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

by Sabaa Tahir

Can you compare the rage of a storm to the rage of man? When Mauth created the Meherya, he created a creature that could pass on ghosts for millennia, despite all of their pain, all of their sadness. Do you know what Meherya means?”

But we can imprison the Meherya,” she says. “Bind him. My magic is the only force on this earth strong enough to contain him—”

“The Nightbringer seems to want ghosts who have suffered. Those who would have come to the Waiting Place. That is why it is empty. He is taking them.”

Fate will always lead you back to her, for good or for ill.

Watching her is like watching a waterfall thundering down a gorge. Like watching the Northern Dancers illuminate the sky. I cannot describe it. I only know that a tightness in my chest loosens, and I am different—lighter—for witnessing it.

you cannot lead them if you do not understand them. No one wants to draw blades beside someone who views them as lesser. You are too distant. Too cold. If you want the Tribes’ loyalty, then appeal to their hearts. You might want to start by finding your own.”

Death wakes the great sea,’” Musa translates, nodding a greeting to a group of Scholars as they pass. “Or—no, wait. ‘Death feeds the great sea.’”

You’re in a position of great power, Shrike. It’s a lonely place to be. Most leaders spend their lives using others. Being used. Love isn’t just a luxury for you. It’s a rarity. It’s a gift. Don’t throw it away.”

“I’m not throwing it away.”

“I’m afraid,...

We draw our stories from the deep places, Laia.

They are not just words. They are magic. Some are potent as poison, and strike you dead upon speaking them.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him. “I’m so sorry.” I want to ask his name. How old he is. But I know his name. It is Mirra. Jahan. Lis. Nan. Pop. Izzi. I know how old he is. He is the three-year-old child thrown into an inky ghost wagon before he can understand why. He is the eighty-year-old grandfather slain in his home for daring to look at a Martial soldier wrong.

Somewhere deep within those gray eyes, I see the Elias I knew. I feel the heat of the man who has blazed with life from the first moment I met him.

“But no one wants to fight for nothing, Elias. You need to give them a reason. Let them know and understand you. Let them care for you. Otherwise you might return and find you have no army left.”

Siladh, lord of the sea efrits. Another that undulates like wind in a bottle. “And we need you,” Rowan says. “The time for our alliance has come, whether you wish it or not.”

“I’m here because it’s been months since you kissed me, but I think about that moment so often it feels like it happened yesterday,” I say. “And because when I saw you go down in the battle, I thought I’d—I’d tear apart the world if anything happened to you. And because I—”

In his hands, I am beautiful, sacred, beloved. Beneath his lips, I am undone.

Until I am the Blood Shrike no longer, but simply Helene. His Helene.

“I have learned to love you these past few weeks, Laia.”

“It’s Kehanni magic, child. A Kehanni can sense a story. Feel out its contours, its breath. I do not just speak a story, I sing it, I become it. That is what it means to be a Kehanni. All of us trained to tell stories have a bit of magic in our bones.”

you cannot make me stop loving you, Elias Veturius. Not when I know that somewhere in there, you feel the same.”

“The barbarous keen yokes us to the low beasts, to the unutterable violence of the earth,”

If something happens, be a brother to Darin for me. Swear you will.” “I don’t—” He takes in my scowl and nods. “I promise,” he says. “Thank you, Soul Catcher.” “Elias,”

“From you I prefer Elias.”

“They feed the maelstrom.” Maro’s fear makes him talk. “It must be fed if we are to breach the wall between worlds.”

As I lay her down on the earth, it feels as if a giant fist is trying to squeeze all the blood out of my heart. Please, please. I don’t know what I’m asking for. Or who I’m asking. I only know that when I feel her pulse at her throat, strong and steady, I can breathe again.

But if he pours enough pain into the Sea of Suffering, he will unleash it. And it will destroy all human life.

He is lost, Soul Catcher. His grief has taken him.

It is time to come home.

Then her hand goes slack, and my baby sister, my Livvy, closes her eyes and does not open them again.

“War is like the sun. It burns away all the softness and leaves only the cracks. The Nightbringer has been at war for a long time. Learning his story will teach us his weaknesses. It will help us exploit the cracks.”

“Truth . . . and—”

‘to know the heart of pain,’”

The scream breaks out of me like a prisoner who hasn’t seen light in a century. My body feels alive, but in the worst way, a betrayal of all those who are gone. All those who I didn’t save. I scream over and over. And the scream dissolves into something primal, so I howl then, and weep. I snatch the club from Harper and break every stone in the room.

“I am unmade.” I whisper to Harper the words the Augur uttered to me so long ago. “I am b-broken.”

“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.”

“Thank you,” I say. “For—” For being here. For telling me to scream. For loving me. For knowing me.

I have seen what happens to those I love.

“I promise I will keep you safe.”

“Whatever the price. I will protect you as I didn’t protect them. This I vow, by blood and by bone.”

love is why I still live. Why, when I look at Elias, I do not see the Mask or the Soul Catcher, no matter how he wishes me to. Love is why the Blood Shrike agreed to march her army hundreds of miles to support us, instead of stealing the Commandant’s Empire out from under her.

But when I look at the Blood Shrike’s bare, scarred face, the past overwhelms me. She is not just the Shrike. She is Helene Aquilla.

Friend. Warrior. Comrade-in-arms. We did violence together. We survived together. We saved each other from death and madness and loneliness in those long years at Blackcliff.

He was good.” Avitas cocks his head and looks me dead in the eye. “Like you.”

Avitas’s words fill a part of me I didn’t know was empty.

And then there’s Laia. There are fewer words between us, yet our conversation never ends.

Suffering isn’t meant to be controlled. And the—the Meherya cannot control what he seeks to release. Mauth himself told me. Once free, the Sea of Suffering will destroy all life. Even you. He will break the world—”

“There’s always a reason that something isn’t our fault.”

“I understand why you don’t want to accept responsibility for the Martials’ crimes. Neither do I. It hurts too much. Skies, the things I’ve done.” He looks down at his hands. “I do not think I will ever make my peace with it. But I can be better.”