“I didn’t need to.” Ziva flips her curls away from her face. “While he was consoling his people, I commandeered several wagons that were loaded for the journey to Verdenet, which the Namagaans will no longer be needing, and made it clear to the people guarding them that they could either follow me or be obliterated by starfire.” She turns to the Namagaans now and shoos them away with a flick of her fingers. “You may go.”
“As for where to journey next …” Ziva continues. “Verdenet isn’t the only territory that needs freeing.” Her eyes meet mine over the carts, and a thoughtful grin climbs my cheeks. Once again, I was so focused on freeing Verdenet, I didn’t allow myself to consider other options—a different order of events.
“We go to Chotgor.” My voice rises with excitement. “If they’re unaware of the Sky King’s death, we can deliver the news, which will give them the strength they need to rise up in rebellion. If they’ve already heard, there’s no reason they shouldn’t join with us. We’ll be stronger against the Zemyans, united. And they needn’t fear reprisal from the imperial guards if the foundation of the empire is crumbling.”
The group explodes with chatter—whether it’s about our plan or the supplies, it’s hard to say. It doesn’t matter at this point. There’s a path forward. A clear way to navigate this disaster. And I know what I need to do to play my part in it. Something I should have agreed to from the beginning. A small way to show my commitment and, hopefully, begin to regain the shepherds’ trust.
“I’ll train you as we travel,” I tell Ziva. “We need every bit of strength the Lady and Father have given us. I was wrong to deny you before. Scared and doubtful and threatened, which is a shameful way to live.”
She blinks at me for a long moment. So long, I expect her to fling a retort back at me and insist she doesn’t need or want my help anymore. But then she bounds through the mud, throws her arms around my neck, and hugs me tightly.
After a few shocked breaths, I lightly pat her back, silently praising the Lady and Father for this miracle, and so many others.
“To Chotgor,” I say, looking to the filthy but smiling shepherds.
“To Chotgor!” they agree.
We leave at once, traipsing northward through the flooded marshlands with a surge of newfound energy. The shepherds pass out food and dry clothes with minimal bickering, and more than enough people volunteer to pull the heavy wagons. It’s amazing, what a little bit of hope can do.
“Can you believe this?” I ask Serik, who walks beside me. “I thought we were finished.”
I expect a proud, moon-eyed grin, but he shrugs and drags the toes of his boots through the mud.
I reach for his arm. “What’s wrong? Everything’s coming together. It’s nothing short of miraculous.”
He looks at my hand instead of my face. “Chotgor is so far north, and so cold. Even colder than Ashkar. And I’m already exhausted. It will be miraculous if we don’t freeze to death.”
The strain in his voice makes my heart squeeze. Our new plan may have lifted the weight from the rest of our shoulders, but it’s settled squarely on Serik’s. He’s been so strong and unflappable since we left Sagaan—the steady hands reaching down to lift me and the shepherds out of every pothole.
It’s about time someone eased his burden.
“Keep going. We’ll catch up in a minute,” I tell Ziva. Then I lace my fingers through Serik’s and guide him into the forest. Out of sight of Ziva and the shepherds, where the air is thicker and bullfrogs welcome us with throaty croaks.
“Where are we going? We should stay with the group.” He tries to turn back, but I tighten my fingers on his sunburst cloak, drag him around an enormous tree, and tug him closer. So the entire length of our bodies touch—arms, legs, and chests fitted together as if chiseled from the same mold. “What are you doing?” he whispers, hazel eyes wide.
“Thanking you. For refusing to back down and never giving up on me. For standing beside me when no one else would. For believing me, even though I gave you every reason not to. You’re the strongest, bravest, most loyal person I know, and I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I thank the Lady and Father every day for their kindness. I figured it was about time I thanked you, too.” I lean up on my toes, eyes locked with his, and gently tilt forward until our lips touch.
His mouth is warm and soft, and tingles explode in my stomach. It shouldn’t be possible for such a small touch to make my body flare with heat, but I am burning, blazing, bubbling with need … until I realize Serik isn’t kissing me back.
I pull away, cheeks flaming. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have—”
He reaches out and takes my face in his hands, his thumb trailing over my scars. “Yes, you most definitely should have. I should have been ready, considering I’ve spent half my life imagining this moment.”
“Only half?” I say with a breathy laugh.
Then his lips are on mine and his hands are in my hair, and even though our clothes are muddy and dripping, I feel like I’m sprawled across the sand, baking beneath the desert heat. My mouth presses harder against his, somehow knowing what to do despite never having kissed anything other than Orbai’s beak. I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s like the euphoria at the height of my Kalima power combined with the comfort of a heavy wool blanket. I am completely exposed yet completely understood.
I break away to catch my breath, and Serik plants tiny kisses down my jawline, making me shiver. “Where did you learn to kiss like this?” I demand. “It definitely isn’t something they teach at Ikh Zuree.”
“I lived plenty of years before being banished to Ikh Zuree….”
“And I was there for most of them! Who else have you kissed?” I swat his chest playfully. “It was Rhona, wasn’t it? The cook’s girl. Don’t think I didn’t notice how you made eyes at her.”
