of Cobalt Shadows (Burning Empire Book 2) by Emma Hamm (best e ink reader for manga .txt) 📕

Nadir took a deep breath and held it. Slowly releasing the tension, he nodded. “I don’t know how to make them continue to think in such a way. I don’t know if I really want them to.”

“You do.” Nahla reached out, tucked a finger under his chin, and forced him to meet her gaze. “You want your people to look at you and see a god. They will not question the verdict of a God King. They will question the thoughts of a man.”

“My advisors—”

“Are but pawns in this great game of chess,” she interrupted. “You worry about their opinions far too much, my son. Soon, you will have no need of them. The country will look to the skies for the answers to their questions. They will pray to you and your wives in hopes that someone will hear their prayers. And you? You will answer them.”

He’d never wanted to be a god. Not to his people, not to his family, and certainly not to the world. But the way she said it…. It did seem easier.

There would be no more advisors or people who tried to tell him what to do. There would be no one judging him for being just a man who made poor decisions. The world would have to agree that he was trying, or that they couldn’t understand his methods, but that they must agree with them.

What would Sigrid say?

Nadir wracked his mind, but could only come up with a disapproving expression. She hadn’t wanted him to be anything more than himself. She was the one who said his people needed to see a man before they saw a sultan.

And here he was, choosing to become a god.

His blood mother tapped her thumb on his jaw. “My son. I know this isn’t the path you would have chosen for yourself. It’s not the path I would have chosen for you either. But you must understand, Bymere is at a turning point. There will be a war. There will be so much violence neither of us can see through the blood. And the only thing that can stop that is a god who protects his people from certain death. Can’t you understand that?”

He understood that people wanted to control him his entire life. Everyone he’d ever met wanted something from him, or him to be someone else.

This was his mother. The woman who had given him life. Who was he to deny her anything when she had gone through so much just to ensure he had breath in his lungs?

Or perhaps, he was merely weak. The small voice in his head which had been beaten back by the strength and determination within Sigrid awakened once more. It whispered he couldn’t do this on his own. His decisions were always bad. He was nothing more than a child in a game that would devour him whole if he didn’t listen to his betters.

He didn’t know this woman, or why she wanted him to help her. But he did know she ruled the most important community of deadly assassin in the entire empire. She had to be trustworthy.

And so, the Sultan of Bymere lowered his head and placed it on her lap. “Teach me,” he whispered.

“I will, my son. Before my soul joins the ancestors, I will teach you how to be a god.”

15

Camilla

She kept her eyes focused on the forest beyond the keep, waiting for Jabbar and his men to return. They’d left early in the morning, saying they were going to hunt for the rest of their people. There was plenty of meat in their home. Camilla knew they were lying.

She just didn’t have any idea what they were doing.

Now, the sun set on the horizon, and they still hadn’t returned. A sinking feeling in her belly warned that something terrible was going to happen. Something she couldn’t control.

Camilla had led these people well in the wake of her sister’s disappearance. She refused to think of it as a death, although every day that Sigrid was gone stretched longer and longer. She couldn’t believe her sister was dead. The mere thought sent her heart into a thundering beat that threatened to bury her under the sound.

Instead, she believed that Sigrid had found the legendary city. That she would return with new knowledge and purpose for their people. She had to believe. Otherwise, all she could think of was Sigrid’s body on a mountain somewhere, and her soul wandering for all eternity because the ceremony hadn’t been performed.

Warm arms slid around her waist, startling her out of her thoughts.

She glanced down at the honey-colored forearms, their strength easily visible as they flexed beneath her fingers. She’d seen these hands so many times, she knew them better than her own.

There was a scar on his palm if he turned it around. She’d asked about it once, and he’d claimed it was a right for young boys in Bymere to prove their bravery. Hold the bare blade of a sword as tightly as possible for long enough, and one was marked to be a warrior later on.

Najib had held the blade longer than any other boy in his camp.

“You’re worried,” he murmured, pressing his lips against the back of her neck and holding her close to his chest.

“I am.”

“About what?”

Camilla felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t been able to tell him a single thing about her sister’s crazed plan. As far as he knew, Sigrid was dead. She was the one leading her people, even though she knew she was only here by proxy.

Keeping secrets from him felt as though she were lying every day. She tried not to draw back from their new relationship. Something in his eyes had lured her to him from the first moment she’d seen him, emaciated in the Bymerian Beastkin camp.

He turned into a leopard at will. A great, beastly creature with scars all over its hide and eyes that