A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,126

a flush creeps up my face. He is not always calm—that was clear enough in the baths.

“I don’t need to—to shout or cry or . . . break stones.” I drop the club. “I need to—I need—”

“To scream,” he says quietly, and hands me the club again. “And break things.”

It is as if his words have breathed life into something twisted and aching that has lived within, unacknowledged, for too long. Lurking ever since I watched Marcus slit my father’s throat. Since I heard Hannah cry out, Helly! Since I watched Antium burn. Since Cook and Faris and Livvy all died.

I only know I hit the floor when my knees slam into it. 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.

When there are no stones left, I drop the club and curl into a ball on the cot. Choked sobs leak out of me, and I have not wailed like this since I was a child safe in the arms of my parents. Then even the sobs fade away.

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

Harper kneels and wipes my tears away with his thumbs. Then he lifts my face to his, his own eyes wet, his gaze fierce in a way I’ve rarely seen.

“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.”

I sniff and wipe my face. “Thank you,” I say. “For—” For being here. For telling me to scream. For loving me. For knowing me.

I say none of it. I am glad now that we did not make love here, in this place. I am glad I pushed him away for so long, for it will make doing it again easier.

I return the club to its corner and stand. Then I walk away. He says nothing. But I hope he understands.

I have seen what happens to those I love.

* * *

«««

At dawn the next morning, I leave my room and go next door, to Zacharias. He sleeps, Tas on the cot beside him and Rallius standing near the door.

“Shrike,” Rallius murmurs, before stepping outside to give me a private moment.

I stand over my nephew’s crib and stare down at him. His brown curls are fuzzy and soft beneath my hand, just like Livia’s used to be when she was a child.

“I promise I will keep you safe.” I fight back the tears that threaten. I have done my screaming, my weeping. No more. “Whatever the price. I will protect you as I didn’t protect them. This I vow, by blood and by bone.”

And with that I leave, and go to secure my nephew’s empire.

XLVIII: Laia

The moon is high and fat when Elias finds Darin and me sitting atop a boulder on the rim of the canyon. I sense the Soul Catcher before I see him, the way you feel the air quiver when a falcon stoops for prey.

“What is it?” As I jerk my head up, Darin draws his scim, for we are on guard duty. “What do you see?”

My heart thuds against my chest like a penned bull as Elias approaches. Darin spots him and groans.

“Can I kick him?” my brother asks. “I’m going to kick him.”

“He saved your life, Darin.”

“A small kick,” he argues. “It wouldn’t even hurt him. Look at him, skies. It would probably break my foot.”

“No.”

“Fine.” Darin grabs his pack, ignoring the Soul Catcher’s nod of greeting. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.” Once past Elias, my brother turns around and mimes a kick, grinning.

Skies. Brothers.

“Any progress with the Tribes?” I ask Elias, for when I came up here, the Zaldars were still arguing over whether to leave for Adisa or try to fight for Aish.

Elias shakes his head. “Most wish to fight for Aish,” he says. “Few wish to go to Marinn.”

My fingers tighten around the staff of the scythe. The blade is folded into a slot in the wood, and it appears for all the world like nothing more than a fine walking stick. Which is