He shakes his head adamantly. “My eyes have always been on you.”
I melt back into him, our lips moving in a rhythm that feels effortless but ravenous. Smiling against his mouth because I’m kissing Serik.
Finally.
He backs me up against the tree and my fingers curl into his collar, pulling him even closer. I want to stay like this forever—two blades soldered together—but a long, agonized moan makes us freeze.
“What was that?” I whisper.
“Probably just the shepherds.” Serik leans back in, but I shake my head and hold up my hand.
“It’s coming from the opposite direction. It almost sounds like crying…. Do you think there are other survivors still out there?” I squirm free of Serik’s arms and cast off in the direction of the weeping. The closer we draw, the louder and more animalistic the screams become. My toes curl inside my boots, and I have to force my feet to keep moving. I don’t want to find anyone else suffering because of my mistakes. But not finding them would be even worse.
I crash through a particularly thick jumble of undergrowth. “We’re coming!”
“Hurry! Please!” a shattered voice calls.
My legs wheel. My heart thunders.
I hack through the thicket and stop dead in my tracks. “You!”
Serik skids to a stop beside me and we stare up at a figure dressed in Shoniin gray, dangling from the gnarled branches like a broken kite. Golden hoops glint in his ears and jagged black hair flops across his face.
“I didn’t think you were the type to ‘hang around’ after a battle …” Serik laughs wickedly.
Temujin’s tiger eyes find us, and the horrified expression that twists his face is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in weeks. A ray of golden sunshine, slicing through the oppressive clouds.
“Can’t I catch a skies-forsaken break?” he mumbles up to the heavens.
But the Lady and Father ignore him.
As well they should.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GHOA
THE ZEMYAN SEA IS MORE VIOLENT THAN ANY OPPONENT I’VE faced on the battlefield. More forceful than every Kalima power comb
ined. The water advances in terrible, crashing waves that fling me back and turn me over. Every time I open my mouth to scream, salt water invades my lungs. When I try to get my bearings, it gouges my stinging eyes.
I have never encountered water like this.
And I have never felt so miniscule. So powerless.
The current sucks me out into the expanse of terrifying blue and green. My lungs sputter as the water smashes me lower and lower. My heart rate increases with the pressure—pounding in my wrists and throat and head. Booming against my temples.
Air, air, air! it screams.
But air won’t bring me glory. Only ice can do that.
I spread my fingers, reach into my glacial center, and pour all of my remaining strength into the swirling water. But the salty surge refuses to cooperate. It’s slow to freeze, and when I do manage to forge a branch of ice, the swells rip it from my fingers. Before I can fully freeze one wave, the next one dashes it to pieces. There isn’t enough ice in the entire world to harden this much water.
My knees sink into the soft, silty bottom, where I droop and sway like seaweed. The sand cradles my face like a pillow, and as my vision blurs, my parents appear in the rippling waves. They gaze at me from across the music room, their sorrowful faces begging me to lift my voice and sing. Sing, Ghoa! But there’s no music in this place. And singing will help nothing.
I see Enebish, too, with black pearl eyes and seafoam scars. I hate her and love her. I miss her and despise her. She is my greatest accomplishment and biggest failure.
It doesn’t have to end like this, her voice swirls and gurgles.
How else can it end? I’m trapped beneath the sea. Don’t pretend you care.
You could ask for help….
From who? I snap. Though, of course I know the answer.
Enebish and her fool gods.
Those old stories may comfort her, but I refuse to believe some nebulous lady of clouds and sunlight will swoop down from the heavens and rescue me. What’s more, I don’t want her to. I don’t want anything from anyone.
The burning in my chest and the pressure in my head disagree, and as the agony mounts, the raw, primal part of me takes over. The most vital, inner self that refuses to die a failure. To leave my parents in humiliation and disgrace. To let my honorless warriors defeat me like this.
“Please.” The word slips out—the last bubble of air in my lungs.
As it rises to the surface, just before I’m sucked into oblivion, a hand clamps around my bicep and drags me upward.
I wake to sand beneath my fingers, water in my nose, and lips on my mouth. Cold, thin lips that are as slimy as a dead fish.
When my eyes pop open, and I see the ashen face hovering a hairsbreadth from mine, I wish it were a fish.
I vomit up a bucketful of seawater straight into the Zemyan prince’s lap.
“Honestly? You couldn’t have retched in the other direction?” Ivandar gags as he crawls away from me, his woven shirt now plastered to his chest with water and vomit.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
“What does it look like? Would you rather I didn’t resuscitate you?”
“Yes!”
His dripping face twists with outrage. “Are you really going to disparage me? I could have swum directly to shore and let you drown, but instead I tugged you three leagues through rough seas so you wouldn’t be found.” He gestures to the long stretch of beach surrounding us. It’s completely deserted, hemmed in with gnarled foliage that creeps up to a distant mountain peak. “What were you thinking, destroying the prison like that? You were never going to escape.”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying to escape.” I peel tentacles of seaweed off the side of my face and spit sand from my teeth. The only thing worse, the only thing more horrifying, than being betrayed by my warriors, captured by Zemyans, and dying in a sea I couldn’t freeze, is not dying and being saved by the Zemyan heir.
