Page 86 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

I found Rehmat along the northern coast of the island. She wore her human form, brown-skinned and brown-eyed, with black hairwoven into a plait. She rocked back and forth, her arms clasped tight about her legs.

“Rehmat?” I cradled her to me, and she dropped her head against my heart.

“This is an island of death, Meherya,” she whispered. “Many ghosts will pass from here. It will not be you who passes them, but another who has not yet come. And you will call her traitor, though she meant no harm.”

She screamed, her dark eyes burning into mine. “The Ember will walk these sands, and here the seeds of his defiance will flower, but for naught, for the forest will call him and suffering will sunder him.”

Thus did we learn Rehmat’s power, one far more treacherous than anything we had yet encountered. She foresaw the future. My own ability to scry was limited to impressions, brief images. Rehmat saw possibility after possibility.

She returned to the Sher Jinnaat, as she promised. But the price was high. She locked herself away in her home and spoke to no one but me. I begged Mauth to free her from the torment of her magic. But he spoke less and less. We were created to pass the ghosts. Our powers had their uses—and though we might not like it, hers had a purpose too.

“If only I could master it,” she whispered to me once after a particularly difficult episode. “I would teach others. This, I vow.”

I cared for her during those difficult months, and something kindled between us, a soul-deep fire that others had found but that had, until then, eluded me. My heart was hers, and I knew that if she did not wish to become my queen, I would never have one.

In time, she learned to understand and control her magic. As she promised, when other flames kindled and discovered they were haunted by the curse of foresight, it was Rehmat who taught them to see it as a gift.

After she made peace with her visions, she found her poetry again. But now she shared it with me alone, whispering it into the deepest chambers of my heart.

When she consented to be my queen, the Sher Jinnaat celebrated for a month. And when we brought our own little flames to the world, the entire city turned out to sing the song of welcome. All was well.

Until the Scholars came.

After they murdered our children, Rehmat donned her blades once more. She spoke strength into the jinn who yet lived. She used centuries of experience to outwit the Scholars in battle.

But it was not enough. Even as Cain’s accursed coven plotted to chain the jinn, Rehmat fell in combat near the Duskan Sea, where I first beheld her. I pulled her to me as her flame flickered into darkness, and she fixed her liquid-fire eyes on my face.

“You are strong,” I said. “You will survive this.”

“Remember your name.” There was such urgency to her whisper. “You are the Beloved. Remember, or you will be lost.”

“Do not leave this world,” I begged her. “Do not leave me alone, my love.”

“I will see you again.” She squeezed my hands. “This, I vow.”

Then her flame faded. But I left her ashen body, for far to the north, a great evil was unfolding. The imprisoning of my kind.

I tried to stop it. But just like with Rehmat, I was too late.

“I forsake thee.” I forced my way to Mauth’s domain, to that vast, wretched sea into which I had cast so much human suffering. “I forsake thee, and I am thy creature no longer.”

“Thou wilt always be mine. For thou art the Meherya.”

“No,” I said to him. “Never again.”

I returned to a desolate world. For my Rehmat was gone. My kin were gone, all but Shaeva.

She died slowly—I made sure of it before bringing her back to be Soul Catcher, before chaining her to the Waiting Place to pass ghosts.

And I wept over Rehmat’s final words to me, for she took such pride in keeping her vows, and this was one she had broken.

What a fool I was. All those years I knew her, she never once broke an oath. Not even the smallest, simplest promise.

Why would her last and greatest vow be any different?

XXXVI:Laia

It takes me an hour to find my fallen pack, and three more to discover a path that will take me to Afya and Mamie. My clothes have finally dried, though they are stiff with mud and scrape painfully against the bruises and cuts from the flash flood. I feel as if every bone in my body has been broken.

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