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

with my tongue. It almost makes me feel a twinge of guilt for the thousands of icy daggers I’ve rammed into Zemyan skulls over the years. Except, of course, they deserved them.

“Next time the knife won’t be an illusion,” Kartok warns, drawing back the folds of his azure robe to reveal an identical weapon. Only, this one rings as the steel leaves the scabbard and the edge is cold and sharp as he jabs it beneath my chin.

I lick my chapped lips and stare into his unnaturally blue eyes. Demon eyes. “We both know you’re not going to kill me.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t make you wish you were dead.”

“I have an extremely high tolerance for pain.”

Kartok leans against the blade, and drops of blood trickle from my throat. “There’s more than one type of pain, Commander.” He returns the knife to his hip and fiddles with little knobs hidden in the wall until the glass passageway reappears behind him. “Get some rest.”

A dangerous smile steals across his lips, and as the throne room solidifies between us, the low rumble of laughter fills the room.

My stomach lurches into my chest.

Because the laughter isn’t Kartok’s.

It’s the Sky King’s.

I’d recognize his voice anywhere.

I know he isn’t here, but I whip around to check because it sounds so real. So close—wild, unhinged laughter that borders on crying. It seems to be coming from the gilded throne, and as I creep toward it, the Sky King slowly materializes, fading into existence as if through thick fog. Those eyes that miss nothing. The merciless slash of his brows. That thin, unforgiving mouth.

“You.” He stands and moves toward me, and that’s when I notice the bright strip of gore staining the side of his robe. How his fox fur crown sits askew on his head—the back half of his skull crushed. Blood bubbles from his lips, thick as tar, when he speaks. “You failed me. You failed Ashkar.”

I close my eyes and chant, “It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it isn’t real.” But it feels so real, my body refuses to believe the logic from my brain. I can smell the king’s expensive cologne. I can even hear the imperceptible hitch of his step from an old war wound that only I know about.

“How does it feel to be responsible for the fall of an empire?” he prods. “To be the biggest disappointment Ashkar has ever known? What will your parents think?”

I try to fight it off, but the woody scent of Papá’s pipe smoke and the citrusy punch of Mamá’s orange water perfume drift past my nose. And then they’re there, standing before me. Sobbing.

I cough so hard, I vomit.

“Their fall from society will be catastrophic,” the Sky King continues. “Not only did I perish under your watch, you were captured during the Zemyan siege—when commanders are never captured—because your own soldiers saw your weakness and ineptitude and turned against you. Your parents will be shunned. Humiliated. They’ll regret ever having a daughter—if they survive the siege, that is….”

His laughter resumes, boring into my brain like a spear tip. I feel my throat closing. My eyes stinging. I have to get away. I throw myself against the walls, pounding and poking, desperate to find the invisible knobs.

After what feels like days, I retreat to the farthest corner of the hall and huddle into a ball. Teeth clenched. Palms over my ears. But that only provides partial relief, because I’m surrounded by eyes. All of those damnable eyes, peering down at me from the dangling masks. Only now they’re no longer the eyes of Ashkar’s greatest warriors. They’re eyes I stared into every day for over a decade. The eyes of my Kalima warriors—stripped of their humanity and every shred of respect, leaving only a reflection of those final, terrible moments on the ice bridge. Varren’s regretful but rigid gaze. Weroneka not even bothering to look back. Eshwar’s sneer and Karwani’s disgust. Even little Reza, my page, who wasn’t trapped in Papá’s office and who has never looked on me with anything but adoration, blinks round, wet eyes. Bright with betrayal. As if I ran my saber through his gut.

I’ve never seen magic like this. Not in all my years on the battlefront. I knew the Zemyans could disguise their faces and manipulate their weapons, but I didn’t know they could create the illusion of entirely different worlds. And trap me within them.

The painted walls press closer; the king’s laughter peals louder. I rock in the corner. Spewing profanities. Praying Kartok’s magic will eventually fade. Power always has a limit. But the onslaught continues, and the images filling my head are more horrifying than any amount of bodily torture he could have inflicted.

My anguish is so heavy, it feels like I’m sinking through the floor. Like I couldn’t possibly descend any lower. Which is when the specter of Enebish arrives to haunt me. She drags herself toward me through red-stained snow, her right arm nearly severed and her leg flopping bonelessly. “Are you happy?” she croaks, blood burbling from her lips. “You destroyed me—and yourself—for nothing.”

“You are to blame!” I scream back at her. “You were trying to usurp me, humiliate me. No matter that I saved you and trained you and gave you everything. None of this would have happened if I’d left you to die in Verdenet.”

As my mother counseled me to do.

“I’m not certain this is the best idea,” she said when I returned with Enebish from the war front. She paced the halls and picked at her nails while our maids scrubbed the soot and dirt from Enebish’s skin and scrounged for clothes small enough to fit her emaciated frame. Finally Mamá pulled me into Papá’s study and lowered her voice. “We know nothing about this Southerner. Or her family. And we’ve already endured so many rumors by taking in your cousin. She’s not even from Ashkar….”

But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Because I couldn’t forget the way Enebish looked