Page 103 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

“Finally! We’ve been waiting. Where are they?”

But I do not hear Darin’s response, for Elias rides into the courtyard with a clatter and my concentration is broken.After, I think to myself.I will speak with him after.

Elias swings down from his horse and makes his way toward me. Though he still wears his black fatigues, something about him speaking Sadhese among the dun buildings of Nur makes me smile and remember the Moon Festival. He dressed as a Tribesman and danced with me, graceful as a cloud.

“Laia,” he says. “You should rest. It will be a long night.”

“Do you remember the Moon Festival?” I blurt out, and for a moment, he looks confused.

“In Serra,” I say. “It was the first time I saw you without your mask. You asked me to dance—”

“Stop.” He takes a wary step back. “I’m not asking on my own behalf. I’masking because I will only hurt you, Laia. I’ve proven it over and over. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”

“You still think you can decide things for everyone.” My hands curl into fists. “But you cannot. And you cannot make me stop loving you, Elias Veturius. Not when I know that somewhere in there, you feel the same.”

I grab his cloak, rise up on my tiptoes, and kiss him. Hard. Angry and bruising. His nose is cold from the wind, but his lips are soft and deliciously warm.Kiss me back, you dolt, I think, and he does, but far too carefully, his desire caged. It drives me mad.

When I break away, he stares at me, dazed.

“Uh—Um—”

I leave him there, stammering. It is a small victory. But even those are hard to come by these days.

«««

Night falls reluctantly, as if she does not wish to witness the horrors it will bring. When the stars finally rule the sky, the horizon brightens, glowing orange, then white.

The jinn approach.

“We’ll need more than magic to survive that, Laia.” Afya enters the courtyard. Her gaze is trained on the eerie glow of the sky, visible even through the trellises. “Are you ready?”

“Doesn’t matter if I’m ready.” As I dip the last of my arrows in salt, I remember the words I said to my mother long ago, just before I broke Elias out of Blackcliff. “It’s time.”

“Be careful.” Afya glances over her shoulder at Elias, who sends the last of the Tribespeople into the desert. “I don’t trust him to defend you.”

“I do not need defending, Afya.”

Afya nods at the flames drawing nearer. “With that on our tails, we all need defending.” She clasps my hands and leaves, heading to the edge of the courtyard, where Aubarit and Gibran hitch up the last wagon leaving the city. The air flickers around them—wind efrits who will speed them through the desert. The young Tribesman says something to theFakirathat makes her cheeks rosy. They have spent many hours together, those two, and it makes me smile.

“Not much time, Laia.” Elias speaks from beside me, though I did not see him approach. “Shall we?”

“Do not windwalk.” Rehmat’s gentle glow flares between us. “He will sense you.”

I nod, but say nothing else. My anger toward her has cooled, but she has made herself scarce these past few weeks. Whenever she has appeared, there has been a fractured aura about her, as if her focus is fixed elsewhere.

It seems to take ages to wind through the city to the abandoned Martial garrison in its center. By the time we reach the building, the jinn have reached Nur, and the screaming has begun.

I smile at the sound. For if one were to listen carefully to those screams, one might notice that there is something off about them.

“The barbarous keen yokes us to the low beasts, to the unutterable violence of the earth,” Elias mutters, and when I look at him askance, he shrugs. “Something the Warden of Kauf Prison said. For once, that evil old bastard was right.”

Indeed, a human scream is unique because of its rawness. A fey cry, however, is round and clean, without edges. A stone instead of a saw.

It is the fey who scream now, the sand efrits who are immune to fire, and who agreed to provide a distraction to cover the evacuation of the Tribespeople.

We make our way to the rooftop of the garrison. It is a broad space, scattered with patchy armor, sandbags, and a few piles of pale brick—whatever the Martials failed to take when the Tribes drove them out.

“Does this remind you of anything?”

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