Night Spinner (Night Spinner #1) - Addie Thorley Page 0,84

if you open your eyes.”

“Trust me,” I say again. Because for the first time in my life, I feel like my eyes are finally open.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I COLLAPSE FACEDOWN ON MY BEDROLL AND SLEEP LIKE THE dead, too exhausted to dream. Temujin collects me what feels like minutes later, though more than twenty-four hours have somehow passed.

“Your rendezvous with Kartok is farther south, which means it will take two days to return to the Ram’s Head.” Temujin rattles off instructions while I rub the sleep from my eyes. “It’s too risky for you to travel by day, so you must find a secure hiding spot near water and arrange a meet-up with Chanar’s ration raiders.”

I nod when I’m supposed to and manage a few grunts that sound like agreement, but all the while Serik’s cynical laughter plays in my ears. His disappointed face hovers at the edges of my vision.

Would it kill you to believe in something? I want to shout at him across the Eternal Blue. To believe in me?

Guilt wallops me over the head a breath later.

You don’t need a master. Be your own hero.

Serik does believe in me. Just not how I want him to. Not how I need him to.

“Are you listening to a word I’m saying?” Temujin cocks a concerned brow at me.

“Yes, sorry. I’m just—”

“If it’s too much too soon, we can find another way,” Temujin offers. But his voice is small and he can’t meet my eyes.

I stand and pull on my greaves. “We both know there’s no other way.”

When I arrive at the rendezvous point, I find Kartok huddled in a gully thick with scrub oak. His brown cloak and tunic blend so perfectly with the decaying leaves, I see the breath ghosting from his lips before I see the man himself. I dismount and settle into the weeds beside him, shocked anew at the pallor of his skin—so white, it’s nearly blue from cold. This far south, less snow covers the ground, but the wind is far more punishing, whistling through the slot canyons and stripping the last of the leaves from the trees.

“Took you long enough.” He blows into his hands. “I was beginning to think you left me to freeze to death.”

“I’m sorry. The ride was long and my legs kept cramping. I had to take breaks. Do you want to build a fire?”

He levels a glare at me and points across the flat, barren field, in the middle of which sits a sprawling fort surrounded by tall wooden walls. There’s nothing else for leagues and leagues, not even a gnarled tree.

“Have you forgotten?” I snap my fingers and momentarily blacken the sky directly over us. “I promise they won’t see a thing.”

“Yes, yes! Praise the goddess of the heavens,” he moans.

I quirk a brow as he grapples for grass and twigs to use as kindling. I’ve never heard that particular expression before, but he was trapped in a Zemyan prison camp for a good deal of his life. He’s bound to do things differently.

“This job is much more pleasant since you came along, Enebish the Destroyer,” Kartok says once our fire is roaring and I’ve stitched a veil of night around us. “Though, don’t get too comfortable. We have a job to do.” He tuts his tongue like the monks at the Ikh Zuree and points an accusatory finger at me, reclined on my elbows, the threads of darkness resting slack in my palms. “You’re acting like you’re Queen of Night after one successful mission.”

I laugh because it feels so natural to be lounging in the darkness like this, I almost forgot to be afraid. Almost forgot a monster prowls beneath my skin.

Kartok and I exchange tales while we wait for the recruits to extinguish and relight the lantern in the eastern tower—our signal that it’s nearly midnight.

“It was by pure luck I escaped from the Zemyans,” Kartok says in a faraway voice. “I’d been captive so long, and was so docile and defeated, they stopped checking the shackles around my ankles. One day I discovered the iron had corroded from the filth, so I climbed out when the night watch changed, bludgeoned the unsuspecting guard over the head, and ran to freedom.”

“I am the opposite,” I tell him. “Poor luck brought about my freedom. Had I never been discovered and tortured at the Qusbegi Festival, Ghoa never would have sent me on my mission. I would still be trapped within the walls of Ikh Zuree, ignorant to the