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

We lock eyes. Until we have our vengeance. Livia and I haven't spoken of it. It was understood the first moment I saw her after that horrible day in the throne room.

My sister brushes out her hair. "You've heard nothing more of Elias?"

I shrug.

"And what of Harper?" Livvy tries again. "Stella Galerius has been angling to meet him."

"You should introduce them."

My sister furrows her brow as she watches me. "How is Dex? You two are so--"

"Dex is a loyal soldier and an excellent lieutenant. Marriage might be a bit more complicated for him. Most of your acquaintances aren't his type. And"--I lift up the mirror--"you can stop now."

"I don't want you to be lonely," Livvy says. "If we had Mother or Father or even Hannah, it would be different. But, Hel--"

"With respect, Empress," I say quietly. "My name is Blood Shrike."

She sighs, and I attach the mirror, straightening it with a touch. "All done."

I catch my reflection. I appear as I did just a few months ago, on the eve of my graduation. Same body. Same face. Only the eyes are different. I look into the pale gaze of the woman in front of me. For a moment, I see Helene Aquilla. The girl who hoped. The girl who thought the world was fair.

But Helene Aquilla is broken. Unmade. Helene Aquilla is dead.

The woman in the mirror is not Helene Aquilla. She is the Blood Shrike. The Blood Shrike is not lonely, for the Empire is her mother and her father, her lover and her best friend. She needs nothing else. She needs no one else.

She stands apart.

LVII: Laia

Marinn rolls out beyond the Forest of Dusk, a vast white carpet dotted with iced-over lakes and patches of forest. I've never seen a sky so clear and blue or breathed air that feels as if it's filling me with life every time I inhale.

The Free Lands. Finally.

Already, I love everything about this place. It is familiar in the way my parents would be familiar, I think, if I could see them again after all these years. For the first time in months, I do not feel the chokehold of the Empire around my throat.

I watch Araj give the final order to the Scholars to move out. Their relief is palpable. Despite Elias's assurances that no spirits would trouble us, the Forest of Dusk weighed heavier and heavier upon us the longer we spent within it. Leave, it seemed to hiss at us. You don't belong here.

Araj finds me beside the once-abandoned cabin I've reclaimed for Darin, myself, and Afya, a few hundred yards from the border of the Forest.

"Are you sure you don't wish to join us? I hear Adisa has healers that even the Empire cannot match."

"Another month in the cold would do him in." I nod to the cabin, sparkling clean within and glowing with the heat of a roaring fire. "He needs rest and warmth. If he is still not well in a few weeks, I will find a healer to come to me." I do not tell Araj my deepest secret fear: that I do not think Darin will wake up. That I think the blow was too much after all he had already suffered.

That I worry my brother is gone forever.

"I am in your debt, Laia of Serra." Araj looks out at the Scholars trickling to a road about a quarter mile distant. Four hundred and twelve, in the end. So few. "I hope I will see you in Adisa one day soon, with your brother at your side. Your people have need of someone like you."

He takes his leave and calls to Tas, who bids goodbye to Elias. A month of food, baths, and clean--if too large--clothes has done wonders for the child. But he's been pensive since killing the Warden. I've heard him moaning and crying out in his sleep. The old man haunts Tas still.

I watch as Elias offers Tas one of the Serric steel blades he stole off a Kauf guard.

Tas throws his arms around Elias's neck, whispering something that makes him grin, and scampers off to join the rest of the Scholars.

As the last of the group moves out, Afya emerges from the cabin. She too is dressed for travel.

"I've already spent too long away from my Tribe," the Zaldara says. "Skies know what Gibran's been up to in my absence. Probably has a half dozen girls with child by now. I'll be paying bribes to silence their angry parents until I'm broke."

"Something tells me Gibran is fine." I smile at her. "Did you say goodbye to Elias?"

She nods. "He's hiding something from me." I look away. I know very well what Elias is hiding. He has confided only to me about his deal with the Soul Catcher. And if the others have noticed that he's gone most of the night and for long stretches during the day, they've not seen fit to mention it.

"Best be sure he's not hiding anything from you," Afya continues. "Bad way to get into bed with someone."

