A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes #2) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,127
to Keenan—the Keenan I knew? The Keenan I loved? I scream in my mind. And why? I glare into his eyes, the darkness rising, taking over. I sense alarm from the Nightbringer, and surprise. Tell me! Now! Quite suddenly, I am weightless as I fly into the chaos of the Nightbringer’s mind. Into his memories.
At first, I see nothing. I only feel … sadness. An ache that he’s buried beneath centuries of life. It permeates every part of him, and though I am bodiless, my mind nearly collapses from the weight of it.
I force myself through it, and I stand in a cold alley in Serra’s Scholar quarter. Wind bites through my clothing, and I hear a strangled cry. I turn to find the Nightbringer changing, screaming in pain as he uses all his power to morph into a redheaded child of five. He staggers out of the alley and into the street beyond, collapsing on the stoop of a dilapidated house. Many seek to help him, but he does not speak to anyone. Not until an achingly familiar dark-haired man stops and kneels beside him.
My father.
He scoops up the child. The memory shifts to an encampment deep in a canyon. Resistance fighters eat, chatter, train with weapons. Two figures sit at a table, and my heart drops when I see them: my mother and Lis. They welcome my father and the redheaded child. They offer him a plate of stew and tend his wounds. Lis gives him a wooden cat that Father carved for her, and she sits beside him so he is not afraid.
Even as the memory shifts again, I think back to a cold and rainy day in the Commandant’s kitchen months ago, when Cook told Izzi and me a story about the Nightbringer. “He infiltrated the Resistance. Took human form and posed as a fighter. Got close to your mother. Manipulated and used her. Your father caught on. Nightbringer had help. A traitor.”
The Nightbringer didn’t have help, and he didn’t pose as a fighter. He was the traitor, and he posed as a child. For no one would think a young, starving orphan could be a spy.
A snarl echoes in my mind, and the Nightbringer tries to fling me from his thoughts. I feel myself returning to my body, but the darkness within roars and fights, and I do not let myself release him.
No. You will show me more. I need to understand.
Back in the creature’s memories, I see him befriend my lonely sister. I grow uneasy at their friendship—it seems so real. As if he truly cares about her. At the same time, he wheedles information from her about my parents: where they are, what they are doing. He stalks my mother, his covetous eyes fixed on her armlet. His hunger for it is like that of a starving animal in its potency. He doesn’t want it. He needs it. He must get her to give it to him.
But one day, my mother arrives at the Resistance encampment without the armlet. The Nightbringer has failed. I feel his fury, overlaid by that yawning sadness. He arrives in a torch-lit barracks and speaks to a familiar silver-faced woman. Keris Veturia.
He tells Keris where she can find my parents. He tells her what they will be doing.
Traitor! You led them to their deaths! I rage at him, forcing myself further into his mind. Why? Why the armlet?
I fly with him deep into the past, streaming along the winds to the far-flung Forest of Dusk. I feel his desperation and panic for his people. They face a grave danger at the hands of a Scholar coven bent on stealing their power, and he cannot get to them fast enough. Too late, he howls in the memory. I am too late. He cries out the names of his kin as a shock wave ripples out from the center of the Forest, throwing him into darkness.
An explosion of pure silver—a Star, the Scholars’ weapon—used to imprison the jinn. I expect it to disintegrate—I know the story. But it does not. Instead, it shatters into hundreds of shards flung across the land. Shards that are picked up by Mariners and Scholars, Martials and Tribesmen. Fashioned into necklaces and armlets, spearheads and blades.
The Nightbringer’s rage steals my breath. For he cannot simply take back these pieces. Each time he finds one, he must ensure that it is offered freely, in absolute love and trust. For that is the only way he can