A ​Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes, #4)

by Sabaa Tahir

Broken, unmade thing, you will lose more before the end, for you are a torch against the night, little Shrike, and above all a torch burns.

So much evil. So many monsters.

Or perhaps she’s simply beautiful, and looking at her feels like sunlight flowing into a room lost to the darkness for too long.

“For me, Elias, desire is not simple. It is not shelter. It is not warmth. It is a fire that offers no light, only heat, ruinous and consuming. The longer you deny it, the hotter it burns. You forget shelter. You forget warmth. There is only that which you want and cannot have, and the desolation that follows.”

He’s dead. Bleeding hells. Faris is dead. Dead because of me, like my parents and sister and Cook and Demetrius and Leander and Tristas and Ennis, and I do not deserve to live when they all died.

Oof crying damn it

“So everyone keeps saying,” Laia gasps, glaring at him, at the other jinn. “But you are all monsters. And monsters have weaknesses.”

Whoever he was, he did not deserve any of this. Adults brought this upon him. I brought this upon him. The Commandant. All of us striving for power and control, and destroying any who got in the way.

The son of shadow and heir of death Will fight and fail with his final breath. Sorrow will ride the rays of the day, The earth her arena and man her prey. In flowerfall, the orphan will bow to the scythe. In flowerfall, the daughter will pay a blood tithe.

What the fuck

Harper sighs, and it feels like he can see right into me, into those moments I mourned Faris, those moments I spent staring into the eyes of a child’s skull, thinking death had finally come.

Alexa play the archer by taylor swift

Thou art the Beloved, Mauth says. “No, Father,” I say after a long time. “I was the Beloved. Now I am something else.”

Broooo

“Suffering is a monster, waiting to be released from a cage. You have only to look at your own mother to know the truth of that.”

question is out of my mouth before I can stop myself. “Keris Veturia’s suffering runs deep, Soul Catcher. My brethren mistakenly believe that she is but a human stooge, a servant to carry out the Meherya’s plan. But her suffering is why he sees himself in her. Why she sees herself in him. Suffering is the cup from which they both drink. It is the language they both speak. And it is the weapon they both wield.”

Hmmminteresting

Would that we all knew the cracked terrain of each other’s broken hearts. Perhaps then, we would not be so cruel to those who walk this lonely world with us.

My mind snags on one word: Fearless. For I am not fearless. To be fearless means to have a heart of steel. But my heart betrayed itself. It is soft and hopeful. And I know now that it belongs entirely to Avitas Harper. No matter how I wish to deny it, my reaction when I thought him dead tells me I am fully, foolishly in love with him. He is the weak spot in my armor, the flaw in my defense. Damn my traitorous heart to the hells.

The fire turns her gold eyes molten, and she throws back her head and laughs. Watching her is like watching a waterfall thundering down a gorge. Like watching the Northern Dancers illuminate the sky. I cannot describe it. I only know that a tightness in my chest loosens, and I am different—lighter—for witnessing it.

He grins suddenly, and I turn to see Harper coming down the hallway. His sleeves are rolled up, and there’s rain in his hair and glistening along his cheekbones. No distractions, Shrike. Do not stare at his forearms—or his face—

Oh shes down BAD

“But that’s not what we’re talking about,” Musa says. “You are lucky enough to love someone who loves you back. He is alive and breathing and in the same vicinity as you. By the skies, do something about it. For however long you have. For whatever time you get. Because if you don’t, I swear that you’ll regret it. You’ll regret it for all your years.”

“Thank you, Soul Catcher.” “Elias,” he says after a moment, the slightest bit of warmth entering those cold gray eyes. “From you I prefer Elias.”

PAin

If you underestimate the spider, Banu al-Mauth, it can bite. And if its bite is poison, it can kill. So it is with the Nightbringer. He knows where to bite. And he is riven with poison.

“You are broken. But it is the broken things that are the sharpest. The deadliest. It is the broken things that are the most unexpected, and the most underestimated.”

“Thank you,” I say. “For—” For being here. For telling me to scream. For loving me. For knowing me.

“I promise I will keep you safe.” I fight back the tears that threaten. I have done my screaming, my weeping. No more. “Whatever the price. I will protect you as I didn’t protect them. This I vow, by blood and by bone.” And with that I leave, and go to secure my nephew’s empire.

I am crying omg

And then there’s Laia. There are fewer words between us, yet our conversation never ends. She touches my arms or shoulders as she passes, and smiles when she watches me with my family. If she catches me gazing at her, she stares back, a promise and a question in her dark eyes. At night, she wanders through my dreams, and I wake from them aching with need.

I miss you. I’m sorry.

Alexa play i miss you im sorry by Gracie abrams

“Love can be more powerful in a battle than planning or strategy. Love keeps us fighting. Love drives us to survive.” “Skies, stop meddling—” “I meddle because I hope, aapan.” The humor bleeds from his voice, and I’m certain he’s remembering his beloved, doomed Nikla. “Life is too short not to hope.”

If I seem different, remember that I love you. No matter what happens to me. Say you’ll remember, please. “I remember,” I whisper, and make my way across the jinn grove. “I remember.”

Im crying omg

I don’t know if you will remember—” “When it comes to you, I remember everything,” he says, and my pulse quickens.

“May death claim me first.” “Ah, no, my love.” He gathers me close. “You cannot go first. I could not make sense of the world if you did.”

This feels like forshadowing

“Listen to me.” He gazes at me with our mother’s eyes, the eyes of someone who believes in you so deeply that you have no choice but to believe in yourself. “You are the strongest person here. The strongest in the camp. Stronger than me, Spiro, the Blood Shrike, the Soul Catcher, Afya. You are the daughter of the Lioness. The granddaughter of Nan and Pop. You are Lis’s sister and mine.”

Keris is fueled by anger. But mine burns hotter because of grief. And I unleash it.

“I wish I could live a thousand lives so I could fall in love with you a thousand times,” he says. “But if all we get is this one, and I share it with you, then I will never want for anything, if—if you—would—if you—” He stops, hands gripped so tight around the armlet that I fear he’ll break it. “Yes. Yes.” I take it from him and put it on. “Yes!” I cannot say it enough.

Elias laces his fingers through mine as we walk. He tells me what he hopes to do on his first full day home, his baritone thrumming in my veins like the sweetest, deepest oud playing a song that I wish to hear forever. What a small thing it seems, to walk with the one you love. To look forward to a day with them. I marvel at the simplicity of this moment. And I thank the skies for the miracle of it.