Page 154 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

Laia releases me, her hand on her mouth. I kneel beside the body of my mother, whose heart and mind will now forever be a cipher. Despite her violence, her implacable hatred, I grieve her loss. Her skin is cold and soft beneath my hands as I close her eyes. My eyes.

Stay far from the Nightbringer, Ilyaas. Such a strange and unexpected warning. Why did she caution me, when she spent so many years trying to kill me?

Perhaps she was never trying to kill me. Perhaps she was trying to kill some part of herself. But I will never know. Not truly.

Just a few feet away, Avitas Harper lies dead too. Now I understand the Blood Shrike’s devastation. We had one meaningful conversation, Avitas and I. It was not enough.

Even as my heart aches for my brother and my mother, Mauth’s magic swells, a wave of forgetting that he will unleash to wash away the mess in my mind.

“No,” I whisper, knowing that he can hear me. “My duty is not yet done. I must restore the balance.”

You will speak to the jinn. Mauth has returned to full power, and his voice thunders in my bones.But you must be clear of mind and heart, Soul Catcher. Not distracted by love and regret and hope.

“That isexactlywhat I must be distracted by,” I tell him. “Love and regret and hope are all I can offer.”

A long silence as he mulls it over. Laia watches me knowingly—the one person on this earth who understands the bone-deep intrusion of having a supernatural voice in your head that is not your own.

Do not fail me, Banu al-Mauth.

Behind me, the air hisses as hundreds of scims leave their scabbards.

“Look at that, bleeding hells—”

“Must be scores of them living in that city—”

Down in the Sher Jinnaat, across the gash in the earth, figures emerge. Most are in human form, though some wear their shadows, and others swirl in full flame.

“Soul Catcher.” The Blood Shrike limps toward me. Behind her, our ranks of Tribesmen, Scholars, and Martials are already forming up again into neat lines. Her gaze is fixed on the jinn watching us from the Sher Jinnaat.

“The catapults. There are two still working.” She raises her voice. “Load the salt—”

But I turn on her, Mauth’s power filling me, and my voice booms out across the jinn grove.

“You will not touch them.”

The Blood Shrike looks at me in surprise. As the rest of our men realize what I am saying, an angry mutter rises.

“We cannot let what they’ve done stand, Soul Catcher,” the Blood Shrike says. “Their leader is dead. Their human minions are dead or scattered. This is our chance.”

“They are not the Nightbringer,” I say. “The Augurs imprisoned them for a thousand years for doing nothing more than defending their borders. Unless you wish to punish yourself for defending Antium against invaders?”

“You saw what they can do at full strength. Such a threat—”

“We can treat with them,” I say. “This is what the Augurs worked toward, Blood Shrike. The foretellings, the raising of Blackcliff, the Trials. All their machinations were to bring us to this moment. They knew there was going to be a war years ago. Ever since they stole the jinn’s magic, they’ve been trying to make up for the evil they did. But they are not here to see it through.” I look at Laia and the Shrike in turn. “That falls to us.”

As I regard them, I wonder at the strange twists of fate that have led us here. The impossibility of this outcome, of the three of us alive, together, and standing before a host of the creatures desperately needed to restore balance to our world.

“Right.” Laia takes my hand in her left, and the Blood Shrike’s in her right. “Let’s get on with this.”

Hand in hand, we make our way down the escarpment and to thewaiting jinn. We stop at a far enough distance that they don’t feel threatened.

“Where is he?” Umber steps forward, recognizable only by her wrathful voice and the glaive in her hand. Even her eyes have dimmed, her fire a bare flicker of what it was in the battle.

“He is gone.” Laia steps forward. “Bound by Rehmat, who gave her life so yours might be spared. For he would have destroyed this world, and there is yet much good in it.”

“No.” Umber crumples, weeping, not in rage as I expected, but in desolation. “No—he loved us—”

But the other jinn are silent, for they bore witness. They saw what he became.

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