Page 71 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

But in time, a loneliness descended. No matter how rich and varied the lives of humans, they were falling stars in my world. They flared bright and brief, and then they burned out.

My powers were familiar terrain, and the Waiting Place itself no mystery. Even the nuances of the ghosts grew predictable. My domain was flooded with spirits as human civilization spread. But I could pass them with hardly a thought.

I grew restless. Emptiness gripped me, a vast chasm that nothing could fill. I wanted. I yearned. But I did not know what for.

Mauth must have sensed my agitation, for in time, I felt new sparks enter the Waiting Place. Fully formed and as bewildered as I was when I arrived.

Your own kind, Mauth said, guiding me to them.For those of clay and fire are not meant to walk alone. And the Beloved was meant to receive love as well as give it, else how could I have named you such?

I nurtured those young flames, until they were full grown and burning bright. Together, we discovered their names. Their magic.Diriya learned to manipulate water in the flat heat of the summer, when we had forgotten the taste of rain. Pithar spoke to stone long before she realized it spoke back, and she raised up the Sher Jinnaat—our city. Supnar gave life to the walls, so we could imbue them with our stories. In time, the jinn began to pair and create their own little flames, each more beautiful than the last. We had a city, now. A civilization.

Still, I felt incomplete. Empty.

Little remains of Khuri. A few ashes that I gather close, untouched by the wind. Umber bunches to fly in pursuit of Laia and the Soul Catcher, but I stop her.

“They are unimportant,” I say. “Protect Maro. Only the reaping matters.”

Perhaps she will defy me. Her hands tighten on her glaive, and Faaz and Azul step forward, ready to quell her flame with stone and weather. Talis shudders, inconsolable at Khuri’s loss.

“We will have our vengeance, bright one,” I say to Umber. “But not if we think like mortals.”

From the city, screams rise. Keris does her work well. And Umber is hungry to join in.

“Unleash your spite on the humans,” I say. “I will return.”

I gather what little I have of Khuri and ride the winds deep into the Forest of Dusk, to the place I hate the most. The jinn grove, or what is left of it.

As I enter, I sense a presence watching from the forest. A spirit. Anancient impulse to pass her on seizes me, so deeply ingrained that after a thousand years of ignoring the ghosts, I nearly go to her. But I crush that instinct.

Khuri’s ashes fly away on a gentle wind, and I consider her life and all that she was: the deep burgundy of her flame; how she loved her siblings; how she took up a scim when they were lost, destroying an entire legion of Scholar invaders with her wrath.

When my pain is as sharp as the scythe on my back, I ram through Mauth’s defenses and seek out a place that exists beyond the Forest of Dusk. A place of claws and teeth. A Sea of Suffering.

The suffering reaches out to me.More, it demands, and I sense its unending hunger. A maw that can never be filled.More.

“Soon,” I whisper.

I consider, then, the problem of Laia. The girl knows now of the scythe. She realizes what it can do.

Yet I am no closer to understanding the unnatural magic that exists within her. Time to remedy that.

My son, do not do this.

Mauth has tried to speak to me before. Always, I have ignored that hated voice, so ancient, so wise, so monstrously unfeeling.

Thou art the Beloved, Mauth says.

“No, Father,” I say after a long time. “I was the Beloved. Now I am something else.”

XXX:Laia

After Elias departs, I sink onto the rock where we kissed, stunned as the depths of my failure sink in. For it is not just that Elias left again. After all, I told him to go.

It is that I did not get the scythe. I am alone in the middle of the Tribal desert with no food, no water, and no way of getting to either of those things quickly. All I have is my dagger and a freshly ravaged heart.

“Rehmat?” The creature does not respond, and I wince when I think of the dismay in its voice after I killed Khuri. Like I was a cruel child who broke the neck of a bird.

I drop my face into my hands and try to breathe, focusing on the desert scents of salt and earth and juniper. The wind yanks at my hair and clothes, its wail echoing in my head like the Nightbringer’s keen. I wish for Nan and Pop. For my mother. I wish for Izzi. For Keenan. For everyone who is gone.

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