Night Spinner (Night Spinner #1) - Addie Thorley Page 0,64

she lays out a fresh blanket beside her own. She even drags a branch inside for Orbai, who nibbles her fingers in appreciation.

“Thank you,” I whisper as I snuggle under the blanket and stare up at the lantern dangling from the apex of the tent. “I don’t know why you’re so kind to me.”

Inkar yawns. “I’m only doing it so you’ll cooperate and lend your night spinning to our cause.”

The blow lands as hard as an actual punch. I cough and my hands fly to my smarting chest.

“I’m just teasing you.” Inkar’s laughter punctures the quiet like the thwap, thwap, thwap of raining arrows. “You’re one of us now. Family. And while family may goad each other, we also stand up for each other when it matters most.”

“Family,” I repeat, thinking of my own. Of Serik, bound and gagged in the back of a prison wagon. Of Ghoa’s icy tears and haunted expression in those terrible moments before I slammed my darkness to the earth.

I trace my fingers over the little silver-and-onyx feathers at my wrist, wanting to rip the bracelet off and clasp it tighter all at once.

Is she hunting me? Does she miss me? Do I want her to miss me? These maddening thoughts go around and around my brain until I finally succumb to exhaustion.

But there’s little rest in sleep.

Maybe it’s because I carved the moonstone from my flesh. Or maybe it’s because I called the night during my escape with Orbai. Or maybe it’s the stronger connection to the Lady of the Sky in this realm. But for the first time in two years, I dream of Nariin.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IT BEGINS WITH THE FAMILIAR HORRORS, THE THINGS the moonstone could never fully eradicate: the swirling, amorphous darkness and the terrifying weight on my chest. But now the nightmare expands like blotches of paint, revealing hidden, horrifying details. Still not a complete picture, but glimpses. Flashes.

I see a field of crystalline snow, blinding in its purity. A blink later, it’s littered with heaps of charred bodies, like flies in a bucket of milk. And the smell … burning flesh and melting hair. I choke and gag as I crawl through the smoldering ashes.

Ghoa is there, sitting beside me. She’s folded into a tiny ball with her head on her knees, her hand still resting on her blood-covered sword. She rocks forward and back and quietly whispers, “How could you? How could you? Burning skies, how could you?”

“Enebish!” Inkar’s frantic voice blasts through the billows of smoke, and I rip back into consciousness. Her hands are clamped around my shoulders, holding my thrashing arms to my sides, and Orbai circles above us like a screeching whirlwind.

“It’s just a dream,” Inkar says, gasping.

But it isn’t just a dream. It’s a memory. The memory. As angry as I am with Ghoa, seeing her like that—so gutted and distraught, yet stalwart by my side, when my crime was far worse than attacking an eagle—breaks something inside of me.

I curl into a ball and moan into my hands. My skin is slathered in sweat, and pain radiates through my injured arm and leg—as sharp and as raw as it was on that terrible day. “Why did I kill them? I didn’t mean …” I didn’t mean to let the monster escape. I didn’t even know it was there, lying dormant inside of me. I had never felt its wicked presence before. Had never even come close to losing control of my Kalima power.

Lies.

I had been foolish and reckless and grasping. Every bit as desperate for promotion as Ghoa. Each night after receiving that first official missive from the king, I sent my darkness into his bedchamber. I shaped the wisps into images of me leading the Kalima and told the tendrils what to whisper in his sleeping ears. As we marched farther and farther from Sagaan, it required more of my strength. So much so, my grip on the night began to falter during drills. It would spark and flare and burn out entirely. I knew I should stop—my power was needed on the battlefield. But I couldn’t. What better way to honor my parents than by leading the Kalima against the Zemyans?

“Shhh,” Inkar murmurs. She smooths the damp clumps of hair away from my face. “You’re safe. You haven’t hurt anyone. We’re in the realm of the Eternal Blue, remember?”

My eyes creak open to find walls of mint-green silk and Inkar’s worried face hovering over mine. Orbai lands on my other side