A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes 2)

I chuckle and smile at him. "My brother used to say that when he made it for me." As I think of Darin--the old Darin--my smile fades. Who is my brother now? When did he transform from the boy who made me too-sweet tea to a man with secrets too heavy to share with his little sister?

Keenan settles in beside me. A wind howls out of the north, battling the flames of our fire. I lean close to the fighter, savoring his warmth.

"Are you all right?" Keenan dips his head toward me. He takes a lock of hair flying across my face and tucks it behind my ear. His fingers linger at my nape, and my breath catches. "After . . ."

I look away, cold again, and reach for my armlet. "Was it worth it, Keenan? Skies, Elias's mother, his brother, dozens of members of his Tribe." I sigh. "Will it even matter? What if we can't save Darin? Or if . . ." He's dead.

"Family is worthy dying for, killing for. Fighting for them is all that keeps us going when everything else is gone." He nods at my armlet. There's a sad longing in his face. "You touch it when you need strength," he says. "Because that's what family gives us."

I drop my hand from the armlet. "I don't even know I'm doing it sometimes," I say. "It's silly."

"It's how you hold on to them. Nothing silly about that." He tips his neck back and looks up at the moon. "I don't have anything from my family. I wish I did."

"Some days I don't remember Lis's face," I say. "Just that she had light hair like Mother."

"She had your mother's temperament too." Keenan smiles. "Lis was four years older than me. Skies, she was bossy. She tricked me into doing her chores all the time. . . ."

The night is suddenly less lonely with memories of my long-dead sister dancing around me. On my other side, Izzi and Gibran lean toward each other, my friend giggling delightedly at something the Tribal boy says. Riz and Vana reach for their ouds. Their strumming is soon accompanied by Zehr's singing. The song is in Sadhese, but I think they must be remembering those they have loved and lost, because after only a few notes, it raises a lump in my throat.

Without thinking, I search the dark for Elias. He sits slightly away from the fire, his cloak pulled tight around him. His attention is fixed on me.

Afya clears her throat pointedly and then jerks her head at Elias. Talk to him.

I glance back at him, and that heady rush I always experience when I look into his eyes rolls through me.

"I'll be right back," I say to Keenan. I put down my mug and pull my cloak close. As I do, Elias rises in one smooth motion and moves away from the fire. He disappears so swiftly that I don't even see which direction he's gone in the darkness beyond the circle of wagons. His message is clear: Leave me alone.

I pause, feeling like a fool. A moment later, Izzi appears beside me.

"Talk to him," she says. "He needs it. He just doesn't know it. And you do too."

"He's angry," I whisper.

My friend takes my hand and squeezes. "He's hurt," she says. "And that's something you understand."

I walk out past the wagons, scanning the desert until I spot the shine of one of his bracers near the base of the plateau. When I'm still a few feet away from him, I hear him sigh and turn toward me. His face, blank with a sort of bland politeness, is lit by the moon.

Just get it over with, Laia.

"I'm sorry," I say. "For what happened. I--I don't know if it's right to trade the suffering of Tribe Saif for Darin's life. Especially when it doesn't even guarantee that Darin will live." I was planning a few demure and carefully chosen words of sympathy, but now that I've started talking, I can't seem to stop. "Thank you for what your family sacrificed. All I want is for nothing like that to happen again. But--but I can't guarantee it, and it makes me feel ill, because I know how it feels to lose family. Anyway, I'm sorry--"

Skies. Now I'm just babbling.

I take a breath. Words seem suddenly trite and useless, so I step forward and grab Elias's hands, remembering Pop. Touch heals, Laia. I hold fast to him, trying to put everything I feel into that touch. I hope your Tribe is all right. I hope they survive the Martials. I'm truly, truly sorry. It's not enough. But it's all I have.

After a moment, Elias lets out a breath and leans his forehead against mine.

"Tell me what you told me that night in my room at Blackcliff," he murmurs. "What your Nan used to say to you."

"As long as there is life"--I can hear Nan's warm voice as I say it--"there is hope."

Elias lifts his head and looks down at me, the coolness in his eyes replaced by that raw, unquenchable fire. I forget to breathe.

