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

by Sabaa Tahir

“Tell me how to get them back.” “You cannot get them back,” the Nightbringer says. “They are gone.” “What have you done with them?” “They feed the maelstrom.” Maro’s fear makes him talk. “It must be fed if we are to breach the wall between worlds.”

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

“I was looking for you.” Harper’s voice makes me jump and my cheeks burn. “It’s going to be difficult to act like nothing’s happened if you blush every time you see me, Shrike.” He holds a cup in his hand, and the smell is familiar. Mamie Rila taught me to brew it when I needed to slow my moon cycle at Blackcliff. Training while suffering cramps was a special sort of hell. The brew also prevents pregnancy.

“What you see cannot come to pass,” Karinna says. “It will hurt my lovey. I can feel it. You must stop it.”

The power of the Sea of Suffering cannot be controlled. Not even by the king of the jinn. If he unleashes it, it will not just destroy humanity. The Sea will destroy everything. All life. Even the jinn themselves. I fear, Banu al-Mauth, that the world has yet to break.

“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 at the heart of what the Nightbringer was. It is his greatest weapon. But I can use it as a weapon too.

“I am with you too.” She folds her arms and fixes me with her dark stare. “But you have a bad habit of doing everything yourself. Carrying every burden. Fighting every battle alone. Not this time, Soul Catcher. This time, we do it my way.”

Love. Always, I return to that word. Darin went to prison because of love. Elias gave up his future because of love. The Nightbringer seeks vengeance because of love.

“In all our years at Blackcliff,” I say, “I never imagined this was how you and I would draw swords. Fending off our old teacher while a Scholar hunted a jinn.” “There is no one I’d rather have at my back, Blood Shrike,”

If I seem different, remember that I love you. No matter what happens to me. Say you’ll remember, please.

“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. You’ve done terrible things? So have I. We were born into war, Elias. It is all we’ve known. Your mistakes only define the rest of your life if you let them. Don’t let them.”

“When it comes to you, I remember everything,”

“I said: You are my temple.”

He yanks me closer, as hungry as I am, kissing me with the same dark heat, as if he knows that this night, our last night, our only night, will never come again.

“Don’t you dare,” I say fervently. “You’re perfect.” She smiles then, the smile I dream about.

“We have to win,” she says. “Why?” “Because this cannot be the only night we spend together.”

“I want a life with you. Adventures. Meals. Late nights in front of fires. A thousand rainy walks. You talking me out of my clothing in inappropriate places. I want ch—” She stops, sadness in her eyes, though she hides it quickly. But I know what she was going to say. Because I want children too, perhaps not now, but one day. “I want more,” she says.

I pull Laia to me and kiss her once more, putting all of my love and hope and desire into that kiss. Everything I wanted to give her in a lifetime together.

“Ah, no, my love.” He gathers me close. “You cannot go first. I could not make sense of the world if you did.”

“You are the strongest person here. The strongest in the camp. Stronger than me, Spiro, the Blood Shrike, the Soul Catcher, Afya. You are the daughter of the Lioness. The granddaughter of Nan and Pop. You are Lis’s sister and mine.”

“Tell me what you’ve done. Tell me.” “I—I’ve survived the Commandant,” I say. “And Blackcliff. Our family’s deaths. I’ve survived the Nightbringer. I’ve defied him. I saved you. I’ve fought. I’ve fought for our people.” “And you will keep fighting.” Darin grabs both shoulders now. “And you will win. There is not a single person alive who I trust more than you to do what must be done today, Laia. Not a single one.”

“Don’t give Keris an inch, Blood Shrike. She’ll have something up her sleeve. She always does.” The Shrike smiles grimly. “And who is to say I don’t, Soul Catcher?”

“Laia. Laia, my sweet love.” Though she will not believe I loved her, it is the truest thing I have ever said.

That the only way to release the maelstrom, to bore a hole between this world and Mauth’s, was to pour a thousand years of my own pain into the Sea of Suffering.

