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

way I couldn’t describe. Bigger than I would ever be. I had been so certain that nothing in the world could be more endless than the grasslands, until I saw those waves, rippling into eternity. A million shades of blue, each one deeper and darker.

The closer we get to Karekemish, the more impossible it becomes to sleep. The air is heavy and thick and revolting, and I sweat all night, my Kalima power still too depleted to summon cooling drafts. Though, I wouldn’t be able to sleep in the heart of a blizzard with the way my thoughts are racing. My panic escalates every day as I think of Sagaan. Of the Zemyans, sinking their claws deeper into my country, now that there’s nothing and no one to hold them back.

We have no king, the Kalima will have retreated to the rendezvous point in the northern steppes to regroup, and our troops at the battlefront were undoubtedly obliterated when the Zemyans cut their way through to Sagaan.

I imagine the seven sectors of the capital in flames, burning like the Sky Palace. All the beautiful architecture, destroyed. Thousands of years of progress, lost. I picture the people scrambling down the streets like rats before a cat, screaming for help—for warriors who will never come.

And what will become of the Protected Territories? How long will it take for the Zemyans to reach them? I want to believe our remaining troops will stand their ground and guard our holdings, but when I close my eyes, I see them abandoning their posts and fleeing into the night. There’s nothing keeping them there without the king to answer to.

Without me to lead them.

Thankfully, I won’t have to witness any of it. I’ll be long dead.

Perhaps the Kalima did me a favor after all.

We reach Karekemish a week later, and it’s nothing like I remember.

When we invaded the Zemyan capital three years ago, I galloped past houses that were nothing more than hovels made of mud and hay. Rudimentary wells had been dug right into the center of the streets, causing massive amounts of flooding. Sad little boats were tipped over on every rocky stretch of beach, and it reeked of fish and sewage. And the people! They looked like the clear white sand scorpions that only emerge in the desert at night.

Now I gape up at towering copper gates. They are as high as any wall in Sagaan and just as beautiful—the copper as green as the sea beyond, the bars formed of sculpted serpents and tiny spiral seashells. Starfish and long, swirling plants crown the top.

Inside the city, the houses are definitely not made of mud and hay. They may be brown, but they’re tall and sturdy, with wraparound balconies, windows made of sea glass, and shining abalone roofs. The roads are paved not with cobbles, but an endless slab of sandstone that’s so smooth, the wagon feels as if it’s floating.

The Zemyans have clearly rebuilt.

Except barbarians could never accomplish all of this so quickly.

“Impressed, Commander?”

I lurch back from the window, and the Zemyan sorcerer laughs. He leers at me through the bars, so close that I choke on the sour tang of his breath.

The deeper we wind into the city, the more the wagon slows. Crowds of Zemyans in golden finery pour from their homes to point and shout. Shrill horns blare and hands pound the wagon’s walls like thunder. As if this is a monumental occasion. As if I’m someone important.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

My enemies revere me more than my own warriors.

The sun creeps higher and the heat intensifies. I feel like I’m baking inside this blasted box as we plod down the long, thin peninsula. The glaring light shining off the water is so bright, I don’t see Empress Danashti’s palace, rising out of the sea, until we come to a halt in front of it.

It’s the opposite of the Sky Palace in every way.

Where the Sky Palace is dazzling white marble, reaching up into the clouds, Empress Danashti’s palace is one sprawling level made from black coral that juts and twists into strange, porous shapes.

I would never call it pretty. This entire country is harsh and austere—devoid of the lush grass, sparkling snow, and tall, spired buildings that make Ashkar beautiful—but it’s also not the slum that lives in my memory.

The lock on the wagon doors clanks and harsh sunlight fills the compartment, making it easy for the Zemyans to clamp manacles around my wrists and shove me from the wagon while I squint.

I hit the ground like a flopping fish and the crowd roars louder.

The sticky heat is even more oppressive out here. If my icy core had begun to refreeze, it’s a puddle beneath my armor now. Seeping from my skin in buckets of sweat.

“We’ve brought a gift for the empress!” my captor bellows.

The throng roars, and heralds with long, strange trumpets turn toward the palace. Their music is low and rumbling, buzzing the marrow in my bones, and they do not stop until a water chariot appears from the far side of the coral palace. The chariot is shaped like a cup, with fanning grooves like a seashell, and it’s pulled by a team of porpoises. A cluster of people stand inside, but my eyes go immediately to the woman at the front: an enemy I have only seen from across the battlefield.

Empress Danashti is somehow more imposing and more unremarkable up close. I’ve only ever seen her mounted on her warhorse, and she’s much smaller than I realized. Hardly larger than a child. Her features are blunt and unrefined. Dark brows frame her bone-white face and silver-white hair billows behind her like the foam churning from her chariot. She looks too soft and too hard. Too plain and too beautiful to be the ruthless leader of these magic-wielding demons.

The gathered crowd falls onto their faces as she lifts her gauzy skirt and steps onto the sand. It’s so quiet, I