A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,161

runs past us, green eyes sparkling as he pulls me down, and I chase him. My parents speak, and though I cannot hear their words, their language is that of love.

Seeing it is a scim to my soul, for I want so much for it to be real. For this to be a memory and not a wish. I want for suffering to have never touched any of us.

“Ah, my boy.” My father takes me in his arms. “It was not to be.”

He holds me to him for long minutes, and I close my eyes and let myself grieve.

“What if I don’t go back.” I pull away. “I could stay here. With you. Though—” I glance around, for a mist has rolled in, thick and cool, and Blackcliff’s stark walls fade. “Where is here? And how are you here? You died years ago.”

“I live in your blood, my son. I live in your soul.”

“So I’m dead too.”

“No,” he says. “When the Sea of Suffering broke through the barrier, it took you, but before it could consume you, Mauth snatched you away. You are in between. Walking a scim’s edge, as you have for so much of your life. You could fall into the Sea of Suffering and lose yourself in your pain. Or you could return to the world, for you are Soul Catcher still, and you have a duty. The balance must be restored.”

“The jinn.” Your duty is to the dead, even to the breaking of the world. “But the world is—” Broken, I was about to say, before I remember my words to Laia months ago. The world must be broken before it can be remade.

“Will you help remake the world, my son?” my father asks me.

“I—I begged the jinn already,” I say. “I told them the balance couldn’t be restored without them. They didn’t listen.”

“Because it was the Soul Catcher who asked them.” My father takes me by the shoulders, and his strength flows into me. “But that is not all of you. Tell me, who are you?”

“I am the Banu al-Mauth.” I do not understand him. “I pass the ghosts—”

“Who are you, son of mine?”

“I—” I had a name. What was my name? Laia said it. Over and over she said it. But I cannot recall it anymore.

“Who are you?”

“I am—I—” Who am I? “I am born of Keris Veturia,” I say. “Son to the Kehanni who told the Tale. Beloved to Laia of Serra. Friend to the Blood Shrike. I am brother to Avitas Harper and Shan An-Saif. Grandson to Quin Veturius. I am—”

Two words echo in my head, the last words Cain spoke to me before dying. Words that stir my blood, words that my grandfather taught me when I was a boy of six and he gave me my name. Words that were burned into me at Blackcliff.

“Always victorious.”

Some door bursts open inside me, and Blackcliff fades. The great maelstrom drags at me, as if the conversation with my father had never happened, as if there were only seconds between when the Sea of Suffering took me and now.

I fight my way out, toward a light coruscating distantly. The Sea is so close that I feel it dragging at my feet, but I battle my way up to the world of the living, screaming those two words over and over.

Always victorious.

Always victorious.

Always victorious.

LXVI: Keris Veturia

The Blood Shrike will die as her sisters died. As her parents died. Throat slit, a slow enough death that she will walk into the hereafter knowing I defeated her.

Part of me rages against how easily she fell. All she had to do was not love. If she hadn’t loved, she’d have been a worthy foe. I’d never have been able to hurt her, no matter who I killed.

Far away, a deep, earth-shuddering growl resounds. I ignore it.

The Shrike clutches her side as I approach, and she is a small, broken thing. A version of myself, if I had allowed defeat to enter my veins like a poison. Me, if I’d let myself love or care.

Give me a foe who challenges me, I shout in my mind. A foe who makes my body scream, who forces me to think faster, to fight harder.

“You sad creature,” I say. “Look at you. On your knees in the mud. Your army dies around you, and not one of them is brave enough to come to your aid. You weak, broken bird, mourning a man who was dead the moment he called out