A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,28

skin. The same sharp cheekbones and generous mouth.

“How dare—” the Blood Shrike sputters, eyes flashing. “Musa! That’s not your—”

“Not my secret? It is if it will save our lives.” The Scholar turns to me. “You’ve been looking at him funny. Your gut’s probably telling you there’s a connection. Your gut is right. Same father. Different mother—thankfully for him.” The Scholar chuckles to himself. “You wouldn’t let your own brother die, would you? You were raised among the Tribes. Family is everything.”

“Once, perhaps,” I say. “No longer.”

“Enough.” The voice that speaks conjures laughter and wonder, molten honey skin and hair the color of night. She emerges from the cliff trail and for a long time as she stares at me, she’s silent.

Her regard bothers me. It makes my skin feel hot, feverish, raises memories in my mind of a granite-walled school, and a dance beneath a full moon. Of a trek through the mountains, an inn far away, her body against mine—

“You will grant us passage, Soul Catcher.”

“Laia of Serra.” I say her name softly. “It is not your time. The forest will not abide it.”

“I say it will. You will grant us passage.”

There is a weight to Laia’s voice that wasn’t there before, and a glow manifests near her. That light feels familiar, yet I cannot recall seeing it before.

A cluster of ghosts gathers behind me, but they are silent. Laia lowers her gaze, fists clenched, and I have a sudden, strange thought. She is conferring with someone—or something. As a man used to voices in my head, I recognize when others are listening to voices too.

Nodding as if in agreement with someone, Laia steps past me, into the Waiting Place. I wait for the ghosts to howl, for Mauth to protest. But the forest is still.

The others follow her in. If I do not stop them, something will shift. Something irrevocable. Something that began with that blasted Augur giving me back my memories.

I gather up my magic, prepared to drive them out.

But Laia looks back at me with betrayal and pain in her eyes and I let the magic drain away. An unfamiliar emotion fills me.

Shame, I realize. Deep and gnawing.

XII: The Blood Shrike

The Soul Catcher guides us away from the edge of the forest to a muddy game trail. I glance at him, searching for vestiges of my friend Elias Veturius. But other than the hard lines of his body and the sharp planes of his face, there isn’t a shred of the boy I knew.

We stop in a small clearing, and he watches as Laia carefully removes the arrow and bandages my wound. At the crack of a branch behind me, I draw my scim.

“Just a squirrel,” the Soul Catcher says. “The soldiers won’t enter here. The ghosts would drive them mad.”

My neck prickles. I know there are ghosts here, but they are quiet, far different from the screeching demons that possessed my men at the gates of Antium.

“Why won’t they drive us mad?” It is the first Tas has spoken.

The Soul Catcher looks down at the boy, and his voice is gentler. “I don’t know,” he says. His brow is furrowed. It’s the look he’d get at Blackcliff when the Commandant would send us after a deserter, and he couldn’t settle on how he felt about it.

Forget about Blackcliff, Shrike. I have more important things to think about. Like getting the hells back to my nephew. Figuring out what my next steps are beyond crossing this wood for three weeks.

By the time I reach Delphinium, I will have been gone for two months. Skies know what I will find on my return.

When I mutter as much to Laia, she shakes her head.

“Not if he helps us.” She glances at the Soul Catcher. He hears. He might be some otherworldly servant of ghosts now, but he’s still tied to Laia, still a part of her song, whether he admits it or not.

“You’ll be through by dawn,” he says. “But stay close. The ghosts are not the only fey who walk the Waiting Place. There are older creatures that would seek to harm you.”

“The jinn,” Laia says. “Those the Nightbringer freed.”

The Soul Catcher gives her a brief, unreadable look. “Yes. One human might slip through the forest undetected by them. But a half dozen? They will know you are here soon enough.”

“Can’t you just—” Musa puts his hands around his throat and mimes choking—referring no doubt to how the Soul Catcher can steal away breath.

“I’d rather not.” The