Our eyes meet for one frantic moment. Then the Sea of Suffering drags me into darkness and claims me, body and soul.

“I should have trusted you, Rehmat.” I walk to the edge of the plateau. “Because you’ve been with me my whole life. Because you’re a part of me. I trust you now. But you must trust me as well. It was a jinn and a human who began this madness a thousand years ago. A jinn and a human must stop it. I must go to him.”

“The Illustrians who killed me made her watch.” My father says the words as if he speaks of someone else. “They told her that as a Plebeian, I was not worthy of her. She tried to stop them, but there were too many. It destroyed her. She gave in to her pain.”

“But you do not have to be like them. You have suffered. You have created suffering. You have killed. But you have also paid. With your life, twice over now, and with your heart, with your mind. You have guided thousands of lost souls. You have saved thousands of lives. You have done good in this world. Which will define you? The good? Or the suffering?”

“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.”

“You were a child.”

“It’s not your fault the Resistance took your mother. It’s not your fault they hurt her.”

But still, he hides away, for he is not the Beloved anymore either. He has turned his back on his duty and humanity. On Mauth.

But in truth, humanity turned against him first. And Mauth, who should have loved the Meherya best, did nothing when his son and all that he cherished were destroyed.

“My beloved,” she murmurs. “Come to me now, for I have waited long years for this, our last union. Come now, and give me your pain. I must bind you, that you may never release this agony upon the world again. You must submit to me.”

“I am Blood Shrike of the Martial Empire and Regent to Emperor Zacharias. In his name, I vow that no Martial shall cross the border of the Waiting Place unless you will it, and no Martial shall raise arms against you, unless in defense. We will make no treaty with any nation that does not agree to do the same.”

“Didn’t bother checking my body,” Mirra of Serra says. “And I touched the Star, remember? We’re tough to kill.”

Laia throws herself at her mother, who rocks back, surprised, before lifting her hands and holding her daughter close. “I’m not alone.” Laia buries her face in her mother’s hair. “I thought I was all that was left of us.”

“You’re not alone,” Mirra says, and her voice is gentler now. “And if I have anything to do with it, you never will be again.”

“Just free the boy, Mauth. I’ll do whatever you bleeding want.” Mirra considers. “Except forget her.” She nods to Laia.

“The Mother watches over them all,” I say. Cain and his bleeding prophecy. “I thought the Augur was talking about the Commandant. But it was you. You’re the Mother.” “That I am, Elias.” The Lioness takes her daughter’s fingers in one hand and mine in the other. “That I am.”

Damn you, I shout at him in my head. Damn you for not being faster. For not loving me less. For not being locked in some other battle so you didn’t have to risk yourself in mine.

Sometimes you kill and you hate killing but you are a soldier through and through so you keep killing. Your friends die. Your lovers die. And what you have at the end of your life is not the surety that you did it for some grand reason, but the hard knowledge that something was taken from you and you also gave it away. And you know you will carry that weight with you always. For it is a regret that only death can relieve.

“You got there first, my love,” I whisper. “I envy you so. For how will I endure without you?”

“From among the battle-hardened youth there shall rise the Foretold, the Greatest Emperor, scourge of our enemies, commander of a host most devastating.”

“No, Empress,” she says. “For he is family. As are you. As is Laia. And while family can cause pain and make mistakes, it is never a burden. Never.”

Within it, I hear my father’s voice and my mother’s. I hear Hannah’s and Livia’s and Harper’s. Loyal, they whisper, to the end.

“Tell Helene I got my wish, please. Tell her she must live.”

“You’ll go to her?” he asks. At my nod, he tilts his head. “I’m happy,” he says. “If anyone can love her enough for everyone she’s lost, it’s you. I wish you joy, Elias.”

“Well, boy, what are you waiting for?” She smiles her crooked smile and gives me a shove. “Go to her.”