"Skies, Afya," I sputter, looking behind me and hoping Elias hasn't heard. Thankfully, he's disappeared back into the Forest. "I'm not getting into bed with him, nor do I have any interest--"

"Don't bother, girl." Afya rolls her eyes. "It's embarrassing to listen to." She considers me for a second and then gives me a hug--swift and surprisingly warm.

"Thank you, Afya," I say into her braids. "For everything."

She releases me with an arched brow. "Speak of my honor far and wide, Laia of Serra," she says. "You owe me that. And take care of that brother of yours."

I look in through the cabin's windows at Darin. His dark blond hair is clean and cropped short, his face youthful and handsome again. I've carefully tended all of his wounds, and most are now nothing but scars.

But still, he has not stirred. Perhaps he never will.

A few hours after Afya and the Scholars have disappeared over the horizon, Elias emerges from the Forest. The cabin, so quiet now that everyone has left, suddenly feels less lonely.

He knocks before entering, bringing a burst of cold in with him. Beardless now, and with his hair cropped short and some of his weight back, he looks more like his old self.

Except his eyes. They are different. More thoughtful, perhaps. The weight of the burden he has taken on still astounds me. Though he has explained to me multiple times--that he accepted it with a whole heart, wanted it, even--I still feel angry at the Soul Catcher. There must be some way out of this vow. Some way Elias can live a normal life, travel to the Southern Lands he's always spoken of with such fondness. Some way he can visit his Tribe and be reunited with Mamie Rila.

For now, the Forest holds to him tightly. When he does emerge from the trees, it is never for long. Sometimes the ghosts even follow him out. More than once, I've heard the low timbre of his voice murmuring words of comfort to a wounded soul. Every now and then, he leaves the Forest frowning, his mind on some troublesome spirit. I know he's struggled with one in particular. I think it's a girl, but he doesn't speak about her.

"Dead chicken for your thoughts?"

He holds up the limp animal, and I nod to the basin. "Only if you pluck it."

I slide up onto the counter beside him as he works. "I miss Tas and Afya and Araj," I say. "It's so quiet without them."

"Tas worships you," Elias says with a grin. "I think he's in love, actually."

"Only because I told him stories and fed him," I say. "If only every boy were so easy to win over." I do not mean for the comment to sound so pointed, and I bite my lip as soon as I say it. Elias lifts a dark eyebrow and gives me a fleeting glance of curiosity before looking back down at the half-plucked chicken.

"You know he and all the other Scholars are going to talk about you in Adisa. You're the girl who razed Blackcliff and liberated Kauf. Laia of Serra. The ember waiting to burn down the Empire."

"It's not like I didn't have help," I say. "They'll talk about you too." But Elias shakes his head.

"Not in the same way," he says. "Even if they do, I'm the outsider. You're the Lioness's daughter. I think your people will expect much of you, Laia. Just remember, you don't have to do everything they ask."

I snort. "If they knew about Kee--the Nightbringer, they might change their minds about me."

"He fooled all of us, Laia." Elias gives the chicken a particularly violent chop. "

And one day, he'll pay."

"Maybe he already is paying." I think of the ocean of sadness inside the Nightbringer, the faces of all those he loved and destroyed in his quest to reconstruct the Star.

"I trusted him with my heart, and my brother, and my--my body." I have not spoken much with Elias about what happened between Keenan and me. We never had the privacy to do so. But now, I want to get it out. "The part of him that wasn't manipulating me--that wasn't using the Resistance, or planning the Emperor's death, or helping the Commandant sabotage the Trials--that part of him loved me, Elias. And some part of me, at least, loved him back. His betrayal can't be without cost. He must feel it."

Elias stares out the window at the swiftly darkening sky. "True enough," he says. "From what Shaeva told me, the armlet wouldn't pass to him unless he loved you truly. The magic isn't one-sided."

"So a jinn is in love with me. I far prefer the ten-year-old." I put my hand to the place my armlet once was. Even now, weeks later, I feel the ache of its absence. "What will happen now? The Nightbringer has the armlet. How many more pieces of the Star does he need? What if he finds them and sets his brethren free? What if--"

Elias puts a finger to my lips. Does he let it linger a little longer than it needs to?