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

by Sabaa Tahir

But when I looked into her soul, something—someone—peered back: my queen, gazing at me across the centuries.

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

One piece remains, and beware the Reaper at the Gates! The sparrows will drown, and none will know it. The past shall burn, and none will slow it. The Dead will rise, and none can survive. The Child will be bathed in blood but alive. The Pearl will crack, the cold will enter. The Butcher will break, and none will hold her. The Ghost will fall, her flesh will wither. By the Grain Moon, the King will have his answer. By the Grain Moon, the forgotten will find their master.

I leap between the Nightbringer and Elias, dagger out. “Don’t you dare touch him,” I say.

“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.”

“Ah, but the Nightbringer is no monster, child, though he may do monstrous things. He is cloven by sorrow and thus locked in a righteous battle to amend a grievous wrong. Much like you. I think you are more similar than you know. You could learn much from the Nightbringer, if he deigned to teach you.”

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

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.

“Why would I tell her? So that she can attempt to kill you again? I am not her servant, Blood Shrike. She is mine. She attacked you against my orders. I have no patience for defiance, thus I have thwarted her.”

“You want to take down the Bitch of Blackcliff? You want to destroy her? You have to become her first. And you don’t have it in you, girl.”

“The blood of the father and the blood of the son are harbingers of darkness,” Musa reads. “The King shall light the Butcher’s path, and when the Butcher bows to the deepest love of all, night approaches. Only the Ghost may stand against the onslaught. Should the Lioness’s heir claim the Butcher’s pride, it will evanesce, and the blood of seven generations shall pass from the earth before the King may seek vengeance again.

“The Nightbringer stayed in Navium because his target was there the whole time. He never had to leave. She has it—the Blood Shrike has the last piece of the Star.”

“It wasn’t because they got in her way.” I relate what Quin said. “It was vengeance. They beat Arius Harper to death.” I look up from the scrolls. I wonder if his father had green eyes too. “Your father.”

“It’s power. She loved him. They killed him. They took her power. By murdering them, she’s taking it back.”

“It is true, Laia,” the Nightbringer says, and my very soul shudders, for I know he tells no lies. “Your mother lives. You know her. And now, you are free.”

“I will not!” My voice is raw with rage and failure. “I will not let you torment her to death, even if stopping you tears my own body to shreds. All the world can burn, but I will not simply leave her to suffer.”

“Elias,” Laia whispers. “Are . . . are you real? Are you a trick too?” “No.” I touch my forehead to hers. “No, love. I’m real. You’re real.”

“Forgive her, if you can,” I say. “Remember that fate is never what we think it will be. Your mother—my mother—we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”

“Use your head, Shrike! She had Captain Alistar poisoned. She had Favrus poisoned. She got to the bleeding Empress. You’re not immortal. She can get to you too. Be smart about this, for the love of skies. We need you. You cannot play into her hands.”

I glance at them and see not humans but lesser creatures who are dying slowly. The humans are mortal, unimportant. The ghosts are all that matter.

I require a conduit—a being from your world to harness my power. The amount of power required to restore a civilization would destroy any conduit I chose, human or wraith, jinn or efrit.

Not today. You have released your ties to strangers, to friends, to family, to your true love. Now surrender to me, for it is your destiny. It is the meaning of your name, the reason for your existence. It is time.

“I don’t feel like myself anymore.” Because you are not yourself. You are me. I am you. And in this way, we will pass the ghosts through, that your world be spared from their predations.

“Because you’re going to take vengeance on that savage demon queen for me,”

She is finally the Lioness, the woman I knew as a child—and, somehow, more.

“Harp—Harper,” the Shrike slurs in a whisper. “Told you . . . collapse the tunnels. You disobeyed orders.” “With respect, Shrike, they were stupid bleeding orders,” Harper says. “Stop talking.”

Harper lifts a hand to my cheek and traces one side, then the other. “You haven’t seen yourself,” he says. “I haven’t wanted to.”

“You have scars,” he says. “Two of them, like twin scims.” “Do I—” The words come out a whisper, and I brusquely clear my throat. “How bad is it?”

“They are beautiful.” His green eyes are thoughtful. “Your face couldn’t be anything but beautiful, Blood Shr...

For someone who is always so infuriatingly calm, he kisses like a man who will never be sated.

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.

“Your eyes.” She runs a finger across my brows. “They’re like hers.” “Like Shaeva’s,” I say. As they should be. “No,” Laia says. “Like the Commandant’s.”

But the humans are ready for you, Nightbringer. They will prevail.”

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.