Something feels off.
Serik warned me so many times. Even without a Kalima power, and despite never having worshiped the Lady of the Sky, he could feel it.
As I should have.
As Idid.
This damnable buzzing and constant scraping at my energy feels like leeches wriggling beneath my skin. It has from the moment I crossed into this realm. As soon as I touched this cursed stone altar, I knew in my bones it didn’t feel right. But I was so desperate to save Orbai and Serik, and eager to be in the realm of the Eternal Blue among others who believed as I did. I was so desperate to be a warrior, I was willing to overlook the signs.
Serik was right to leave. To question my judgment.
And Ghoa may have been wrong about many things, but she was right about this—as much as it pains me to admit.
Ashkar will fall because of him.
And I didn’t listen because I didn’t think anyone else could betray me so completely. By the time our battalions at the war front learn Sagaan is under attack, the city will be lost. BecauseIbrought these termites into our home.
I gaze across the ever-shifting landscape—the sky split with spiderwebs of black and the fields blooming one second then wilting the next—and scream for Orbai. But still she doesn’t come. I suppose I don’t blame her.
I do, however, blame the Lady of the Sky.
“Why would you allow this to happen?” I mutter up at the insidious blue. I know this isn’t Her realm. The true realm of the Eternal Blue is probably worlds away—ifit exists at all. But I shout anyway, just in case She can hear. “I was going aboutyourwork. You confirmed this was the right course, but it clearly isn’t. Am I nothing but a mockery to you?
“Or are you a liar?” I say in a quiet, accusatory voice. “Or maybe you’re not there at all. Maybe the Sky King is right and you never have been.”
Part of me wants it to be true. But my pathetic, loyal heart cries out at the wrongness of these claims. The core of who I am, the innermost essence of Enebish, has always been and will always be intrinsically tied to the sky. As much as I want to deny every last shred of my faith, I can’t. Because the Lady of the Sky lives inside me. Denying Her would be denying myself. One cannot exist without the other. This probably makes me foolish and naïve, but it also makes meme.
“Why?” I shout again. “If you’re with me,why?”
Footsteps crunch through the grass.
I stifle my cries and incline my head. Temujin makes his way slowly up the hill. Livid bruises still encircle his neck like a collar, and he walks with a limp that resembles mine. But he’swalking.And he’s clad in a fresh gray tunic and breeches, his boots polished to a high shine.
“You’re looking remarkably well for someone who nearly died,” I snap.
He trudges up the stone steps and leans against a jade pillar. “Allying with sorcerers has its benefits,” he says quietly, staring at his boots.
“The first truthful words from your lips. Have you come to gloat? To laugh at the poor, stupid girl you tricked into aiding you?”
“Does it look like I’m gloating?” He drags a hand through his damp hair and I hack to expel the cloying scent of tea soap. Ihatethat smell. Almost as much as I hate the imploring look in his golden eyes. And the fact that I once relished our shared heritage. And how I wrote with him in his Book of Whisperings and shivered at the feel of his fingertips on my scars.
“It wasn’t all a lie,” he continues. “I really was abandoned at Novesti. My battalion left me bleeding in the snow.”
“Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?”
“The Lady of the Sky didn’t heal me.”
I snort and glower at him. “I gathered as much.”
“Kartok did. He was healing his warriors with Loridium and executing the wounded—stabbing an enchanted spear through each Ashkarian gut—but I cried out. Vowed to do anything they asked if he would spare me. So we struck a bargain. He and the other Zemyan sorcerers had invented axanav—that’s what they call this place: a pocket world in which to hide their armies—but they couldn’t venture far enough across Ashkar’s border to plant it. And sorcerers cannot enter a realm of their own creation or the weft of the magic frays and collapses—as you’re witnessing now. I agreed to plant thexanav,to raise a rebel army and ferry soldiers across the border, in exchange for my life—and a better life once the Zemyans are in command. I am to be governor of Sagaan.”
“Again, do you expect me to congratulate you? Why are you wasting your breath telling me this?”
He steps into the temple and crouches beside me. Too close. I lurch away from the terrible warmth of his skin.
He has the gall to look hurt. “It doesn’t have to be like this, En. You don’t have to be a prisoner. We don’t have to leech your Kalima power from you. You could help us of your own accord. Use your darkness and starfire to help us take Ashkar, and together we can restore peace and prosperity to Verdenet and Chotgor and Namaag. We can help the starving refugees and children sent like chaff to the war front. This is the only way to end the conflict and help our people. To restore our way of life.”
I laugh so hard, I choke. “Restore our way of life? Last I checked, you have little autonomy when you’reenslaved.There will be nothing left ofanynation, other than Zemya, once Empress Danashti is finished with us.”
