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

Thus, he found it strange to see the Beastkin Qatal standing in a circle around the oasis with their arms outstretched. Their fingertips didn’t quite touch each other. They all stood with heads back, eyes closed, allowing the sun to play across their faces.

“What is this?” he asked Tahira who moved to stand among her brethren.

“Your mother is waiting in her usual spot. Go and see her before you ask any more questions, Sultan of Bymere.”

He frowned. What were they up to? He didn’t want to take part in any kind of ritual. He wasn’t joining the Alqatara. The last thing he needed was for others to say he was an assassin.

But his feet still moved in the direction of his mother. She sat on a small bench, wrapped up in blankets even though it was plenty warm outside.

She was more fragile like this. Her entire body seemed… weak. He had thought she would be a monstrous woman to house a dragon inside her. She wasn’t.

Nahla was as fragile as a spring breeze. Cautiously making her way through life while she tried to figure out what would and wouldn’t hurt her. He could see why his father had been captivated by her immediately. Everything about her screamed that she needed to be taken care of. Someone had to stop and hold her just for a few moments so she didn’t fly apart at the seams.

Perhaps that was her greatest ability in life. She was a woman with a spine of steel who had trained armies of legendary assassins and still managed to look like a delicate creature herself.

At his approach, his mother opened her eyes and smiled. “Come, my boy. Sit with me for a few moments.”

“What is it?”

She patted the bench. “You know how long I’ve waited for you, Nadir?”

The words were the same she said every time she saw him. And every time he replied with, “My whole life.”

“Indeed. And now that you’re here, it’s hard for me to think of anything else than my boy has finally returned.”

Somehow, he didn’t quite trust those words. Her eyes were too calculating, her mind too quick, and he didn’t think she was the type of woman to be distracted by anything that she didn’t want to be distracted by.

He settled onto the bench hesitantly. “What is it, Nahla?”

“You could call me mother, you know.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “It would make an old woman very happy to finally hear those words from your lips.”

He hesitated before replying, “I believe you’ve already heard them before.”

Nadir hadn’t wanted to bring up the man who now sat on his throne. Somehow, it felt like something taboo that he wasn’t supposed to mention. He didn’t know who the man was. Solomon had made it clear he wasn’t going to tell Nadir either. But the suspicion was still there.

Solomon looked far too much like him to be anything other than what Nadir suspected.

“I’ve been called it by many people,” she replied. “Least of all the man whom you think of. That doesn’t mean the words coming from your lips would be any less important.”

He didn’t want to call her mother. The woman who had raised him was his mother. She had held him close at night, wiped away the tears of nightmares. She had been the one who after all this time still appeared in his dreams. The sultana had been far more than just a woman in his life who had taken him in. She had been the woman who raised him, then the woman he knew welcomed him into her heart knowing that he wasn’t her child.

Nahla opened her eyes and focused on him. Suddenly, those yellow eyes which looked so much like his own were harder. Chips of gold stuck in a face that had aged but was no less powerful. “Do you not believe in me, Sultan of Bymere? After all these years keeping the kingdom safe, I would have thought you would understand the importance of the Alqatara.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you questioning me? Why are you looking at me as though I am lying to you?”

He cleared his throat and rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “I’m not doing that.”

“Then call me mother.”

The words stuck in his throat. “I cannot.”

“Why is that, I wonder?” she asked. “Is it because you still have some lingering loyalty to the family who nearly destroyed the creature inside you? The ones who claimed you were a monster they needed to hide?”

“My family was good to me,” he corrected, anger bubbling in his chest like an old friend. “They didn’t make me think I was a monster.”

“They told you no one could know who or what you were. They made you hide in the shadows your entire life and you say they were good to you? Do you know what that does to a Beastkin? You need to change, to allow the creatures inside you to grow or all you foster is an animal that will stop at nothing to break free from the bonds you’ve placed on it.” Nahla shook her head and growled, “You cannot chain a dragon.”

And yet, he had. His entire life he’d done so, and it didn’t seem that the dragon was any worse for wear.

At the thought, the beast inside him lifted its head. The colors around him flattened into little more than black and white. Perhaps his eyes had shifted as the dragon peered out, or perhaps his mind had simply snapped at the idea the beast could take over entirely.

It didn’t matter in the end. Nahla’s pupils elongated in her eyes, and he knew he was no longer looking at the leader of the Alqatara. He was looking at the legendary creature who had birthed him.

A low growl erupted from her lips, the sound grating and far too deep for her to be able to make. “I birthed you,” the