The Final Strife (The Ending Fire Trilogy #1)

by Saara El-Arifi

“I don’t know why people say, ‘better than that,’—who’s ‘that’ and why should I listen to them?”

How nice it is to be so blinded by your own riches that you can’t see whose back your home is built upon, she thought.

Sylah didn’t hear cheers. She heard the cries of newborn Ghostings having their hands and tongues severed, she heard the creaking of the rack as Dusters were torn limb from limb, she heard the snap of the whip from the plantation overseers.

Just because you turned your back on who you are doesn’t mean the fight has stopped.” That’s the thing with unspoken words: sometimes they reach for you.

Tears dripping down his cheeks like pearls. She wondered if she could string them together and gift them to him.

We will not descend into indifference like our ancestors. We will soar. And we will harvest their red blood in retribution.

She was not born to sparkle. She was born to burn.

How can there be nothing, not an ink dot, on the world before the Ending Fire? Those who founded the empire survived, so why didn’t they document the world that once was? Anoor was stricken that she had never had these thoughts before. She prided herself on her curious nature, something she’d learned from her years reading Inquisitor Abena’s tales. But this ignorance was gargantuan, a gaping hole of nothingness in her knowledge.

Though you can’t see the blood, it’s there, blue and clear, in every whitestone brick. In every building near.

“I know, I’m sorry.” It was the type of apology that one person does for a collective. A pathetic assurance that everyone was sorry for the bigotry committed, even if they didn’t show it. It was the apology of the bystander, and Sylah regretted it as soon as it came out of her mouth.

She’d been caught having an illicit”—Anoor tried to wink but both her eyes closed—“affair

“I’m not a maggot,” Anoor growled out and snapped the book closed. Her mother hadn’t looked closely enough. She was a caterpillar, and at some point, she would fly.

She’s giving me a gift, expecting nothing in return. The thought perturbed Sylah until she realized it was because this had never happened to her before.

It struck Sylah that the Wardens’ Empire was always prepared to go to war, but she wasn’t sure who with.

“She’s not my master.” They’re all masters to me, Sylah. Even you.

It was the reason Hassa hated the trials so much. In the face of entertainment Dusters forgot who the real enemy was. Ghostings never did.

Hassa’s phantom fingers twitched. She so rarely felt the nerve damage there anymore, but occasionally the ghost of her fingers would reach outward, stretching toward the horizon. As if she could touch the sun. As if she could burn.

It wasn’t only the gore that raised the bile to her throat, or the cries of the dying woman. It was the realization that if she won the Aktibar, she’d be the one turning the notches on every rack in every city, even if her hands weren’t moving the wheel.

“This river separates so much more than just land.” Anoor’s voice was soft, thoughtful. “It’s like the rack, it splits the city in two. Blood oozing out.” They walked in silence after that.

The words, starting in the throats of the officers, had crawled across the river into the mouths of countless children. A nursery rhyme, they thought. Isn’t that how propaganda starts?

“I’m sorry, but I’m really just the messenger here.” Messengers carry guilt too.

Have you thought about that? Who benefits the most from a drug that decimates half the population and keeps them placid?”

Truth is a hard thing to bear. It is raw and powerful and painful. Especially when the truth is twisted by anger into a lie.

Strikes went by, and Anoor’s pile of reading grew, as did her horror. It was like a film of ignorance had covered her view of the empire like latex, so tight that she didn’t even know it was there.

“Sometimes fire is what’s needed for new life to bloom.” And like the shell of a joba fruit, Sylah felt something inside her crack under Anoor’s gaze. It unfurled with a warmth of feeling, more intoxicating than the seeds within.

Tell them they are lesser. And they will feel lesser. Show them they are nothing. And they will be nothing. Take their identity. And they will be no one.

We cannot reclaim what is ours without the help from those who oppress us.

Grief is like a scab, each day you heal a little more, the blood clotting, the skin stitching together. But once a year you peel back the protective crust, each time expecting a scar, but instead the blood still gushes forth.

She knew Uka had mistreated her, misused her, but this…this was something Papa would have done. The thought struck her dumb, seeing her childhood with a stranger’s eyes for the first time.

Anoor had been going to school for most of her life, and she was twenty. It was a luxury, she knew that, but now she wondered if she’d been studying the wrong things. She was trying to make up for it now.

And from her tower on the hill, Anoor had seen the beauty, but now she saw the horror.

“Every day the Embers beat the backs of those below them. Still, he stands. Still, he works. That is power.”

Though the books she read were biased, Anoor began to piece together a picture of the system that the Warden of Truth called “justice.”

The darkness consumed her in moments. Panic rose in her throat when she heard the key turn in the lock, but she quashed it. Block by block, like Sylah said. Take each piece and build a castle, a fortress, to lord over. The bricks fell into place, then the walls. She added furniture and filled the bathroom with scented oils. Finally, she imagined hundreds of plates of fried yams. Just for her and Sylah.

Sylah thought of Papa Azim and wondered if that was his intention. She wondered if he relished their pain like Uka did, or if it pained him too. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the delight in violence or the premeditated nature of crafting the Stolen to become survivors.

“I had to pick up the pieces every time, hide the bruises, stitch the stitches, wipe away her tears. I’m glad she’s doing this…fighting back against her.”

“That is the cost of loving her.” Sylah had two thoughts in that moment. One: that it was a cost Sylah was willing to pay. Two: that Anoor had a mother who loved her after all.

She didn’t go to sleep for a long time. Anoor’s breath sent tingles down her arm with each exhale. It was a feeling that Sylah didn’t want to miss by sleeping.

Where Jond was stone, immovable and safe, Anoor was the tidewind, spirited and dangerous. And like the tidewind, her essence had found its way into the cavities and emptiness of Sylah’s life, relentlessly beautiful.

If Anoor was the tidewind, Sylah was fire.

But I don’t think I was ever meant to be that grain of sand among the Sandstorm. I was meant to be forged through fire and flame into glass.”

Sylah could never have enough. Even if she knew she would never be enough for her.

I have always been envious of the Abosom and their faith in a God they cannot see. Today I am envious of you, child, of the faith you have in others. To be that open is to be free. We will be free. Elder Dew nodded. And so will our land.

“One day, Jond, I will pay you back in full for this betrayal. Oh, I won’t kill you,” she spat. “I’ve murdered enough of our family, but, Jond, what I will do to you will be worse. I will make you feel so alone, the very darkness will be your only friend. I will make you suffer.”

“You don’t get to have me and then push me aside. You don’t get to do this to me. I refuse.” She was screaming into the cadence of her punches, each word hurtling toward Sylah like shrapnel. “She didn’t break me, and…neither will you. I love you, but I reject it. I. Will. Not. Be. Broken.”

Anoor was the sole boat in her ocean, and when she knelt beside her, Sylah grasped onto her with all the strength left in her body. The tidewind had begun to rage outside the tower. Anoor held Sylah, the tidewind rattling both their bones as she sang the one lullaby she knew.

It is a role to be the forgotten, to be a ghost in your own land. Haunting the stolen.

“You once told me to use my fear like building blocks. And that’s precisely what I’m going to do. I’m going to rebuild this empire whether you’re here to see it or not.”