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

Kartok shoots the deserter a pitying look.

The Kalima clamber to their feet, back into a circle, and raise their hands. Prepared to fight the Zemyans to the death, which will be swift and pitiful in their current state.

“Stand aside!” I run at the original visage of Kartok. If I were going to lie down and die, I would have done it when I first arrived in Zemya—before I endured Kartok’s torture and traipsed across the continent with my enemies. Before my mind became contaminated with these seeds of sympathy that rooted in my heart and grew into suffocating weeds.

The Kalima dive out of my way, covering their heads as I slam my frost-covered fist into the wall. Ice chips spray my face, and my knuckles carve out a cannonball-sized gouge. But there’s no man inside the ice. With a roar of outrage, I lash out at the wall to my left. Then my right. Swinging with wild, reckless hatred at the illusions. One of them is real.

“Stop, Ghoa.” Ivandar catches my arm and holds me against his chest. “This is what Kartok wants. Stay calm.”

How can I stay calm when he’s surrounding us? When he’s making these horrendous claims about me?

“There’s no bond between us! I would never allow it!” I yell at the sorcerer. My hair is so stiff with frost, the chin-length strands slice my cheeks. Red blood spatters the immaculate ice as I thrash against Ivandar’s hold.

“I’m afraid you didn’t have much say in the matter,” the battalion of Kartoks reply, calm as ever as they prowl behind the frozen walls. Just out of reach. I have never despised Zemyan magic more. “You wouldn’t have survived without my healing ministrations….”

“What are you talking about?” I start to spit, but then my hands leap to my throat, feeling for the invisible scar. I think of what Enebish told me about Orbai. How Kartok healed her and, by so doing, turned her allegiance. Stole her agency. “You inflicted this wound. I’d hardly consider that healing.”

“What wound?” Ivandar interjects.

Kartok shrugs lazily. “The magic doesn’t know or care how the wound was made. It knows only that healing demands a price. And I’ve come to collect.”

“What is he talking about, Ghoa?” Ivandar’s voice rises.

“He slit my throat in his prison, then healed me with Loridium,” I grind out.

Behind me, Enebish and Serik gasp.

Ivandar slams his palm against the cavern wall. “What in the merciful seas is this magical elixir and where did it come from?”

“You didn’t think it was important to tell us that Kartok had infiltrated your mind?” Serik yells at me.

“I didn’t know!” I shout. “And it doesn’t matter because he isn’t in my mind!”

The hiss of Kartok’s voice tiptoes across my shoulders. “Tell me, Commander, have your thoughts been a bit fuzzy lately? Snowy around the edges? Consumed by flashes of white?”

“No,” I lie—too slow.

Kartok chuckles. “I never dreamed when I siphoned your power that the bond between us would be so strong. Imagine my surprise when I discovered, not only could I whisper instructions into your mind, I could freeze your thoughts if you seemed resistant. Such a useful little trick.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, even as I think of the constant headaches, those strange flares of whiteness, and the sudden forcefulness of my thoughts. I clutch my head and frantically sift through every impression and prompting I’ve had since leaving Zemya—every example of “goodness” Ivandar insisted on pointing out. This strange inward transformation I’ve been undergoing. Was none of that me? “I would know if my thoughts weren’t my own,” I insist, but it sounds as if I’m trying to convince myself.

“That’s the ingenuity of it all.” Kartok claps. “They are your thoughts. Loridium bends your very will to mine. Until we are one and the same. Isn’t that right, Temujin?”

The deserter’s head jerks awkwardly, as if he’s being forced to nod. I feel Kartok’s fingers pinch my cheeks too, just like the times he held my tongue. Attempting to move my head in the same manner.

I dig my nails into my scalp and drag them down my face, carving fiery lines through my skin. Desperate to extract Kartok like a parasite.

I think of the moment right before I drove his blade into the prison wall. How he hesitated. He could have stopped me from smashing the glass, but he didn’t. The enchanted steel didn’t turn against me as it should have. I’d told myself he’d been too stunned by my attack to react, that I’d been lucky with the blade.

But there’s no such thing as luck.

Kartok knew exactly what I was doing.

A shiver overtakes me. Cold like I’ve never felt. “You wanted me to escape.”

Kartok’s snake lips curl into a grin. “You clearly weren’t going to cooperate—though Goddess only knows why you’d protect these traitors.” He waves dismissively at the Kalima. “Thankfully, you’re just like me. So I stopped wasting my time with questions. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist punishing your warriors and reclaiming your position once you were free. And look, here we are. I should also thank you for getting the prince out of my way. It’s been so blessedly quiet without his meddling. Though, all of this inner turmoil and angst over what you believe is getting rather tiresome.”

He rubs his temples and my entire body shivers with rage.

Ivandar explodes before I can. “This is how you healed my mother from the sweating sickness!” he cries. “How you always seem to have her ear. Why she continually chooses you over me.”

“Or maybe I’m simply more competent,” Kartok jeers. “You’re a pathetic child, searching for reasons to justify your parent’s neglect, while I am a generál—a true patriot—putting an end to this war and glorifying Zemya.”

Every incarnation of the sorcerer raises his hands, presses his spider-leg fingers against the ice, and steps into being as the walls shatter and crumble.

In an instant the cave fills with thousands of Kartoks. All of them rushing toward