“I have a bad feeling about this, Serik,” I say, my heart buzzing in my chest like the wings of a dragonfly.
Serik’s face softens. He twines his fingers through mine and tugs me closer, tucking my head beneath his stubbled chin. “I know it’s hard,” he whispers for my ears only, “but we’re your allies. If you can’t trust us, this rebellion is doomed before it’s truly begun.”
I clutch his hand tighter. I know Serik’s right. I’m not being fair. I’m treating everyone as if they’re going to betray me—as if they already have. But how can I be anything but wary when Ghoa framed me for a massacre and Temujin tricked me and Kartok siphoned my power and stored it in his urns?
“We can do this,” Serik murmurs into my hair. “Have faith.”
There it is again. That word. Coming from Serik.
He gives my shoulders a squeeze, then turns back to Ziva and the crowd of waiting shepherds. “Gather your belongings! We leave for Namaag at sundown.”
CHAPTER SIX
GHOA
EVERYONE FEARS THE DARKNESS TO SOME DEGREE. IT MAKESthe walls feel closer. Sounds seem louder. Every whisper of breath is sinister and every prickle on your skin is menacing.
It renders even seasoned warriors like the Kalima useless.
Their shouts fill the vault behind me and spill down the long treasury hall, low and high, shrill and warbling, as they realize what the darkness means.
What Enebish has done.
She isn’t acting in self-defense or rescuing the “weak.”
She isattackingus.
“Do you know what you’redoing?” I roar into the blackness. We’ll never be able to stand against the advancing Zemyans if we’re locked in battle with one another. Maybe that’s the aim? Temujin has never been concerned with keeping Ashkar strong—always stealing our rations and cannons, luring our soldiers away and releasing prisoners. He probably wants Sagaan to fall. Wants to see the Sky King dethroned. Wants to end the Kalima.
And Enebish supports him.
Part of me wants to scream and flail like my comrades trapped in the blackened vault, but I refuse to give Enebish and Temujin that satisfaction. Plus I have an advantage the others do not: I’m accustomed to Enebish’s darkness. As accustomed as a person can be without the ability to spin the night, that is.
Stretching out my arms, I feel my way across the glass-strewn atrium and back down the corridor, breaking into a run once my hand is flush against the wall.
When Enebish’s power first presented, she stayed up all night fiddling with the ink-black threads, as she called them, drenching our entire room in impenetrable shadow. She never would have stopped practicing—she never would have even known the sun had risen—if I hadn’t woken up screaming most mornings.
In time, I grew less terrified of the oppressive blackness. But I will never forget how my heart raced that first morning. How I felt like I was choking, suffocating. Falling down, down, down a never-ending well.
Just as my honorless, double-crossing warriors are now.
They continue to fight and thrash, desperate to escape the vault.
When we first chose the space for our war room, the close walls and jutting shelves seemed like a good thing. An extra layer of protection. But in the dark, the obstacles might as well be prison bars. Not even the Sun Stokers can counteract Enebish’s darkness. They snap their fingers, but every spark is doused in an instant, leaving the most elite warriors in Ashkar to grapple helplessly for the door.
I feel my way to the threshold and lean against the frame, listening to their weakness. Picturing their desperation. I ran back to them on instinct—to rally them to defend our king and city—but now I’m tempted to leave them here. It would be so easy to slip down the hall and out the door. Let them try to escape and orchestrate a counterattack without me.
This is what happens when you “dismiss” your commander,I’d crow as I watched Enebish and Temujin overtake them.
Or even better, I could seal the door with ice and fill the air with frost. Trap them in here until they’re too cold to move, too frozen to escape. A gift for the Shoniin.
I reach for the door, my lips carved into a grin, when my mother’s warbling voice and my father’s stricken face appear through the blackness. They’re seated in the music room at our estate, as always, but instead of rushing to greet me, eager to hear of my victories, Mamá is sobbing over her embroidery and Papá is pacing the room, downing glass after glass of vorkhi.
“How did you, alone, escape?” he asks.
“Was there nothing you could have done to save them?” Mamá cries.
“We’re so grateful you survived, but …”
