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

by Sabaa Tahir

Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be.

Fearless. No, none of us is fearless. “Ill-fated” is a better description.

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.

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

“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.”

Where there is life, there is hope.

Why are we laughing? I’d asked her at the time. Because laughing makes it hurt less.

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

A memory surfaces—a day long ago at Blackcliff, the first time we saw each other. Skies, the determination in her, the life. Even then, she was an ember ever burning, no matter how much the world tried to quench her fire.

I wish I did not feel so desperately alone

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.

You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you.

“You’re tough and smart. You’re a survivor, Laia. You always have been.”

“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.”

“I have no idea what I am going to do.” Yes you do, Darin says. You just can’t see it yet. You feel defeated, Laia. And it’s no wonder. It’s so great a burden to bear alone. But I’m with you, even if I’m not beside you. You will sort through this, like you do everything that comes your way. And you will do it with strength. So stop. Think. Tell me, what are you going to do?

“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. Do you think that Khuri was not loved?”

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 cared for her during those difficult months, and something kindled between us, a soul-deep fire that others had found but that had, until then, eluded me. My heart was hers, and I knew that if she did not wish to become my queen, I would never have one.

“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 is why I still live.

“Come back,” Elias says, and I emerge from my recollections and look down in surprise, for his hand is twined with mine. “I’m with you, Laia,” he says.

How much pain exists in the world because we cannot get past what has been done to us, because we insist on inflicting pain right back?”

time for me right now. Nor I for him.” “Love can be more powerful in a battle than planning or strategy. Love keeps us fighting. Love drives us to survive.”

“Life is too short not to hope.”

you must love while you can. For tomorrow, all that you love might be ash.

“It is my duty. My burden to make up for my wrongs. I do not deserve your love, Laia—” “Haven’t you learned?” I say. “You don’t get to decide if you deserve my love or not. I decide that. You are worthy of my love. You are worthy of the love Mamie has for you, and the love the Blood Shrike feels.

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

“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.”

“Where there is life, there is hope.”

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