A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,68

there are dozens of Khuris within her.

The son of shadow and heir of death

Will fight and fail with his final breath.

Sorrow will ride the rays of the day,

The earth her arena and man her prey.

In flowerfall, the orphan will bow to the scythe.

In flowerfall, the daughter will pay a blood tithe.

Tears spring to my eyes at the sight of the fallen jinn. She bursts into flame, just as Shaeva once did, her ashes caught on the wind. And though she was my enemy, I can take no joy in her passing. For as she dies, the Nightbringer screams.

“Khuri!” The sorrow in his keen turns my blood to ice, for I have heard such pain before. His cry is my father moaning in his jail cell and my sister’s neck snapping. It is Nan stifling her wails in her fist as she mourned her only child and Izzi telling me she was scared as she breathed her last. It is every death I’ve ever suffered, but so much worse, for he had only just gotten Khuri back. He had fought a thousand years to get her back.

“I’m sorry.” The scythe falls from my nerveless fingers. “Oh skies, I’m so sorry—”

The air near me glows the faintest gold. “Flee, Laia of Serra,” Rehmat whispers, its sadness palpable. “Flee, lest he burn you to ash.”

I do not know if Elias heard Rehmat, or if he simply senses the Nightbringer’s rage building like a tempest over a warm sea. It does not matter. As my eyes meet those of the jinn, the Soul Catcher’s arm comes around me, and seconds later, we are on the wind.

XXVII: The Soul Catcher

The soldier in me tallies up the jinns’ weaknesses: Umber succumbing to my magic as I siphoned away her life force; the glaive wounding Khuri; the scythe killing her.

The Soul Catcher in me yearns for the Waiting Place, rattled by Khuri’s prophecy. I need the peace of the trees, the focus that the ghosts give me. I need Mauth to ease my mind.

And the human in me marvels at the feel of this girl in my arms—that she lives, that she not only survived the Nightbringer but wielded his weapon.

“I had it in my hands,” she whispers as we windwalk. “I had it and I lost it.”

When we stop, it is with a crash at the top of a dry gully choked with scree and spindly trees. I take the brunt of the fall, wincing at the rocks slicing through my clothing. Branches groan in the fierce wind tearing across the desert, and Laia tucks her head into her arm, shielding her eyes from the sand.

“Elias, are you all—”

“Fine.” I lift her off me quickly, then back away a few feet. The sky above is ablaze with stars and we are so far from Aish that it isn’t even a glow on the horizon.

It’s hard to make out Laia’s face in the dark. But that’s a relief. “The foretelling we heard,” I tell her. “Those first two lines were about me.”

“You?” She gets gingerly to her feet. “The son of shadow and heir of death—”

“Will fight and fail with his final breath.” I pause for a long moment. “You know the cost of my failure. You’ve seen it firsthand.”

“It is just a foretelling,” Laia says. “Not all foretellings are real—”

“Shaeva’s foretelling came to pass,” I say. “Every line of it. And she, too, was a jinn. You were right, you know. The Nightbringer is doing something to the ghosts. I nearly found out what it was. But—”

“But you saved me instead.” Laia looks at me like she knows my insides. “Elias.” Her voice is strained. “I’m not sorry. You came back to me—I’ve missed—”

“You’ll have to make your way back to wherever it is you’re going,” I say. “I’ve been away from the forest for long enough.”

She closes the distance between us, grabbing my hand before I can windwalk away. Her fingers are twined between mine, and I think of the night she spent with me in Blackcliff. Before she left, she tried to give my blade back. The words she spoke carry layers of meaning now that they did not have then.

You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you.

“Talk to me,” she says now. “Just for a moment.” The gully is filled with scraggly trees that are blue in the starlight. But she finds a long, flat rock and sits, pulling me down with her.

“Look at