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Akoro exhaled heavily. "You said one of your duties is making your people feel safe."
Naya looked up at him, apprehension on the edge of her nerves. "Yes."
"Have you ever had to deal with the sudden collapse of a building?"
"I don’t think so," Naya said hesitantly.
"How would you prepare or deal with that?"
Naya stared at the building, her eyes running up and down it, trying to draw as much detail from what she could see. "This isn't sudden," she said. "You could’ve easily prepared for this if it was eventually going to collapse."
"This was only built three months ago. It’s one of our newest buildings. It was designed by one of our most celebrated new architects."
Naya inhaled, shock hitting her. She looked back at the building. It was old and weathered, as though it had been standing for hundreds of years. It was chipped and worn with weathered corners and stress fractures running up and down it. Even the surface was peeling. “How could it get like this in three months?"
“An attack.”
Naya nodded in understanding. “A magical attack?”
“Yes. This is recent but we’ve had attacks like this for years. People were working in this building. Now they are dead inside it.”
Naya exhaled in horror. “Is someone directing these attacks? Who would attack a building?”
Akoro looked at her. “Your people. It’s your people who are responsible.”
Naya’s brow rose. She shook her head. “No. That’s impossible.”
Akoro turned back to the building and said nothing more.
Naya watched him, her disbelief holding her in its grip. He had to be lying. The empire wasn’t at war with anyone, let alone causing this kind of damage to a world so far away. Was vengeance why he was planning to conquer the empire? Was this why he’d taken her—he thought her family was responsible for destroying their buildings? “My father doesn’t know you exist. You know that.”
“He doesn’t have to know I exist to cause this,” Akoro said. “He knows this land exists.”
Naya frowned, returning her gaze to the building. She’d never heard her father talking about a land like this. Could this be something that’d happened within the last six years that she didn’t know about? No. She’d been to every major meeting and briefing about empire business and all concerns across the Known Lands. If her father was aware of this place, she’d would have heard about it. Besides, her father wasn’t the kind to shield her from a serious threat regardless of what she might have been going through.
“How could it be attacked when some of the other buildings around it are fine?”
Akoro gestured to the ruins further away. “There was a problem. It’s being fixed now, but we never expected to have to replace this building so soon.”
Naya nodded.
After a few long moments, Akoro beckoned her. "Come."
They mounted his nnirae and rode once again out to the ruins, this time right up to the edge of the city, where the stretch of desert started. Akoro came to a stop near one of the stones and sat there. He said nothing… just waited.
Naya stayed alert. It didn't take long.
In the distance, right in front of them, dark clouds appeared with sand swirling up underneath, the same that she’d seen when they were coming back from the desert.
"What is that?" she murmured.
"We call that the nnin-eellithi. It means wild magic bolt."
Naya squinted at it as it inched closer, and she gasped. It looked exactly like the white fire from the Wastelands. Crackling white bolts shot down at incredible speed and it moved quickly. It didn’t have the cracked sky above it or the cracked ground like in the Wastelands. But it looked like the same thing. How could it be the same?
It came closer still, and Naya found she couldn’t breathe. She hadn't seen one directly since she had tried to tackle it six years ago.
Akoro bound his arm around her middle. "Don't worry," he murmured. "It cannot get to you.”
