A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes, #2)

by Sabaa Tahir

“I can’t swim.” “Remind me to remedy that when we have a few days.”

“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say. “I’m not dead.” She regards me for a long time before cocking her head like a curious bird. “But you are dead,” she says. “You just don’t know it yet.”

I cannot show her the wounded parts of me. I cannot show anyone those parts. Not when my strength is the only thing that will serve me now.

The bitch is wearing the shirt she stole from me.

“I don’t have allies. I have people who owe me things and people who want things and people who use me and people whom I use.

The girl I was, the girl who hoped, the weak little bird—that girl beats her wings and tosses her head against the confusion of it.

“You will hunt Elias. You will find him. For what you learn on that journey—about yourself, your land, your enemies—that knowledge is essential to the Empire’s survival. And to your destiny.”

“Do not let despair take you.” Cain’s voice softens. “Hold true to your heart, and the Empire will be well served.”

“This is what it means to have faith, to believe in something greater than yourself.”

This is what it means to believe. I wish it weren’t so hard.

Most successful missions are just a series of barely averted disasters.”

“I look at you.” His response is swift, his voice low. “Even when I shouldn’t.”

“Your emotions make you human,” Elias says. “Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don’t lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.”

“Keenan, this is—” “I know who he is.” Red cuts her off, and I suppress the urge to punch him for doing so.

“Tell me you have something to eat, Elias,” Izzi says under her breath. “Maybe Keenan can live on obsession, but I haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.”

All he could think about was getting to her.” So he’s infatuated. Wonderful.

I turn to Laia. “Tell me what you want.”

“Always so afraid of the darkness within.” Mamie takes my hands. “Don’t you see? So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.”

“Children are born to break their mothers’ hearts, my boy. Tell me.”

“Afya Ara-Nur,” Mamie says softly. “You will hold your vow. Tribe Saif has promised to do its part in assisting you. But if you betray my son for the bounty, or if any of your people do, we will consider it an act of war, and we will curse the blood of seven generations before our vengeance is spent.”

“One man isn’t worth a Tribe.” “But he was worth an Empire?” Mamie leans forward, her dark eyes fierce, her braids falling into her face. “He was worth your freedom?”

Weaklings try to fill silence. A Mask uses it to his advantage.

There’s a loneliness to him that makes me ache. He’s dying. He knows it. Perhaps life does not get more lonely than that.

Now it’s my turn to snort. “Why in the ten hells haven’t you assassinated him yet? You’d be doing the world a favor.” “Oh, piss off,” she spits at me. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Laia is curled in a ball on the other, one hand on her armlet, fast asleep. “You are my temple,” I murmur as I kneel beside her. “You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release.” Grandfather would scowl at me for sullying his beloved mantra so. But I prefer it this way.

Is this what the Empire has become? Or is this what it always was? a quiet voice within asks.

“Eat,” he says. “Your mother asked you to.

He’s the things that I can’t be. He’s good.

“Do not go, Elias,” Shaeva whispers. “Should you find yourself trapped behind those walls, your fate will be dark indeed.” “My fate is dark anyway.” I reach back and loosen my scims in their sheaths, taking comfort from their weight. “At least this way, it won’t be for nothing.”

“Why would I tell you any of this if I wanted you dead?” “Bleeding skies, I don’t know, Harper. Why do you do anything? You don’t make sense. You never have.”

A Mask is not made. She is remade. First, she is destroyed. Stripped down to the trembling child that lives at her core. It doesn’t matter how strong she thinks she is. Blackcliff diminishes, humiliates, and humbles her. “But if she survives, she is reborn. She rises from the shadow world of failure and despair so that she might become as fearful as that which destroyed her. So that she might know darkness and use it as her scim and shield in her mission to serve the Empire.”

You are a torch against the night—if you dare to let yourself burn.”

What is there to live for if not the moments of joy? What is there to fight for?”

more than reminding me of him, it reminded me of who I was around him. Braver. Stronger. Flawed, certainly, but unafraid. I miss that girl. That Laia. That version of myself that burned brightest when Elias Veturius was near.

“Sometimes, Elias,” she says, “loneliness is a choice.”

“You,” I snarl at him when he finally passes out, “talk too damn much.”

“Did you tell them how your sister sleeps with her hand on your mother’s armlet?” I ask. “Or that up close, her eyes are gold and brown and green and silver. Or that since the day you told her to run, all she has felt is guilt, and all she has thought about is somehow getting to you? Or that she has a fire inside her that’s more than a match for any Mask, if only she’s willing to believe in it?”

“Because if I die before I’m ready, I will haunt these damn trees forever. You’ll never be rid of me.”

“I forgive you, Elias. Forgive yourself. You still have time left among the living. Don’t waste it.”

Perhaps grief is like battle: After experiencing enough of it, your body’s instincts take over. When you see it closing in like a Martial death squad, you harden your insides. You prepare for the agony of a shredded heart. And when it hits, it hurts, but not as badly, because you have locked away your weakness, and all that’s left is anger and strength.

Disappear! I scream the word in my mind, queen of the desolate landscape therein ordering her ragged troops to a last stand. Elias, Darin, and all the rest I must save depend on this one thing, this power, this magic that I know lives within.

Failure doesn’t define you. It’s what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.”

“So you’ve made a few bad decisions. So have I. So has Elias. So has everyone attempting to do something difficult. That doesn’t mean that you give up, you fool. Do you understand?”

It takes only a split second for life to go horribly wrong. To fix the mess, I need a thousand things to go right. The distance from one bit of luck to the next feels as great as the distance across oceans. But, I decide in this moment, I will br...

Break it down to what you can do. One foot. One inch.

“Maybe you’re too soft on the bleeding ghosts.”

I still ache from the interrogations and the beatings, but with the poison gone from my blood, I understand, for the first time, how it stole away my life bit by bit until it seemed to me that I had always been a shadow of myself.

You are all that holds back the darkness.

I’m coming, I shout in my head. The more you bully me, the slower I’ll be, so stop it.

He’s gone, and the part of my heart where he lived is dead now.