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

by Sabaa Tahir

I 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.

“Elias Veturius yet lives. And it is imperative that he live, for the Great War approaches, and it is not the Soul Catcher who will win it, it is Elias Veturius. It is not the Soul Catcher who is an ember in the ashes, it is Elias Veturius. It is not the Soul Catcher who will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. It is Elias Veturius.”

“It was never one. It was always three. The Blood Shrike is the first. Laia of Serra, the second. And the Soul Catcher is the last. The Mother watches over them all. If one fails, they all fail. If one dies, they all die. Go back to the beginning and there, find the truth. Strive even unto your own end, else all is lost.”

You do not wish to abandon Elias Veturius. Accept it.” I feel suddenly exposed and cowardly. “I am not—I will fight the Nightbringer. I will destroy him and not because you tell me to. But Elias—the Soul Catcher—he has nothing to do with this.” “He does and your heart knows it. Go against its wishes at your own peril.” “My heart”—I draw myself up—“fell in love with a murderous jinn. It cannot be trusted.” “Your heart is the only thing that can be trusted.”

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.”

I need you to disappear. To never leave. I need to have never met you or felt you. You. You. You. I need you.

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.

“Some names are etched into the stars,” Talis goes on. “Melody and countermelody, a harmony that echoes in the blood. I hear such harmony in your names—Laia-Elias.” He speaks them so they sound like one word, so they sound like a song. “You might seek to deny her, but you cannot. Fate will always lead you back to her, for good or for ill.”

“War is your past. War is your present. War is your future.

“We are doomed, you and I,” the Nightbringer whispers, and when he touches my face with his hands, their fire cooled, I do not quail. “To offer more love than we will ever be given.”

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.

“Your love is powerful,” Rehmat says. “It is your love that woke me—your love of your people. Your desire to save them.

“Love and hate, Laia,” Rehmat says. “They are two sides of the same coin.

“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.”

“Love can be more powerful in a battle than planning or strategy. Love keeps us fighting. Love drives us to survive.”

The world must be broken before it can be remade, or else the balance will never be restored.

“I am—I—” Who am I? “I am born of Keris Veturia,” I say. “Son to the Kehanni who told the Tale. Beloved to Laia of Serra. Friend to the Blood Shrike. I am brother to Avitas Harper and Shan An-Saif. Grandson to Quin Veturius. I am—” Two words echo in my head, the last words Cain spoke to me before dying. Words that stir my blood, words that my grandfather taught me when I was a boy of six and he gave me my name. Words that were burned into me at Blackcliff. “Always victorious.”

“Perhaps you and I are doomed.” My voice is raw, aching. “Doomed to always hurt. But what we do with that hurt is our choice. I cannot hate. Not forever.

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