A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,65

ghosts?” I force myself to ignore Laia. “To strengthen your jinn? Yourself?”

“Not a single word for the woman you used to love,” the Nightbringer says. “And your kind think that I am cruel. Do you even remember those you’ve killed, boy? Or are there so many that their faces fade together? The latter, I think. That is how humans go through this life. Murdering and smashing and forgetting. But—” He looks at the city around him.

“I understand every death caused in service of my purpose. I do not take them lightly. Am I not kinder than you and your ilk, who cannot recall face or form of your foes? Your homes and lives and loves are built upon the graves of those you never even knew existed—”

Laia, who hangs limply from the Nightbringer’s hand, suddenly comes to life. Her chains go flying toward Umber, who screams when they touch her. I expect Laia to disappear. To escape.

Instead, she lunges for the Nightbringer.

For a moment, they tumble back in a tangle of shadow and flesh. But when he rises, he has Laia’s wrists caught in one of his hands.

“You cannot kill me, girl,” he sneers at her. “Have you not learned?”

“So everyone keeps saying,” Laia gasps, glaring at him, at the other jinn. “But you are all monsters. And monsters have weaknesses.”

“Monsters?” He twists her around until she faces me. “There stands a monster. Walking through a city burning, ignoring the screams of his own kind. Without a care for anything but his precious ghosts. He will not mourn you if I kill you slowly.”

“Can’t kill me,” she gasps. “Star—”

“Perhaps I’ve overcome that little hiccup,” the Nightbringer says. “What of it, Soul Catcher? Would you like another ghost for your kingdom? Or maybe I will reap her soul too. Would you let her die, knowing her spirit will never cross the river?”

My attention flicks again to what’s happening behind the Nightbringer. The girl thrashes, clawing at him.

But she’s not “the girl.” Cain made sure she never would be again.

If she let herself be cowed, I could look away. Instead she defies the Nightbringer, kicking and fighting even as he squeezes the life out of her.

A memory surfaces—a day long ago at Blackcliff, the first time we saw each other. Skies, the determination in her, the life. Even then, she was an ember ever burning, no matter how much the world tried to quench her fire.

Our eyes meet.

Walk away, Soul Catcher, I tell myself. Look to the jinn behind the Nightbringer. Figure out what he is doing. Save the spirits from whatever skies-awful fate he is inflicting upon them.

Walk away.

But for a moment, just a moment, the wrathful, imprisoned part of me, the old me, breaks free.

And I cannot walk away.

XXV: The Blood Shrike

The dark stone tunnels beneath Antium are laid out in a grid, meant to allow ease of movement when the weather is wretched. If you know the tunnels, traversing them is child’s play.

For me, they are a nightmare, stinking of mold and death, littered with the detritus of our flight from Antium months ago. Clothes and shoes. Blankets and heirlooms. And now my blood, a trail of it that any tracker could follow.

My ragged breathing is punctuated by the occasional skittering of rodents, their eyes flashing in the dark from afar. Move. Keep moving. I drag myself across the damp rock for hours. Pick my way through an unending reminder of what the Karkauns did to us.

No, I think. What we did to ourselves.

When the blood has all drained out of me, when I know that my healing power will not save me, I stop. My torch has burned down to almost nothing. You are a torch against the night—if you dare to let yourself burn. Cain said that to me.

Only it’s not true any longer. The Augurs are gone. There is no light in this place. Only my pathetic life, finally at its end, and everyone and everything we left behind.

I wait for pursuit but it does not come. I wish it would. I wish the Karkauns would just kill me quickly.

My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I realize I am staring into the face of a skeleton. It is picked clean, for there is life in these tunnels even if it isn’t human.

The skeleton is not large. A child, a wooden horse clutched in his shriveled hands. Injured in the attack and left here, perhaps. Or maybe separated from family and abandoned to fend for himself.

The