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

by Sabaa Tahir

“Everything is better when you’re not hungry.

When your mind does not hear you, train your body. Your mind will follow.

Defeat in your mind—” “Is defeat on the battlefield.”

Such is the world of the living.

Your homes and lives and loves are built upon the graves of those you never even knew existed—”

“Life is sacred, Laia of Serra,” Rehmat says, its voice deep as the thunder rumbling above me. “Even the life of a jinn. It is forgetting this fact that leads to war in the first place.

you’ll remain human. Is that not worth a bit of madness?”

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.

I understand loss. But you do not fix loss with mass murder.”

“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.”

humanity’s worst traits. Tribalism. Prejudice. Greed.

Your mistakes only define the rest of your life if you let them. Don’t let them.”

My eyes sting as I watch. So many dead. Who they fight for does not matter, because we are all the same to the Nightbringer. He has manipulated us into hating each other. Into seeing the other side as he sees us. Not as humans, but as vermin, worthy only of slaughter.

For, tortured as it was, it was still love, in the only way she could give it to me.

“The Mother watches over them all,” I say. Cain and his bleeding prophecy. “I thought the Augur was talking about the Commandant. But it was you. You’re the Mother.” “That I am, Elias.” The Lioness takes her daughter’s fingers in one hand and mine in the other. “That I am.”

“Gird your loins, Shrike.” Musa gives me a sidelong glance.

We are nothing if we are not united. And we are not united if we are not equal.

And while family can cause pain and make mistakes, it is never a burden. Never.”

That despite all I have survived, or perhaps because of it, there is still joy in my heart.

wish I could live a thousand lives so I could fall in love with you a thousand times,”

thick layer of cloud rests atop the eastern horizon, and the sky pales, the deep orange glow of an ember breathed into life. High above, the stars whisper their goodbyes and fade into the depthless blue dome of the firmament.