"Don't you forget it," he says. "Ever."

I nod. The minutes pass, and neither of us pull away, instead finding solace in the coolness of the night and the quiet company of the stars.

XXIII: Elias

I enter the Waiting Place the moment I fall asleep. My breath clouds in front of my face, and I find myself lying on my back atop a thick carpet of fallen leaves. I stare at the web of tree branches above, their foliage the vibrant red of autumn, even in the half light.

"Like blood." I recognize Tristas's voice immediately and scramble to my feet to find him leaning against one of the trees, glaring at me. I haven't seen him since the first time I entered the Waiting Place weeks ago. I'd hoped he'd moved on.

"Like my blood." He stares up at the canopy, a bitter smile on his face. "You know. The blood that poured out of me when Dex stabbed me."

"I'm sorry, Tristas." I might as well be a simpleminded sheep bleating the words. But the rage in his eyes is so unnatural that I would say anything to ease it.

"Aelia's getting better," Tristas says. "Traitorous girl. I thought she'd mourn for at least a few months. Instead, I visit her to find that she's eating again. Eating." He paces, and his face darkens into an uglier, more violent version of the Tristas I knew. He hisses under his breath.

Ten hells. This is so far from who Tristas was in life that I wonder if he's possessed. Can a ghost be possessed? Isn't it ghosts that usually do the possessing?

For a moment, I'm angry at him. You're dead. Aelia's not. But the feeling passes quickly. Tristas will never see his fiancee again. Never hold his children or laugh with his friends. All he has now are memories and bitterness.

"Aelia loves you." When Tristas spins toward me, his face twisted in rage, I hold up my hands. "And you love her. Do you truly want her to starve herself to death? Would you want to see her here, knowing that it was your death that did it?"

The wildness in his eyes dims. I think of the old Tristas, the Tristas from life. That's the Tristas I need to appeal to. But I don't have the chance. As if he knows what I wish, he whirls and disappea

rs into the trees.

"You can soothe the dead." The Soul Catcher speaks from above me, and I look up to find her sitting upon one of the trees, cradled like a child in its enormous, gnarled branches. A wreath of red leaves encircles her head like a crown, and her black eyes shine darkly.

"He ran away," I say. "I wouldn't call that soothing."

"He spoke to you." The Soul Catcher drops down, the carpet of leaves muffling the sound of her landing. "Most spirits hate the living."

"Why do you keep bringing me back here?" I look down at her. "Is it just for your amusement?"

She frowns. "I didn't bring you this time, Elias," she says. "You brought yourself. Your death approaches swiftly. Perhaps your mind seeks to understand better what is to come."

"I still have time," I say. "Four--maybe five months, if I'm lucky."

The Soul Catcher looks at me pityingly. "I cannot see the future the way some can." She curls her lip, and I sense she's speaking of the Augurs. "But my power is not insignificant. I sought your fate in the stars the night I first brought you here, Elias. You will not live past Rathana."

Rathana--The Night--began as a Tribal holiday but has spread throughout the Empire. For Martials, it's a day of revelry. For the Tribes, it's a day to honor one's ancestors.

"That's two months away." My mouth is dry, and even here, in the spirit world where all is dulled, dread grips me. "We'll have just made it to Kauf by then--if we're lucky."

The Soul Catcher shrugs. "I know not the small tempests of your human world. If you are so distraught with your fate, make the best use of the time you do have. Go." She flicks her hand, and I feel that jerk in my navel, as if I'm being pulled through a tunnel by a great hook.

I wake beside the dimly glowing embers of the fire, where I bedded down for the night. Riz paces outside the circle of wagons. Everyone else sleeps--Gibran and Keenan by the fire, like me, and Laia and Izzi in Gibran's wagon.

Two months. How do I get to Kauf and free Darin with so little time? I could urge Afya to go faster, but that would only lead to us getting there a few days earlier than planned, if that.

The watch changes. Keenan takes Riz's place. My eyes fall on a cold-box hanging from the bottom of Afya's wagon, where she had me pack the goat I butchered earlier.