Sunburner (Moonburner Cycle Book 2)

by Claire Luana

  SUNBURNER

  Copyright © 2017 by Claire Luana

  Published by Live Edge Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978–0-9977018–3-8 (Paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978–0-9977018–4-5 (Ebook)

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Okay Creations

  Interior Formatting: Integrity Formatting

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Interlude

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Interlude

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Interlude

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Interlude

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  From the Author

  About the Author

  To Mom and Dad.

  This book wouldn’t have been possible without your love, support, and willingness to drive me to the library about three million times as a kid.

  The days and nights blended together in this place of darkness. Her captors slid food through the slot at the base of the door from time to time. The prisoner suspected from the deep gnawing hunger in her belly that it was not every day. Her body was wasting away, eating itself from the inside out.

  At least they didn’t hurt her. She supposed she should be grateful for that. Overall, this captivity was far more pleasant than her last. This time, they seemed content to let her slowly waste away, forgotten and alone.

  But she hadn’t resigned herself to death. And so yet again, she prepared to perform the ritual that should summon the goddess. She didn’t have light and she didn’t have a sacrifice. She only had the words, her will, and her own blood. She didn’t have a weapon; they weren’t foolish enough to leave her in here with a means to end her life. So she scratched ragged marks across her inner arm with her fingernail, bringing warm blood welling to the surface. She couldn’t see in the darkness, but she could smell the metallic tang of the blood as it mingled with the smells of her filth, feel its slick wetness against her skin. And she could feel the scabs up and down her arms bearing witness to her previous failed attempts to summon the goddess.

  This time, though, this time she had something different. A bone, picked from the measly scrap of oily meat that had been her latest meal. Maybe the blood and the bone together would come close enough to the little creatures she used to sacrifice to summon her.

  The prisoner dipped the bone in the blood coating her forearm and chanted the words she had said so many times. Please, she thought. She willed it to work. Please.

  For the first time in many weeks, something happened. A breeze tickled her skin, and static crackled in the air, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.

  The goddess appeared, radiant in gray light.

  The prisoner closed her eyes and cowered from the being, the sudden brightness burning her retinas. As she opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the light, the goddess’s figure became clear, its black gown billowing as if in a storm. It filled the space of the small filthy cell, towering over the cringing prisoner.

  “Why have you summoned me to this place?” The goddess’s voice was low but harsh, the strange sound grating to the prisoner’s ears.

  “I have been jailed,” the prisoner said, trying to still her quaking body. “They mean to let me die in this cell. Please free me so I can continue your work.”

  “Why should I?” the goddess hissed. “You failed. The moon and sunburners are at peace. The centuries of hatred and war that we have worked for threaten to be for nothing. Without the discord and death, we are wasting away.”

  The irony of that statement was not lost on the prisoner as she looked down at her own emaciated form, dimly lit by the goddess’s glow, for the first time in months. She fought down the urge to laugh. It came out as a deranged hiccup.

  “There must be some way I can be of use to you,” the prisoner pleaded, her mind racing. “The burners believe me a traitor. Think of what pain it will cause them if I escape and assist in their downfall. They will fight amongst themselves, blaming each other.”

  The goddess seemed to consider her, though it was hard to tell through the blurry nothingness where its face should have been. “Perhaps you may be of use to me yet,” the goddess said at last.

  “How?” the woman asked eagerly, latching on to the goddess’s statement like a lifeline. “Let me help you. I’ll do anything.”

  “Anything? You do not even know the task I might ask of you.”

  The question was a test. She had no true choice here. She had made her choice two decades before in the dark dank of another cell. “The task doesn’t matter. I will serve,” the prisoner said, bowing her head once again.

  The goddess seemed satisfied. “The era of the burners is coming to an end. They have stood in our way long enough. We will destroy their power so they are left with nothing but the bitter memory of their former glory. We will remake this world so it serves us.”

  “I don’t understand,” the prisoner admitted, afraid to voice the words, but more afraid to misunderstand her mission. “Burning needs the sun and the moon. How could you destroy that power?”

  “That is not your concern,” the goddess said sternly. “Your only concern should be whether you will do your part to bring about the end of this world and usher in a new one. A world of darkness.”

  The prisoner already lived in a world of darkness. The darkness of her cell was only a shadow of the blackness that lived in her soul, what she had been twisted into. She had left the light a long time ago. “Tell me what to do,” she said.

  The stag was nothing but skin and bones. It moved warily through the sparse pine trees, its hooves crunching the dusty leaves and needles that coated the forest floor.

  Kai notched an arrow to the string of her bow, her sweaty fingers struggling to find purchase. She squinted at her quarry, hesitating.

  A horse jangled its halter some ways behind her, startling the stag. It darted away, disappearing into the brown camouflage of the trees.

