SKY
BREAKER
ADDIE THORLEY
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FOR LOR AND COURT, THE WORLD’S BEST SISTERS
I’M GLAD WE DIDN’T KILL EACH OTHER AS KIDS, BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’D DO WITHOUT YOU NOW.
“For love is like a tree; it grows of itself; it sends its roots deep into our being, and often continues to grow green over a heart in ruins.”
—VICTOR HUGO, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
CHAPTER ONE
ENEBISH
DARKNESS RISES AROUND ME LIKE A SHIELD—GIRDING ME with armor, enfolding me in steel, deflecting the whispers that climb the cavern walls like goblin spiders.
It’s easy to tell when people are talking about you: They huddle into groups and throw hasty glances over their shoulders. They murmur in hushed tones and jump when you enter the room, their smiles too wide, their faces too bright.
I want to tell the shepherds not to bother. I’m hidden in every inky shadow, pressed into every murky corner of these caves. Which means I hear every skeptical and disapproving word they utter.
Sand scuffs beneath my knees as I crawl along a narrow ledge jutting over the mouth of our cavern like a swollen lip. Nearly a thousand homeless shepherds are camped below, their tents and animals spread throughout the system of limestone caves hidden beneath the sand dunes of Verdenet.
I heard countless rumors of the caves when I was young. Traders claimed they were an ideal place to take refuge from snow squalls and hide from caravan raiders. If you could find them. According to Southern legend, such a staggering number perished in search, the dunes are composed of disintegrated bones rather than sand—that’s what makes the desert look so white. But we accomplished that part of our journey without much trouble—the only part that hasn’t been riddled with it—thanks to the darkness. The tendrils took me by the hand and led me eagerly toward the eternally blackened tunnels and shafts.
Though, I don’t think anyone in our company would call the caves ideal. They are frigid and gloomy, with wet floors and walls covered in luminescent moss that, while beautiful, is deadly to the touch. And don’t even get me started on the goblin spiders and fire geckos and the banshee vipers that scream like a dying child when they lunge from their crevasses to bite your ankles.
It’s the last place nomads accustomed to the boundless grasslands and open sky of Ashkar would choose to live. The last place I would choose to live. But when you’re being hunted by the Imperial Army for liberating a notorious criminal, and then you’ve been betrayed by said criminal after they allied with your greatest enemy, you have to make concessions. Hide somewhere no one would suspect. Somewhere no one else can find.
Temujin taught me that.
“Enebish!” My name ricochets through the tunnels so loudly, a cloud of bats take flight. I bolt upright, underestimating the height of the serrated ceiling and the sharpness of the rocky floor. The back of my head bashes against a stalactite and my bad leg drags across a protrusion of rock.
I close my eyes, curse behind clamped lips, and pull the cocoon of darkness tighter around me, wishing it could block out voices as well as light.
“Enebish!” they yell again. It has to be at least five shepherds, all shouting at once. My entire body shudders. The complaints and demands are never ending. And the most ironic part is, the shepherds doubt and disparage me with one breath, then cry for my help with the next. I am the problem and the solution. Their scapegoat and their savior.
Which is to be expected, I remind myself. A good leader lives and dies by their successes and failures. They are confident and unflappable—no matter how grim the battle—until the war is won.
You wanted this chance.
Now all I want is for more than two minutes to pass without being criticized or summoned. I want to actually disappear for a few hours to bathe in the geothermal pools hidden at the backs of these caverns, where the rocks are yellow and the water is electric green and surprisingly warm. Hopefully hot enough to scald away my exhaustion and anxiety and doubt.
I try not to consider what that says about me—that I want to be alone again, so soon after two years of solitude at Ikh Zuree. That I’m ready to surrender my title as leader just two weeks after guiding the shepherds from the desolate grazing lands outside of Sagaan.
When Serik’s voice joins the shouting, I sigh and release my hold on the darkness. If he’s entered the fray, it means one of two things: it truly is an emergency—or he’s so tired of the shepherds’ squabbling, he’s going to strangle someone, which will create an emergency.
I pick my way down from the ledge and amble toward the shouting. I should probably hurry, but my feet drag through the puddles. And, for once, it has nothing to do with my old injuries. The first dozen or so times the shepherds summoned me like this, I raced from my bedroll with my heart in my throat, my mind spinning with every horrible scenario:
The tents were on fire.
Shoniin scouts had found the caves.
The children had brushed against the deadly moss.
But no.
Cezari had tied his goats too close to Yimran’s camp and they’d eaten large holes through their
