A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,92

“You will survive this.”

“Remember your name.” There was such urgency to her whisper. “You are the Beloved. Remember, or you will be lost.”

“Do not leave this world,” I begged her. “Do not leave me alone, my love.”

“I will see you again.” She squeezed my hands. “This, I vow.”

Then her flame faded. But I left her ashen body, for far to the north, a great evil was unfolding. The imprisoning of my kind.

I tried to stop it. But just like with Rehmat, I was too late.

“I forsake thee.” I forced my way to Mauth’s domain, to that vast, wretched sea into which I had cast so much human suffering. “I forsake thee, and I am thy creature no longer.”

“Thou wilt always be mine. For thou art the Meherya.”

“No,” I said to him. “Never again.”

I returned to a desolate world. For my Rehmat was gone. My kin were gone, all but Shaeva.

She died slowly—I made sure of it before bringing her back to be Soul Catcher, before chaining her to the Waiting Place to pass ghosts.

And I wept over Rehmat’s final words to me, for she took such pride in keeping her vows, and this was one she had broken.

What a fool I was. All those years I knew her, she never once broke an oath. Not even the smallest, simplest promise.

Why would her last and greatest vow be any different?

XXXVI: Laia

It takes me an hour to find my fallen pack, and three more to discover a path that will take me to Afya and Mamie. My clothes have finally dried, though they are stiff with mud and scrape painfully against the bruises and cuts from the flash flood. I feel as if every bone in my body has been broken.

The storm has fled with the Nightbringer, leaving the brilliant blue spill of the galaxy in its wake. The light makes it easy to see, but the rain-churned desert floor is sludge now, perilous and sticky. My pace is maddeningly slow. My body shakes, and not just from the cold.

Despair takes hold. At this pace, I will not reach the guard tower before I collapse from pain. I think of calling out to Darin, but I will only worry him. And I do not want to draw the attention of any fey creatures right now. If I am attacked, I cannot fight.

“Laia.”

Rehmat’s luminous form casts a glow across the starlit desert, sending night creatures scurrying into their burrows. Beside it—her—I am but a smudge in the darkness.

I have a thousand questions. But now that she is here, it takes me long minutes to find any words that do not drip with rancor.

“You’re his wife,” I finally say. “His queen.”

“I was his wife. No longer. I have not been his wife for a millennium.” Only days ago, I wondered if Rehmat was male because of how irritatingly stubborn she was. But now there is a shift in her voice, her form. She no longer hides who she is.

“I did not tell you,” she says, “because I thought the truth would anger you. I worried you would not trust me if you knew I was a jinn—”

“Are a jinn!”

“Was a jinn.” She greets my outburst with infuriating aplomb. “The Jaduna’s blood magic did not allow me to keep my corporeal body, my fire. But jinn souls are linked to our magic. If the magic lives, so do our souls.”

“So they . . . extracted you?” I ask. “He did not know you had died. Did you trick him too?”

“It was necessary.”

“Necessary.” I laugh. “And the deaths of tens of thousands of my people? Was that necessary too?”

“My gift as a jinn was foretelling.” Rehmat keeps pace with me easily, lighting the way, though I wish she wouldn’t. Darkness is what I want right now. Darkness in which to nurse my pain.

“I saw one path forward, Laia. Before our war with the Scholars, I befriended the Jaduna. We shared much lore over the centuries. When I learned that the Meherya would turn, I went to them, hoping their magic could help me stop it.”

She opens her hands and looks down at her form. “All they could offer was this. They said that upon my death, they would draw out my soul and nest me within their own people. A hundred men and women volunteered. It was a testament to our years of friendship that they would do such a thing, not knowing the effect it would have on their progeny. They found my broken body