Of course this would be the outcome of my first prayer.
Technically, it was answered, was it not? You survived.
I close my eyes and groan. If the gods do exist, they’re clearly punishing me for having the audacity to call on them. If they don’t exist, the universe is ridiculing me for considering the possibility.
“What were you doing if you weren’t trying to escape?” Ivandar demands.
“Reclaiming my honor. If I had managed to kill you and the generál supreme, I would have died with glory. I’d be revered in Ashkar for generations to come. But thanks to your senseless heroics, I now owe a life debt to the Zemyan heir and must live in a world where I failed my king and country.”
The weight of it hits me then, pummeling me even more violently than the sea. I may be free from Kartok’s prison, but I have nowhere to go. No battalion to command. Even if my power rebuilds, I could never contend with the entire Kalima to reclaim my position. And without my position, I can’t show my face in Ashkar—especially not after my failures in the treasury. I can’t even go home; I won’t smear my parents with my disgrace—assuming they’re still alive.
Which leaves only one option: I fall back on the gritty sand, spread my arms wide, and beg the buzzards to devour me.
“You can’t just lie there and give up!” Ivandar says. “Not after I risked everything for you. You’re indebted to me. You said so yourself.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me. And I honestly can’t fathom why you did. If you’re trying to convince your mother to trust you over Kartok, cavorting with the commander of the Kalima warriors isn’t the way to go about it.”
Ivandar waves a dismissive hand, but I see the furrows between his brows, the tightness in his jaw. “She may be disappointed initially, but she’ll thank me when I uncover Kartok’s true motives. Despite his noble claims, I know he’s scheming and vying for power. Which is precisely why I saved you. You know his plans,” he adds when I stare at him dubiously.
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Did you honestly risk your life, and potentially your crown, on a little carrot of information I dangled in front of your nose? How do you know I was telling the truth? Prisoners spin all sorts of lies to save their necks.”
“I saw your face the last time I came to your cell—when you were covered in blood. You were ready to work with Hadassah.”
“Unfortunately, Hadassah doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe not in that incarnation, but she and I want the same things. I am Hadassah.”
“What you are is a fool.” I close my eyes and focus on the blazing heat of the Zemyan sun. It’s even more punishing than a suit of lamellar armor in high summer, steaming my flesh like overcooked potatoes. Sweat collects beneath my arms and runs down the sides of my face, and the worst part is, I can’t summon a single puff of cold to cool my burning skin.
The gods and universe are definitely mocking me. The circumstances are too targeted to be a coincidence—the girl forged of ice, melting into nothing.
Ivandar huffs out several long breaths before asking, “Does it make you feel powerful, being so cruel?”
“I’m not cruel. This is just who I am.”
“Or is it the armor you hide behind?”
I bristle. My fingers automatically move to tighten my ponytail, but the slashed pieces are too short to tie back. “I don’t hide behind anything,” I growl. “I framed my sister for a massacre. I sentenced my cousin to prison. I methodically removed every person who stood in the way of my promotion, as if they were a burr clinging to my cloak. Would you call any of that an act?”
“No,” Ivandar admits, “but it’s never too late. We can always change our course, set our sails to a different wind.”
“Spare me your inspirational drivel,” I groan.
That finally shuts the prince up.
For a moment.
I feel his shadow pass over me. Feel his eyes bearing down on me, as hot as the merciless sun.
This is pathetic. Get up.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” I shoot up fr
om my back and glare at the Zemyan prince.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything,” Ivandar retorts, sitting precisely where he was before—slumped and shivering in the sand like a drowned cat—but I know better than to buy into his illusions. I felt him there, looming over me.
“Don’t toy with me, Prince.”
“I haven’t said or done anything,” he insists. “The salt water has gone to your head.”
“Speaking of going … shouldn’t you be running back to Karekemish? You have quite a lot to straighten out.”
“You know I can’t return. Not until I have damning evidence against Kartok. And in order to find that, I need you to tell me what you know.”
I fold my arms, prepared to ignore him until he either leaves or perishes beside me, when the voice comes again. Louder and more adamant than before. Only now that I’m paying attention, I don’t know how I ever thought it was Ivandar. Because it sounds like me—only sharper. The surest, most unflinching version of myself. The commander still buried deep within me—revealing what my tortured, water-addled mind couldn’t piece together.
Open your eyes, Ghoa. The answer to everything is literally sitting in front of you.
My gaze flicks again to Ivandar—filthy and dripping but unmistakably Zemyan. His clothes may be soaked and slashed, but the material is luxurious and the royal sea green marks him as someone of consequence. He’s the type of prisoner who would guarantee respect for the captor. Maybe even merit reinstatement. Especially if the prince can be used to turn the tide of the war.
Empress Danashti may have sided with Kartok regarding my torture, but I have a feeling her choice would be different if her son’s life were at stake. I can use Ivandar to drive the Zemyan troops out of Ashkar, then I’ll celebrate my victory by thoroughly punishing every last one of my double-crossing warriors.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ivandar demands, bringing me back to the beach.
Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology) Page 21
