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

by Sabaa Tahir

“I go where you go, sis.

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

The cruelest anger comes from the deepest pain.

The permanence of death will always feel like a betrayal.

Strange how monsters can reach from beyond the grave, as potent in death as they were in life.

Why is it always us? All of these people—so many children—hunted and abused and tormented. Families stolen, lives shattered. They come all this way to be rejected yet again, sent outside the city walls to sleep in flimsy tents, to fight over paltry scraps of food, to starve and freeze and suffer more. And we are expected to be thankful. To be happy. So many are—I know it. Happy to be safe. To be alive. But it’s not enough—not to me.

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.