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

by Sabaa Tahir

want sand and stories and a clear night sky. I want to stare up into pale gray eyes filled with love and that edge of wickedness I ache for. I want to know what he said to me in Sadhese, a year and a half ago, when we danced at the Moon Festival in Serra. I want Elias Veturius back.

“Worrying won’t help.” Laia gauges the tenor of my thoughts. “But talking about it might.”

Where there is life, there is hope. I will not accept death. Why should I, when there is life yet burning in my veins?

Do not let them. Fight.” “I can’t,” I whisper. “I—” “You can. It is who you are. It is what you do best.” It is what I do best.

looking at her feels like sunlight flowing into a room lost to the darkness for too long.

“One day, sister,” Livia says, “you’ll have to reckon with all the things you try to hide from yourself. And the longer you wait, the more it will hurt.”

No matter how rich and varied the lives of humans, they were falling stars in my world. They flared bright and brief, and then they burned out.

“We will have our vengeance, bright one,” I say to Umber. “But not if we think like mortals.”

“I have no idea what I am going to do.” Yes you do, Darin says. You just can’t see it yet.

Good. One step at a time, little sister. Just like always. Be safe.

“Perhaps,” Rehmat says. “But you’ll remain human. Is that not worth a bit of madness?”

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.

I do not just speak a story, I sing it, I become it.

“We seek truth, Laia. And when we find it, we must approach it with empathy. We must understand the creatures, fey or human, who populate our tales. Respect them. Love them, despite the villainous things they do. We must see them. Else how will our stories echo in the hearts of those who hear them? How will the stories survive beyond one telling?”

“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.”

“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.”

the eyes of someone who believes in you so deeply that you have no choice but to believe in yourself.

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