The Final Strife (The Ending Fire Trilogy #1)

by Saara El-Arifi

blood will always flow when an empire thrives.

everyone who lived in the Dredge had the same hollowed-out look. It was a mandatory uniform, an expression of squalor and poverty enforced by malnutrition and childhood labor.

“You looked like you were having another seizure.” “I was flirting!”

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.

“But what I’ve learned, what I’m learning, is not to let those hurts define you. Use them like we use the anger, craft yourself from those little hurts, block by block. Build a fortress of pain, a castle even. And lord over it.” Sylah leaned in, her glittering eyes ignited with a passion Anoor had never seen before. No fury marred her face, no scorn, nor sarcastic quips.

Both on paths of destruction, Sylah inward, Jond outward.

He heard the promise in her words wrap around him, sucking his air. They watched each other, breathing heavily, two desert foxes ready to pounce. He broke the tension first and moved away.

You’re pathetic. Pathetic and soon to be dead. At least when you were taking the joba seeds you were in control of the slow death you were heading toward. Now you’re just letting it happen to you.

Sylah didn’t have time to mourn him, but she would. Fayl had always been kind to her. Except for the hunting-down-and-murdering thing. But that was only recently.

She walked toward the skull, away from the hole made for her heart. The Farsai Desert made sand dunes in its eye sockets, and a sand snail now occupied the nasal cavity. She couldn’t guess whose smile once opened up to the gleaming white teeth beneath.