A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,38

expression is preternaturally calm.

Shouldn’t have looked. I direct my gaze up toward the treetops, which are infinitely less interesting.

“You really think it will be so easy?” She runs a slim finger along my shoulder blades, before her hand settles in my hair and she comes around to face me. She rises on her toes and tugs me close, stopping before our lips touch.

“For me, Elias, desire is not simple. It is not shelter. It is not warmth. It is a fire that offers no light, only heat, ruinous and consuming. The longer you deny it, the hotter it burns. You forget shelter. You forget warmth. There is only that which you want and cannot have, and the desolation that follows.”

Her lashes, I note, are unusually long, but it’s the cool challenge in her eyes that makes me wonder why she doesn’t have the world in her thrall.

My hands move to her bare waist and I pull her closer. But doing so is a mistake, for I don’t expect her skin to be so soft, nor for the press of her body to evoke a cascading wave of heat in my own.

“Is that a yes?” Say yes. “If I satisfy you, you’ll leave?”

I know her irises are gold, but in the darkness, they appear almost black as she searches my face. She sighs so quietly I nearly miss it.

“Never mind.” She backs away, and I don’t need Mauth’s magic to sense her sadness. “No matter what you do, Soul Catcher, it will not satisfy me. Turn around, please.”

I do as she asks, though disappointment lashes at me. I don’t let myself dwell on why.

“In that case, I will escort you from here. Your presence disturbs the ghosts. And there is rot near the river.”

“There are no ghosts, Elias,” Laia says. “You’re doing an excellent job. I do not know anything about the rot. The river is hundreds of miles away, and I entered the Waiting Place just this afternoon. If something is wrong with the river, I suggest you look elsewhere for the culprit.”

Water drips from her washcloth as she returns to bathing, and the scent of her soap wafts toward me, light and sugary, like summer fruit. I used to wonder at that scent. How it clung to her even when we traveled through the muck of the Southern Range, even when all we had to wash with was days-old rainwater.

“Why are you here?” My curiosity gets the better of me. “Why are you traveling through the forest?”

“I need to get to the Tribes,” Laia says. “To the encampments near Aish. I traveled alongside the Waiting Place for a few days, but decided it was safer in the forest than in the Empire. Keris’s patrols still hunt for her enemies.”

“The Tribal lands are soon to be a war zone. And I don’t wish to welcome your spirit here.”

“Your wishes do not matter much to me,” she says. “In any case, Tribe Saif and Tribe Nur are there. I need to find Mamie and Afya Ara-Nur. See if they can help me learn something about the Nightbringer.”

“You can’t linger here. The jinn walk this wood. You saw what they can do.”

“You said they would not sense one human walking alone through the forest,” she says. “And they haven’t. Not yet anyway. You can turn around now.”

She pulls on a shirt and unbinds her hair, which falls in a spill of loose ebony curls across her back. Another memory hits me. An inn, far away. A wall. A bed. Her legs tight on my waist. Her skin smooth and giving beneath my lips, and the sheer joy of getting more than a stolen moment with her. The feeling of rightness—of home.

I shove the memory to the back of my mind. “Let me take you south,” I say. I could leave her at the border, near the Duskan Sea. If she is causing the rot, it will fade when she leaves.

“I’m not windwalking with you,” she says. “Besides, I thought I could speak to the ghosts as I traveled. Maybe they know about the Night—”

“No.” I close the distance between us. She gasps at the suddenness of it. But then her face hardens and I feel steel against my throat.

“You will not touch me,” she says quietly. “You will not even think about taking me anywhere without my leave.”

She’s a little breathless, but she holds the blade steady. I do not tell her that it would do no good. That if she plunged