  She lowered her bow, relieved. At least she could help one creature today. She turned her horse to the noise and spotted Quitsu, her silver fox seishen companion, perched on a tree behind her.

  “Not a word out of you,” she said.

  “You always were too soft-hearted,” he said.

  Kai made her way to join the other riders who had come into the cl
earing. The hunt had been one of her mother’s lunatic ideas. Strengthen her ties with the noble families by taking them out into the royal game preserve for a hunt. Nothing brought people together like killing.

  But despite Kai’s protests, her mother had gotten her way, as she most often did. So Kai found herself in the middle of the dry forest underneath the sweltering heat of the sun looking for game to kill. At least her companions were not entirely unpleasant. Though the men and their wives came from Miina’s royal houses, they did not seem as vapid as some of the nobles she had encountered. They were flanked by two master moonburner bodyguards, wearing navy blue uniforms and vigilant expressions.

  Her friend Emi sat on a leggy gray mare a stone’s throw from them, her fine-featured profile illuminated by the sun. From this angle, Kai couldn’t see the extensive burns that covered one half of Emi’s face, a permanent reminder of last year’s sunburner attack on the citadel. She could see Emi’s set jaw and hunched shoulders, her haunted dark eyes. Emi hadn’t been herself since their friend Maaya had died in what had become known as the Battle at the Gate.

  Kai turned in her saddle and watched as Hiro approached, stopping his horse next to hers. She reached a hand out and he grasped it, closing her hand in his warm calloused fingers.

  “She’ll come back to herself eventually,” Hiro said, following Kai’s line of sight to where it had rested on Emi. “She needs time.”

  “It’s been over a year,” Kai said. “I miss Maaya too, but I…I’ve moved on.”

  “You’ve had a kingdom to run. You’ve hardly had time to wallow in grief.”

  That was true. But as she looked at Hiro, the golden sun shadowing his rugged jaw and highlighting his hair like a halo, she knew that her duties as queen were not all that had helped her cope with losing her friend.

  “Maybe she needs a romance,” Kai mused.

  Hiro raised an eyebrow. “Do you have someone in mind?”

  “No,” she said. “Not like there are a lot of eligible men around the citadel.”

  “Maybe one of those fancy nobles.” Hiro nodded towards the nobles riding ahead of them, clothed in colorful linens and silks. They were like preening peacocks in a field of brown—colorful, decorative, and useless.

  Kai rolled her eyes. “I meant eligible and worthy.”

  “You’re right. Emi’d eat those fellows for breakfast.”

  “Maybe I should bring Leilu and Stela back from Kistana,” Kai suggested. “They might be able to lift her spirits.”

  Their friends Leilu and Stela were serving as ambassadors to King Ozora in the Kitan capital city, which was an important post. But she missed them. She’d be happy to have them back as well.

  “You sound as meddlesome as your mother,” Hiro remarked.

  Kai laughed and held up her hands. “All right, I’ll let it go. For now.”

  “Speaking of letting things go,” Hiro said, turning to her with a twinkle in his eye. “Ryu said he smelled a stag in the clearing up there.”

  She blushed. “Tell him to get his nose checked.” She tapped her horse’s flanks with her heels and trotted back towards the citadel.

  The sun loomed large and red over the brown farmland as the hunting party made their way out of the forest. Cooler autumn weather should have settled over Miina a month ago, but sweltering summer hung on with a vengeance. Kai had dressed for the heat in a loose white wrapped top and light brown trousers, her silver hair knotted in a bun under a wide-brimmed hat. Nothing helped. She could have been naked, and it would still have felt as if she were riding through an oven.

  The farmland around them served as a testament to the stark devastation of the drought. Fields that should have been filled with green crops ready for harvest instead sat brown and dusty under the oppressive heat. While the hunt was an opportunity for her to bond with her subjects, it also served a practical purpose. The citadel would need all the resources it could get to survive the coming winter without the crops and plenty it normally relied on. Every little bit helped. Kai thought briefly of the stag she had let go, but then banished it from her mind. The bony creature would do little to stave off the hard season they faced ahead. She was glad she had let it live.

  It was as if their world itself was rebelling against them. Last winter had been bitter, cold, and long, and then the land had skipped spring entirely, roaring straight into a sweltering summer. It hadn’t rained in months. Crops hadn’t stood a chance. Her people couldn’t feed their families. Frightened whispers of a new disease, a spotted fever, was sweeping through both nations. It was supposedly highly contagious—skin-to-skin contact was enough to spread the disease. Only a few cases of the fever had been reported so far—on the outskirts of Miina—but those cases had been fatal. These new enemies she faced were not flesh and bone. How could she fight them?

