Crown of Starlight by Anne Zoelle

Author:Anne Zoelle [Zoelle, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy
Publisher: Excelsine Press
Published: 2020-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Rone

The southern border of the Land of Darkness

“That a worldbreaker has been born gives us another option.” Rone poked the fire in the middle of their newest camp, at the southern border of the Land of Darkness. He couldn’t watch Taline stare at the glowing skin of her bare arms for the hundredth time. It made him feel too many things. “Fight a force with a force.”

Fehl wouldn't even be needed.

“The boy isn’t yet Awakened,” Ninli murmured. “He might remain that way.”

“He has been unmade at least once.” Rone poked his stick in her direction. “How many times do you think they have reversed that boy?”

Ninli looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

He regarded her for a moment, then went back to tending the fire. “You want to save him. Like you wanted to save the nymph.”

“Maybe they are saving him,” she murmured. “By keeping him unmade right now.”

“So he can’t break the world?” Rone jabbed the fire and flipped four strips of meat. “We know more than most that some powers should never be realized.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she chided. “The Scepter of Darkness contains the agony of a worldbreaker—the lingering madness of one. In the hands of another worldbreaker...”

Ninli’s ancestors really had been horrible people. Rone was a scepter scholar. He knew the tales of how they had made the scepter—and the torture involved.

“A different worldbreaker.”

Ninli shook her head. “It might make things worse.”

She was right. He knew that. “It is a possibility, though.” Especially when other options dwindled. Especially when fate was staring at him and telling him he had nowhere else to run.

Sitting around the fire, cooking, Rone tried to keep his words light and his subdued thoughts from showing. An ebullient Taline deserved that he keep his self-loathing inside.

When they had exited the spring, Ninli had been first in line again. He wondered whether her thoughts had made an impact on their exit point. They had ended up as close to Tehrasi as they could get while still being in Darkness’s borders.

The villagers had given them small illuminates for camping that also served to warn off predators. This far from the interior of the forest, and with Ninli and his powers renewed, as well as Taline’s, they were better protected than they had been before.

Quite a bit of map still existed between their present position and Tehrasi. They could make it in a week with a bit of maneuvering through some of the old, enchanted paths, if they chose not to use a temple or gate.

He doubted Ninli would allow such a wait. She would want to be in Tehras tomorrow. She would make it so, to try to stop the opening sacrifices.

Rone had no more time. And yet he couldn't bear thinking of what he would have to do.

Taline looked better—lighter, but contemplative—but there was a sadness in her face. A sadness beneath the resolve. Rone lamented the timing—that Ninli could not have taken her to the spring after freeing her from that burning chariot years ago.

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