Dawn of Cobalt Shadows (Burning Empire Book 2), Emma Hamm [list of ebook readers .txt] 📗

from this story. The humans were at fault, but we are a forgiving sort. Even Amunet allowed her people to leave, to learn their own path, and then gave her body so that she could continue to guide us even in death.

“This story is not meant to upset you. It’s not meant to fan the fires of anger, hatred, and fear. Now you know where you came from, what history you need to overcome, but this is not your path. You were not meant to continue the mistakes of your ancestors.”

“Then what was I meant to do?” A tear slid down her cheek. “I’ve been searching my entire life for meaning to my existence, and every corner I turn is just more and more confusing.”

“You have a lot of growing still to do,” Aslaug replied, then wiped the tear from her cheek. “You don’t need to find the meaning to your existence, little one. It will come to you as the sun rises on the horizon each day. It will drift from the sky like a feather from a bird long gone. The meaning to your life is defined by you and you alone. It cannot be found, only received.”

She felt herself tear at the seams. The mere thought that this woman couldn’t tell her what to do, where to go, or how to be… Well, it made sense. Of course they weren’t going to make every decision for her. But gods, how was she supposed to do it herself?

Sigrid was flying apart at every corner, and she didn’t know where she was going to go after this. There were too many broken pieces in her soul, and she didn’t know how to put them back together in the right way.

She’d started a war. She’d saved her people, but lost someone good in the action.

Nadir.

The name ghosted across her mind like a physical touch. She’d forced herself not to think of him, hoping that in the absence of thought that he wouldn’t haunt her. But there he was. At every step she took, he followed closely behind, because he’d never really left her side. Not yet.

Wasn’t she supposed to have forgotten him by now? The sultan who had stolen her away from her people, who had persecuted their own kind. The boy who had slowly turned into a man in front of her eyes.

She missed him. The laughter in his eyes, the surprise when he did something he finally felt was right. The way he’d squeeze her hand and the way he always thought she wasn’t quite beautiful but strong, and that was all that mattered in this life.

A small sob choked her throat as she tried to speak, and she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.

She wanted to say that all of this had been in vain. That every choice she’d made had only brought her farther and farther away from happiness and she didn’t know how to grab onto that thread and drag herself out of this ever-sinking hole.

Aslaug reached out and pulled Sigrid’s hand away from her mouth. Slowly, the matriarch drew her into her arms and touched their foreheads together. “Easy, child. You’re here now, and you don’t have to leave until you find yourself again.”

“I just want to make the right choice,” she whispered.

“For yourself, or for your people?”

To answer the first felt selfish. She’d carry that guilt with her for the rest of her life, knowing that she’d chosen to be herself while the rest of her people were in pain. But the second made her soul ache and her heart clench. She couldn’t do that either. She couldn’t choose them again while knowing it would only end in more heartache.

“Myself,” she whispered, another sob shaking her entire body within Aslaug’s arms. “I want to choose myself for once.”

The matriarch breathed out a sigh that feathered across Sigrid’s eyes, chilling the tears there.

“Then we will teach you, dragoness. We will teach you how to choose yourself.”

14

Nadir

Wind blasted the sand up into his face, burning his skin and stinging his eyes with the power of its rage. Nadir lifted an arm up to cover his face then swore under his breath. This journey was meant to be easier than just wandering through the desert, and yet, here he was.

His lips were cracked from lack of water. His skin was so dry and aching that he was certain it had split open in a few places under the layer of his clothing. He desperately need to drink and eat.

Hadn’t Solomon said this would be an easier journey? He vaguely remembered the man saying that, or maybe the man who eerily looked like him had simply meant that it was a journey. He didn’t know, and wasn’t exactly thinking straight at this point.

The wind brushed by his cheek again, but this time it felt like the soft velvet of hair. He’d felt it before, so many times while he made this trek that he sometimes had a hard time figuring out whether it was real or not.

Sigrid. The damned woman was still here, whether he wanted her to be or not. She was in every step he took through the desert.

Sometimes he saw her standing on top of a dune, beckoning him in a direction he hadn’t thought to go. And every time, he made sure he followed her. She’d never led him wrong before, and it didn’t matter that this version of her was a mirage.

He hoped it was his mind telling him where to go. That his mind knew where this journey needed to lead him while his body slowly failed.

If he could change, this would be so much easier. The dragon still raged in his mind, slamming at the gates of its cage and desperately trying to save the two of them. He could fly up into the air, scout where he needed to go, and immediately change back if that was what Nadir wanted.

But it wasn’t. He couldn’t