  Kai had heard whispers already. Her mother and advisors had tried to keep them from her, but she wasn’t blind. Her people were saying that the gods were displeased with Kai’s ascension to the throne and the peace between Kita and Miina. Word of the Oracle’s prophecy, spoken the night of her coronation, had spread.

  “And in the reign of Kailani Shigetsu, daughter of Azura, there will be a great war. A war of gods and men. For Tsuki and Taiyo are displeased with the lands of Kita and Miina, and only one side will remain standing when it comes to the end.”

  People were whispering that the only way to break the unnatural weather cycle was to return to war with Kita. Kai wasn’t sure what would happen to her in that scenario, but she didn’t think it would be pleasant.

  Emi slowed her mare down to match Kai’s pace. “You wear your worry plainly, Your Majesty,” Emi said softly. “Best to not let them see it.” She nodded towards the nobles.

  “A good reminder, Emi; thank you,” Kai said. “And speaking of reminders, how many times have I asked you to call me ‘Kai,’ not ‘Your Majesty’?”

  “You think just because you’re queen, I’ll listen to you?” Emi said, a ghost of a smile passing across her face.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Kai said.

  “This will pass,” Emi said, growing serious. “It has to pass. Soon we’ll stand in the rain and laugh about how worried we all were.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Emi gave Kai a sympathetic smile and nudged her horse’s flanks, rejoining the other moonburner guards, who were riding ahead with the nobles.

  Kai rode alone for a while, Quitsu silently trotting at her side. It was how it was to be queen, she realized. To be surrounded by people yet always alone. She shot a furtive glance back at Hiro, who was bringing up the rear of their column, chatting with Ryu, his lion seishen. Maybe not alone. If anyone understood the demands of ruling, Hiro did, as crown prince of Kita. If anyone could love her as queen and as herself, it would be him.

  They neared the farming settlements that dotted the land outside the city of Kyuden. To her left was a stout house, the wood of its walls faded and shrunken with age. The house was surrounded by a dusty farmyard, vacant but for one sorry-looking chicken. It’s much like the house I grew up in, she thought wistfully. Solid and functional.

  “Get off the road,” a high-pitched male voice called from ahead.

  “Please,” said a sobbing female voice, hardly coherent. “My husband.”

  Kai urged her horse towards the commotion. There was a woman in the middle of the road sitting on her knees. Her dirty face was tear-streaked and wreathed in greasy black hair. A threadbare dress that once might have been pink hung from her thin frame, tied tight with an apron. The nobles’ horses danced back from the woman, no doubt picking up on their riders’ unease at being so close to a commoner.

  Emi had dismounted and was trying to help the woman stand.

  Kai swung off her horse and strode to join Emi, taking the woman’s other arm. “We have to get you off the road. Then we can talk about your husband.”

  The woman nodded and stood shakily with their assistance. “He’s sick. He’
s so sick.” She was near hysteria, her eyes darting to and fro. “I thought you could heal him. With your moonburning. You have to help him.”

  Emi and Kai sat the woman down on a bit of brown grass at the side of the road, leaning her against a fence post.

  “I have medical training,” Kai said. “I will look at your husband, and we will send a healer for him if we can help.” If the man was truly ill, there wasn’t much she would be able to do without supplies or herbs. But at least she could evaluate his condition and give the healer she assigned her diagnosis.

  “Thank you,” the woman said, gripping Kai’s hands tightly.

  Kai wriggled from the woman’s grasp, standing.

  “Your Majesty.” One of her master moonburner guards approached, an older woman with thick silver eyebrows. “I have to advise against this. We don’t know what his condition is. You should not risk yourself.”

  The peasant woman’s eyes widened as she realized who Kai was.

  “Thank you for your suggestion, but I did not ask for your permission,” Kai said.

  “I must insist,” the woman continued. “It is our job to keep you safe.”

  Hiro approached from behind her, putting a broad arm around Kai’s shoulder. “You should know by now that the queen will not be dissuaded when she has decided upon a course of action. I will accompany her. She will be safe.”

  The moonburner guard’s thick brow furrowed, but she nodded her acquiescence.

  Kai ground her teeth in frustration. How was it that Hiro commanded more obedience from her own guards than she did? She knew he meant well, but she would have to talk to him later about undermining her authority. He was not in charge here. She was. And she didn’t need him to protect her…

  She was getting worked up now, and there was a sick man to see. She shook off her annoyance and smiled at Hiro. “I would welcome your company. Let’s see if we can help him.”

  The smell of disease struck her like a stiff wind as they walked into the farmhouse. Hiro placed an arm over his mouth, breathing through his shirtsleeve.

  “Open the windows,” Kai instructed. “Let’s get some airflow in here. Fetch some clean water. And the wife. I need to know his symptoms.”