A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,157

back without looking, and breaks Darin’s neck.

The sound.

It has stalked my nightmares for months. This is how my father died. How Lis died. How my mother’s hope died.

Darin slumps to the ground, dark blue eyes open, but defiant no longer. He is—

My brother is—

He will never forge another scim or draw whole worlds with a few strokes of charcoal.

No.

He will never laugh until he snorts, or hunt down rare books I read, or shoot Elias dirty looks, or tell me that I am strong.

No.

I will never hold his children. He will never hold mine. He will never offer advice or eat moon cakes or tell stories of Mother and Father and Lis with me.

Because he is dead.

My brother is dead.

Laia, Rehmat cries out in my mind. Do not kill the Nightbringer. It is what he wants. What he needs. It is the last—

Her voice fades, for all I can hear is that hellish crack. As I look down at Darin’s broken body, I see my mother and my father. I see my sister, Nan, Pop, Izzi. I see the endless Scholar dead, all of us brutalized children of war who have had everything torn from us. Homes. Names. Families. Freedom. Power. Pride. Hope.

Laia, Rehmat whispers. Heed me. Please. Listen.

But I am done listening.

LXII: The Nightbringer

Laia’s face contorts with a horror I know well. She trembles, consumed by her suffering. A sound halfway between a snarl and a keen shreds her throat, and seconds later, she flings Rehmat out of her mind. My queen’s glowing form sprawls onto the ground behind me.

Laia’s hands tighten on the scythe. Rehmat scrambles toward her. Whether her foresight has told her what is to come or she simply knows me best, I do not know. It does not matter.

“Please, Laia,” she pleads with the girl. “It’s what he wants.”

Laia ignores my queen, as do I. Rehmat does not exist. Nor does the battle below. This moment is between me and the girl I loved. The girl who helped to save my people without realizing it. The girl I betrayed and spurned.

For a moment, as she raises the scythe and surges toward me, I am moved by pity. I want to hold her. To tell her that soon, all of our pain will disappear. The world will be consumed by suffering incarnate, and there will be no survivors, not even my own kin.

All will be well, for all will be darkness, I wish to say.

For I did love her, this brave, wild-haired, gold-eyed girl, terrified yet defiant, hesitant yet determined. I loved her for all that she was and all that she would become.

The scythe whistles through the air and slices into my throat. Once. Twice. Three times.

Laia is not careful. The training the Blood Shrike gave her has been forgotten, robbing the grace from this murder. She does not kill me. She kills all of her suffering. All that has been done to her, her family, her people.

But as Keris said, there are some things that do not die.

Pain lances through me, ice penetrating the fire that burns at my core. My legs give way, and I am on my knees, staring up at her, weeping in gratefulness.

Tears streak down her face as she comprehends what she has done. For Laia’s soul is intrinsically good. She drops the scythe, her body shuddering. But she does not understand fully. Not yet.

Though it takes great effort, I shift from flame to flesh, to the human form she knew, red-haired and brown-eyed, bleeding, fading away at the edges. Perhaps this, at the end, will bring her some comfort.

“Laia. Laia, my sweet love.” Though she will not believe I loved her, it is the truest thing I have ever said.

For though Rehmat lived within her, it is Laia of Serra who walked beside me on the last leg of this long journey. Laia of Serra who defied me and ensured the doom of her people and her world when she swore to defeat me.

The Sea will come for me now. It will punch a hole into this world. It will consume me. After months of hunting and killing and hoarding suffering, I realized that the despair of humans would never equal mine. That the only way to release the maelstrom, to bore a hole between this world and Mauth’s, was to pour a thousand years of my own pain into the Sea of Suffering.

“Do not weep, love,” I whisper to her. “This world was a cage. Thank you for