A Reaper at the Gates (An Ember in the Ashes, #3)

by Sabaa Tahir

“Skies save me from the men in my life and all the things they think they know.

Win. Find joy. Remember me. For why should she come back here? Her future is in the world of the living. Say it, Elias, my logic screams. Make it easier for both of you. Don’t be pathetic. “Laia, you should—” “I don’t want to let you go. Not yet.” She traces my jaw with a light hand, her fingers lingering on my mouth.

Waiting Place be damned. I grab her hand and pull her toward me, and as if she was waiting for it, she closes her eyes and rises up on her toes. Her hands tangle in my hair, drawing me tightly toward her. Her lips are soft and lush, and when she presses every curve into me, I nearly lose my feet.

“You are cruel, Elias,” she whispers against my mouth. “To give a girl all she desires only to tear it away.” “This isn’t the end for us, Laia of Serra.” I cannot give up what we could have. I don’t care what bleeding vow I made. “Do you hear me? This is not our end.” “You’ve never been a liar.” She dashes her hands against the wetness in her eyes. “Don’t start now.”

I kick at the door violently—a stupid decision, as now my foot aches. I wonder if my entire life will be a series of moments in which I realize I’m an idiot long after I can actually do anything about it.

Love. I sigh. Love is joy coupled with misery, elation bound to despair. It is a fire that beckons me gently and then burns when I get too close. I hate love. I yearn for it. And it drives me mad.

I look down into her eyes, golden and endless and full of all the desire I feel. I don’t want this to disappear.

I unravel her braid. She takes my other hand and puts it on her hip, and I trace the curve with a light touch that makes her close her eyes. “Why is it like this?” she asks. “Why must we be apart? I miss what we should have been, Elias.

She lifts her face, and my desire for her pools low and sudden. I can’t stop myself from pulling her body to mine. She gasps softly and rises. Her lips against mine are urgent. She doesn’t know when she’ll kiss me again. The same frantic need courses through me.

You will know victory, or you will know death.

The field of battle is my temple.

The swordpoint is my priest.

The dance of death is my prayer.

even knowing what the Masks would have done, I do not wish to kill. I do not wish to belong to this world of blood and violence and vengeance. I do not wish to be a Mask. The killing blow is my release. My wishes do not matter.

What I feel for Elias is different, a flame I hold close to my heart when I feel my strength flagging. Sometimes, deep in the night as I travel, I picture a future with him. But I dare not look at it too closely. How can I, when it can never be? I wonder what he has become in the months we’ve been apart. Has he changed? Is he eating? Taking care of himself? Skies, I hope he has not grown a beard. I hated his beard.

Abandoning Laia. But I can’t do it. I can’t pretend that I don’t love her. “Come back to me, Laia.” Her body is heavy in my arms, hair tangled, and I push it back from her face. “Forget them and their lies. That’s all they are. Come back.”

“Will we ever take a walk by the moonlight, or spend an afternoon making jam or making . . .” Love. My body turns to fire just thinking about it. “I had dreams about you,” she whispers. “We were together—” “It wasn’t a dream.” I pull her close. It kills me that she doesn’t remember. I wish she could. I wish she could hold on to that day the way I do. “I was there, and you were there. And it was a perfect slice of time. It won’t always be like this.” I say it like I believe it.

“We will find a way, Laia. Somehow. But if . . . if I change . . . if I seem different, remember that I love you. No matter what happens to me. Say you’ll remember, please—”

I will find you, Laia. I will find a way. This is not our end. I scream it in my mind. But as soon as I get into the Waiting Place, the thought is dashed from my consciousness. The borders are bending—breaking. I go to reinforce them, but I am a cork in the face of a dam breaking. All things have a price, Elias Veturius. The jinn speak again, an inexorable truth in their voice. We warned you.

The ocean waves thunder on, and it is man who must swim among them. The wind blows, cold and brittle, and it is man who must protect against it. The earth shakes and cracks, swallows and destroys, but it is man who must walk upon it. So it is with death. I cannot surrender, Elias. It must be you.

Curse this world for what it does to the mothers, for what it does to the daughters. Curse it for making us strong through loss and pain, our hearts torn from our chests again and again. Curse it for forcing us to endure.

And his champions, those three flames in which he placed all his hopes—Laia of Serra, Helene Aquilla, and Elias Veturius—I smother those flames. For I have taken the Blood Shrike’s soul. The Waiting Place has taken the Soul Catcher’s humanity. And I will crush Laia of Serra’s heart.

Fearless. No, none of us is fearless. “Ill-fated” is a better description.