Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology), Addie Thorley [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

The familiar scents of pipe smoke and his bergamot cologne hit me, both comforting and paralyzing. He and Mamá retreated to the safety of our estate after the attack on the Sky Palace, but if he were here, he wouldn’t doubt me for a second. Papá is proud and supportive to a fault—evidenced by the awards from every minor concert or competition I’ve ever participated in, plastered to the walls and dangling from the ceiling. The gauntlet of medals slap my cheeks, making the pressure even more overwhelming.

I stumble through the pitch black and crash into Papá’s gigantic desk, toppling papers and making a mess of his carefully arranged quills. Once I’ve battered through the furniture, I lift my hands and ease forward until my palms meet the chilled windowpane. Then I spread my fingers and pump my bitter cold into the glass. I can feel it shudder and expand—like a bowstring drawn too tight.

With a loud pop, tinkling glass falls across my boots and down the outer wall of the treasury, where it smashes against the cobblestones. I don’t know if it’s because my hearing is heightened in the dark, but the sound is louder than a cannon firing.

If Enebish and Temujin didn’t know where we were before, they do now.

“Go. Hurry!”

“Go where, Ghoa?” Varren asks. “You can’t expect us to jump out a second-story window.”

“Of course not. There are buttresses. Walk across to the adjacent building. Hopefully it hasn’t been invaded.”

“How?” someone shouts.

“We can’t see!” another voice interjects.

“Scoot or crawl,” I shoot back. “Do whatever you must. Just go. We cannot be captured. They’ll kill every one of us, then Ashkar will have no hope of recovery.”

“Do as she says!” the Sky King bellows behind me, and despite everything, my racing heart flutters with satisfaction. Vindication.

“We can try to provide some light,” Weroneka, one of the Sun Stokers, says. She and the others feel their way to the window and raise orbs of light as Lizbet ventures out onto the buttress. She’s the smallest and lightest of all of us and, as a Breeze Bringer, she can wield the drafts of wind to steady her balance. She’s the natural choice to make the first crossing. I keep sight of her brown braid until she’s halfway across. The Sun Stokers’ orbs grow smaller and dimmer every second, shrinking from the size of melon fruit to potatoes, but Enebish’s power is flagging too. Every time she snuffs the Sun Stokers’ light, the oppressive darkness lightens a shade. Ink to midnight. Raven to charcoal. It’s a battle of stamina, and she is out of practice.

Vanesh, another Breeze Bringer, mounts the buttress next. He shuffles out a few steps, then turns and extends his hand to the Sky King. Varren helps the king navigate the jagged window and steadies his balance until he catches hold of Vanesh. Then the two of them creep forward slowly. Painfully slowly.

“Faster!” I hiss. But the Sky King is too wobbly—encumbered and off balance in his heavy fox fur cloak and pointed slippers. “Lose the finery!” I order. Vanesh turns carefully, hands trembling as he fumbles with the buckle of the Sky King’s cloak. Which is stuck. Of course. Vanesh is still tearing at the clasp when the darkness ripples. The sky flares orange, and my ears ring with a deadly hum.

“Turn back!” I shout.

Too late.

Several balls of starfire whiz past the window, demolishing the courtyard and east wing of the treasury. Varren leaps back into the room, but Vanesh and the Sky King are too far, nearly to the apex of the buttress, and moving slower than ever, thanks to the king’s hysterics. He’s shouting threats and gesticulating wildly instead of putting one foot in front of the other.

Time slows to a crawl. Another burning star careens from above. It crashes through the center of the buttress, and I see every growing splinter, watch every falling fragment, as the structure crumbles.

No.

The Sky King screams. Vanesh flails, grasping for a ledge that isn’t there.

I throw myself forward, arms raking across the broken glass, as if I’ll be able to catch them. They fall in slow, eerie somersaults, like the fluttering seeds of a globeflower. The Sky King thrashes while Vanesh tries to reduce their speed with frantic bursts of wind.

From across the divide, Lizbet adds her wind to the current, and I almost think Vanesh and the king will survive. But then another bolt of starfire slams into the battlements of the treasury. An enormous chunk of blue marble breaks away, like a glacier collapsing into the sea. It slams into Vanesh first, wheeling him around, then breaks across the Sky King’s back. His spine twists unnaturally. His face goes slack. Screams flay my throat open as I watch the Sky King of Ashkar, my lord and master, plunge into the darkness below.

I bury my face in my hands, oddly thankful for Enebish’s blackness. So I don’t have to see my king and comrade painted across the cobbles.

Behind me, the Kalima are silent. I can’t even hear them breathing.

Our lungs have been crushed—like the Sky King’s.

He can’t be gone. There has never been a more powerful leader in the history of Ashkar. He is transcendent. A god on earth. And a god cannot be flattened like an insect on the cobblestones. They can’t.

Sobs rattle from my swollen throat, and I howl into the quiet. How could Enebish do this? How could she murder our king?

“Don’t disgrace them with your tears,” Bastian snaps behind me. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?” I whip around, my face so hard with frost that it crackles and pops.

“You shoved him out onto that narrow beam. You probably wanted him to fall. You probably told your monstrous sister to come.”

“If anyone is at fault, it’s you—all of you double-crossing traitors!” I fling my hand at the Kalima, frost shooting from my fingers and skimming over their heads. “If you’d been following my orders instead of conspiring