Night Spinner (Night Spinner #1) - Addie Thorley Page 0,121

already gone, winging into the smoke.

I watch the flames billow higher, raging across the field with unnatural speed. The temple will be surrounded in minutes.

Move, Enebish.

I roll to my stomach and fling myself forward. Shards from the broken floor rake my arms like claws, and I position myself on top of a particularly large fragment of ruby. As I pitch myself forward and back, the serrated edge slowly saws the rope. When it finally snaps, I fumble with bloody fingers to untie the binding around my ankles. Then I climb to my feet and spin a circle, surveying the inferno. Even from the top of the hill, heat laps my face. Smoke strangles me with its noxious fingers, and my heart pounds wildly at the sheer impossibility of what I have to do: cross the fiery fields, steal a portal stone from the decimated encampment without being caught, and make it to the gateway before I’m burned to a crisp.

Hysterical laughter pours from my lips as I limp for the stairs, but I halt on the final step and glance back at the urns—filled with my darkness and starfire.

I can’t just leave them.

A true warrior would never save themselves and condemn the rest of Ashkar.

Wheeling back around, I lower my shoulder and run at the pots. I slam against the largest obsidian urn, but it doesn’t so much as rattle. I push and heave and kick at every pot down the line, but it’s as if they’re glued to the floor with mortar. When I try to reach my hand inside, my fingers smash against an invisible barrier.

I scream and fall to my knees, burying my face in my hands.

“This is no time to be praying, Enebish,” a familiar voice scolds.

Shivers flash down my body, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m hearing things now. Imagining the impossible.

“Do I have to carry you out of here? I’m strong enough, of course, but it would be faster if you’d—”

I bolt up from the floor and a wail bursts from my lips when a face materializes through the smoke—freckled cheeks covered in black powder, hazel eyes squished into half-moon crescents.

“Miss me?” Serik attempts a devious grin but it wobbles at the edges, becoming earnest and apologetic.

It feels like a punch to the gut. Like coming home.

An eternity passes before I find my voice, and even then, it’s so small and warbling it sounds nothing like me. “You’re alive.”

He vaults up the steps and crushes me in an embrace. “I’m alive.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I BURY MY FACE IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS NECK AND INHALE the familiar scents of parchment and pine ink. I twine my fists in his crimson robe and melt into the warmth of his arms, my skin smoldering at every point of contact.

He’s real.

Alive.

“How?” I blubber. “Ghoa said you were dead. I saw the papers….”

Serik huffs out an indignant breath and rolls his eyes, and the reaction is so unapologetically him, I laugh through welling sobs.

“I’m offended you think Ghoa could kill me so easily. I have always been the stronger cousin—or the more cunning cousin, anyway. Give me a little credit.” His eyes sparkle, drinking me in as if I’m a pitcher of cool water on a scorching day.

“But she had your cloak! And if you weren’t dead, where have you been all this time? How did you open the gateway?”

“As eager as I am to regale you with details of my daring escape and this ingenious rescue, we need to get a move on. I sort of blew up the Shoniin’s encampment, and that fire will wait for no one.” He points to the cerulean blaze, rushing ever closer.

“That was you?” I slap my forehead. “Of course it was you. But how? It would take a dozen cannons to create an explosion like that.”

“That … is also an explanation for another time. We have a lot to catch up on.” Serik flashes his most squinty-eyed smile, grabs my hand, and pulls me down the temple steps. The air around us burns like an oven, nearly too hot to breathe.

When we reach the bottom of the hill, Serik stops and looks back. “Where’s Orbai?”

“She isn’t coming.” My voice wobbles and I can’t meet Serik’s eyes. I wave him forward, but he digs his heels in like the stubborn mule he is.

“Why not?”

“Just go!”

He searches my watery eyes for a long second, then nods grimly.

Muffled wails puncture the roar of the blaze as we race across the fields to the gateway.