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

by Sabaa Tahir

Would that Mauth had never named me.

My old home is the Waiting Place—known to humans as the Forest of Dusk. I will make my new home upon the bones of my foes.

Laia of Serra has hooks in my heart yet.

But it is what’s deep within that harkens to Laia. An unknowable darkness in his mind. His black eyes meet mine, and he holds up his hands.

His power is wild and unsettlingly familiar.

“The seed that slumbered wakes, the fruit of its flowering consecrated within the body of man. And thus is thy doom begotten, Beloved, and with it the breaking—the—breaking—”

We are, all of us, just visitors in each other’s lives, he’d said. You will forget my visit soon enough.

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

Emotion is the enemy, I remind myself. Love, hate, joy, fear. All are forbidden.

“A time will come,” the efrit says, “when you will wish you hadn’t spoken those words. When Mauth can no longer magic away the screams in your head. On that day, seek out Siladh, lord of the sea efrits.”

That face flashes in my mind. Black hair. Gold eyes. Sorcery in her bones. But what was her name? Who was she? “I won’t hurt you.” I speak as I would to the ghosts—with care. “Won’t you, Elias Veturius?” the figure says. “Even now? Even after everything?”

Will she forgive me for forgetting it?

“How will you die?” she asks. “In battle, like your mother? Or in terror, like mine?”

“You wish to murder her, Laia of Serra.” He stands and approaches. “For Keris is the font of all your woes. She destroyed your family and turned your mother into a murderess and kinslayer. She annihilated your people and torments them still. You would do anything to stop her, yes? So what makes you so different from me?” “I am nothing like you—” “My family was killed too. My wife slaughtered on a battlefield. My children murdered with salt and steel and summer rain. My kin butchered and imprisoned.”

Fury floods my veins, numbing my pain, making me forget the Commandant. It colors everything red, and a darkness roars inside me. The same feral thing that rose within me months ago, when I gave him my armlet. The beast that lashed out in the Forest of Dusk, when I thought he was going to kill Elias.

“What are you?” he

My voice is an unrecognizable snarl that rises from some ancient, visceral part of my soul. “You have harmed too many with your vengeance.” I’m inches from him now, staring into those familiar eyes, hate pouring from my own. “I do not care what it takes, nor how long. I will defeat you, Nightbringer.”

Me, I realize. I am screaming. Only it is not me, is it? It is something inside me. The moment I comprehend that fact, it feels as if my chest has split open. The dark light pouring from my body roars, as if freed after a long imprisonment. I try to stop it, to keep it leashed within.

Coins tinkle—a sound I remember now. The headdresses of the Jaduna.

“Mauth is not good, nor evil,” I say. “There is no right or wrong with Death. Death is death.”

“You think Mauth would let me into your mind, boy? He has you caged and chained, locked away. I did not give you the dreams. You see them because they are truth. Because some small part of your old self lives within you yet. It screams to be free.”

“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.”

I am not alone, but the presence with me is not outside me. It is in me.

I have always been here, a voice says. I have just been waiting.

“He’s hunting you so he can crack you open and understand what lives inside you.”

Rehmat. A strange name—one I have never heard of.

It felt good to fight, a voice within whispers, for you were born to it. Your body was made for it.

“Tell me about the dreams and the threat to the Waiting Place.

“Remember I’d hoped to be gentle,” he whispers. “Remember that I tried, Elias, even as you curse my name. And tell them. You are my messenger here, at the end, and if you do not tell them, there will be no sky beyond the storm. No Waiting Place or ghosts or hope. Only suffering and pain.”

“A gift from me to you, Elias,” he says. “A gift for all that I have taken. The girl with the gold eyes is Laia of Serra, heir of the Lioness. I burn her name into you, and no power on this earth shall root it out—”

“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.”

He whispers something, two words I only just catch.

“You are a child of kedim jadu, girl. Old magic. For centuries, I have waited for one of the kedim jadu to defy the Nightbringer.

“You send them to the chasm and they do not know what awaits them!

The Mask catches her, and there’s something about him that makes me stare, some instinct urging me to look closer at him. We mean something to each other. But what? I have no memories of him.

There is a weight to Laia’s voice that wasn’t there before, and a glow manifests near her. That light feels familiar, yet I cannot recall seeing it before.

“You can. It is who you are. It is what you do best.”

After a moment I realize what the cabin reminds me of: Mamie Rila’s wagon.

“Everyone was gone. The Nightbringer had taken Darin. You. Tas. Afya Ara-Nur. Even E—the Soul Catcher. And there was this—this storm. But it was alive and—” “Hungry,” I say. “A maw, wanting to devour the world. I felt that too.”

He called you and me embers in the ashes, Soul Catcher. He said the Shrike was—” “A torch against the night. If I dared to let myself burn.”

It is torment to love someone hopelessly, with no chance of requital. There is no salve for it, no cure, no comfort.

Elias fought. And he’s still in there somewhere, trying to escape.”

“Elias as we knew him is gone.”

“But I think that if you were the one who got chained up in the forest, Elias would never give up. If you had forgotten how much you loved him, he’d find a way to make you remember. He’d keep fighting until he brought you back.”

You are only a child. You have no idea what you speak of. But I do not. Because he is right.

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.”

“It’s just us now.”

“You desire me,” I say. The quiet splash of water ceases. “I can satisfy you if that’s why you’re here. It’s easy enough and if it means you’ll leave, then I’m willing to do it.” “Satisfy me? How kind of you.”

“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.”