A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,77

her tracks.

The thought of killing a jinn again fills me with a bizarre mix of anticipation and nausea. Khuri’s death flashes before my eyes for the hundredth time. The arc of her body as she fell. The Nightbringer’s scream of loss.

Khuri would have killed me. She and all of her kin are my enemies now. Her death should not haunt me.

But it does.

“There is no shame in mourning the passage of so ancient a creature, Laia of Serra.” Rehmat’s glow is a soft light that reflects off the swiftly pooling water at my feet. “Especially when it passed by your hand.”

“If your goal is to destroy the jinn”—I raise my voice so Rehmat can hear me over the rain—“why are you so sad about me killing one?”

“Life is sacred, Laia of Serra,” Rehmat says, its voice deep as the thunder rumbling above me. “Even the life of a jinn. It is forgetting this fact that leads to war in the first place. Do you think that Khuri was not loved?”

The rain pours down heavier, and I do not know why I bother to wear a hood. My hair is soaked, and water streams into my eyes, blinding me no matter how much I wipe it away. In a few hours, it will be dark. I need to get out of this damn place and find a dry spot to spend the night. Or, at the very least, a boulder to hunker under.

“I did not mean to kill her,” I say to Rehmat. “One second she was not there and then—”

“You did kill her. This is the nature of war. But you do not have to forget your enemy. Nor should you ignore the toll her slaying has taken on you.”

“There will be a lot more dead jinn before this all ends,” I say. “If I weep over every last one, I will go mad.”

“Perhaps,” Rehmat says. “But you’ll remain human. Is that not worth a bit of madness?”

“Better if you help me get the weapon that could end this war,” I say.

“The scythe cannot help you when you don’t know how to wield it.”

“I know I need his story,” I say. “And I will seek it. But a story won’t do much good without a weapon.” The water is to my calves now and rising fast. I quicken my gait. “I do not fear him, Rehmat.”

“What do you know of the Nightbringer, Laia?”

“He’s careful,” I say. “Angry. Capable of great love, but filled with hate too. He spent a thousand years trying to free his brethren.”

“And his mind?”

“How the skies should I know what goes through his twisted brain, Rehmat?”

“You fell in love with him, yes? And he with you.” There is a strange note in Rehmat’s voice, but it’s gone an instant later. “You must have learned something.”

“He—he suffered,” I say. “He lost family. People he loved. And—” Thunder booms overhead, closer than before. “He plays a long game. The moment he knew I had a piece of the Star, he began planning. When things did not go according to his plan, he shifted quickly.”

“So do you think, Laia of Serra, that the Nightbringer, the King of No Name, will allow you to take the scythe now that he knows you want it?”

“Did you know him?” I am practically shouting, the rain is so loud. “Before he became what he is?”

“What I was before does not matter.”

“I think it does,” I say. “You want me to trust you. But how can I trust you when you will not tell me the truth about what you are?”

Wind howls down the canyon, and it sounds like a scream. Or a laugh. My blood goes cold and not from the rain. The last time I was in a storm this powerful, this angry, I was in the desert east of Serra, fighting to get a poisoned Elias to Raider’s Roost. That storm was the handiwork of the Nightbringer. As was the sandstorm that nearly separated me from Elias just a few weeks later.

“Rehmat,” I say. “This storm—”

“It is him.” The creature realizes it as I do. “He knows you are out here, Laia of Serra. He seeks to harm you. Climb, child.”

“Climb?” The path I am on is too narrow, the walls of the canyon too steep. Rehmat’s light flares in alarm as the earth beneath me rumbles.

“The canyon is flooding, Laia! Climb!”

Rehmat flies a dozen yards ahead, where the canyon curves into a small ridge. I try to run, but can