Page 72 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

But there is one whoisn’tgone. Not yet.

I close my eyes, as I did weeks ago in the Forest of Dusk, and think about all that has bonded Darin and me. Then I call out softly, so as not to draw unwanted attention like last time.

“Darin?”

The minutes slide by. Perhaps I did not hear him before. Perhaps it was wishful thinking—

Laia?

“Darin!” I make myself speak his name quietly. “You can hear me?”

Yes. A heavy pause.So I did hear you before. I wondered if I’d imagined it.Darin sounds as if he has not slept in an age. But it is his voice and I want to sob in relief.

How do I know this isn’t a trick?

“When you were fifteen, you liked our neighbor Sendiya so much that you spent a month drawing a portrait of her even though I told you she was horribly vain. But she gave it back because she said you made her nose too small. You moped for weeks.”

It wasn’t weeks. Maybe three days.

“Three weeks,” I insist, though I am grinning.

Thankfully my luck has improved.

“Ugh.” I make a vomiting sound. “I don’t want to know. You have terrible taste in girls, Darin.”

Not this time! You know her, she says. Nawal—she’s a healer.

I nod though of course he cannot see me. “I do know her. She’s too good for you.”

Probably. Are you all right? Where are you?

“I—I am fine.”

The lie weighs heavy on my tongue. I have never been able to fool my brother. Not when I broke a jar of Nan’s precious jam and tried to blame it on an alley cat; not when our parents and Lis died, and I told him I could fall asleep fine without him watching over me. In the end, he took the blame for the jam. And he watched over my sleep for months, though he was only seven at the time.

Laia, he says.Tell me.

His words are a boulder that breaks a dam. I tell him everything. My inability to break through to Elias and remind him of his humanity. My impotence when Khuri took control of my mind. The feeling of the scythefalling from my fingers. The only thing I do not mention is Khuri’s death. It is too raw, yet.

“And now I am stuck.” I am surprised that as I finish, a thin line of purple blooms on the eastern horizon, illuminating an undulating landscape of canyons and cliffs and massive fingers of rock jutting into the sky. “I have no idea what I am going to do.”

Yes you do, Darin says.You just can’t see it yet. You feel defeated, Laia. And it’s no wonder. It’s so great a burden to bear alone. But I’m with you, even if I’m not beside you. You will sort through this, like you do everything that comes your way. And you will do it with strength. So stop. Think. Tell me, what are you going to do?

I stare out at the desert, a speck of nothing against its vastness. These rocks, this dirt, it will abide for millennia, while I am but a moment in time that will be over all too soon. The thought is crushing, and I cannot breathe. I look up at the stars as if they will give me air. They have been the only constant in my life these past eighteen months.

Though that is not true. My own heart has been constant too. My will. That is not much. But it has gotten me this far.

“Water runs through a gully nearby,” I say to Darin. “Rare enough in the desert that there’s likely a settlement—or at least a road—nearby. I am going to find it. And I am going to find Mamie Rila and Afya.”

Good. One step at a time, little sister. Just like always. Be safe.

Then he’s gone and I am alone again. But not lonely anymore. By the time the sun rises, I have made my way to a settlement a mile or so from the gully. It is a small Tribal village where I am able to trade news of Aish for a pack, a canteen, and a bit of food.

The villagers tell me of a Martial outpost only a few miles away. In thedead of night, I sneak into the stables with my magic cloaking me and a small sack of pears. I find a likely looking mare, who stands still while I muffle her hooves with sackcloth and saddle her. When I go to put on her bridle, she nearly bites my fingers off. I have to bribe her with four pears before she will allow me to lead her out of the stable.

For the next two weeks, I make my way toward Aish in the hopes of finding the Tribes that escaped the city. Two weeks of gathering up scraps of news about the Nightbringer’s location. Two weeks of rationing water, trading out stolen horses, and avoiding Martial patrols by the skin of my teeth.

Two weeks of plotting how in the hells I am going to get that scythe back.

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