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

by Sabaa Tahir

Unlike Darin, she watches everything with careful eyes, her gaze flicking back and forth between Mother and Father. She is a child whose happiness is gauged by the strange weather between her parents, sometimes sunny but more often a gale.

I expect to search for Harper’s song. He is the consummate Mask, his thoughts and emotions buried so deeply that I assumed his song would be equally opaque. But his song is near the surface, strong and bright and clear as a star-filled winter sky. I delve into his essence. I see the smile of a dark-haired woman with wide-set green eyes—his mother—and the strong hands of a man who looks strikingly similar to Elias. Harper walks Blackcliff’s dark halls and endures day after day of the hardship and loneliness I know so well. He aches for his father, a mysterious figure who haunts him with an emptiness he can never quite fill.

I witness myself through his eyes: angry and cold and weak and strong and brave and warm. Not

I am woven into his consciousness the way Elias used to be woven into mine. Harper is always aware of where I am, of whether I am all right.

I watch her with wild eyes, part of me desperate to understand her story and the other part wanting to scream out the pain of a dozen years without her until she throbs with it.

Childbirth is not something I have wasted much thought on. I do not wish for children. I will never be a midwife. I have a sister, but no female friends. Babies hold no appeal for me, though I was always fascinated by the way my mother loved us: with a fierceness that was almost frightening. She used to call us her miracles. Now, as my sister releases a roar, I finally understand.

I think of baby Zacharias and the innocence of his gaze. Marcus too must have looked that way once. Perhaps that’s what his twin, Zak, saw when he looked at him: not the monster he had become, but the brother he had been.

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 Shrike. With or without the mask.”

When I lift my gaze to his, he hides nothing, finally, finally unmasking his desire. The power of it is dizzying, and I do not protest when he pulls me close. Avitas stops when he’s a hairsbreadth from my lips, careful, always so careful. In that moment of waiting, he lays himself bare. Only if you want it. I close the distance, my own need tearing through me with a force that leaves me shaken.

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.