An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(122)

For a few seconds, I can’t bring myself to say anything. That’s it? I’m going to my death, and all she’s willing to say is what I already know? That she hates me? That I’m the biggest mistake she ever made?

No, that’s not true. She’s told me that she’d been human once. That she’d had mercy in her. She hadn’t exposed me as I’d always been told. When she left me with Mamie Rila, she’d tried to give me life.

But when that brief mercy faded, when she regretted her humanity in favor of her own desires, she became what she is now. Unfeeling. Uncaring. A monster.

“If I feel regret,” I say, “it’s that I wasn’t willing to die sooner. That I wasn’t willing to cut my own throat in the Third Trial instead of killing men I’d known for years.” I stand and go toward her. “I don’t regret not killing Laia. I’ll never regret that.”

I think of what Cain said to me that night we stood on the watchtower and looked out at the dunes. You’ll have a chance at true freedom—of body and of soul.

And suddenly, I don’t feel bewildered or defeated. This—this—was what Cain spoke of: the freedom to go to my death knowing it’s for the right reason. The freedom to call my soul my own. The freedom to salvage some small goodness by refusing to become like my mother, by dying for something that is worth dying for.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” I say. “I don’t know who my father was or why you hate him so much. But I know my death won’t free you. It won’t give you peace. You’re not the one killing me. I chose to die. Because I’d rather die than become like you. I’d rather die than live with no mercy, no honor, no soul.”

I wrap my hands around the bars and look down into her eyes. For a second, confusion flashes there, an all-too-brief crack in her armor. Then her gaze turns to steel. It doesn’t matter. All I feel for her in this moment is pity.

“Tomorrow, I’m the one who will be set free. Not you.”

I release the bars and move to the back of the cell. Then I slide to the floor and close my eyes. I don’t see her face as she leaves. I don’t hear her. I don’t care.

The killing blow is my release.

Death is coming for me. Death is nearly here.

I am ready for him.





XLVII: Laia


I watch Teluman working from his open door for long minutes before I summon up the courage to enter his shop. He hammers a strip of heated metal with careful, measured strokes, his brightly tattooed arms sweating from the strain.

“Darin’s in Kauf.”

He stops mid-swing and turns. The alarm in his eyes at my words is strangely comforting. At least there is one other person who cares about my brother’s fate as much as I do.

“He was sent there ten days ago,” I say. “Just after the Moon Festival.” I raise my still-cuffed wrists. “I have to go after him.”

I hold my breath as he considers. Teluman helping me is the first step in a plan that depends almost entirely on other people doing what I ask of them.

“Lock the door,” he says.

It takes him nearly three hours to break the cuffs off, and he says almost nothing the entire time, except to occasionally ask me if I need anything. When I’m free of the cuffs, he offers me a salve for my chafed wrists and then disappears into the back room. A moment later he emerges with a beautifully decorated scim—the same blade he used to scare the ghuls away the day I met him.

“This is the first true Teluman blade I made with Darin,” he says. “Take it to him. When you free him, you tell him Spiro Teluman will be waiting in the Free Lands. You tell him we have work to do.”

“I’m afraid,” I whisper. “Afraid I’ll fail. Afraid he’ll die.” The fear flares through me then, as if by speaking of it I’ve breathed life into it. Shadows gather and pool near the door. Ghuls.

Laia, they say. Laia.

“Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be.” Teluman hands me Darin’s blade and nods to the ghuls. I turn and, as Teluman speaks, advance upon them.

“Too much fear and you’re paralyzed,” he says. The ghuls aren’t cowed yet. I raise the scim. “Too little fear and you’re arrogant.” I strike out at the closest ghul. It hisses and skitters under the door. Some of its fellows back away, but others lunge at me. I force myself to stand fast, to meet them with the edge of the blade. Moments later, the few that were brave enough to remain flee with wrathful hisses. I turn back to Teluman. He finds my eyes.

“Fear can be good, Laia. It can keep you alive. But don’t let it control you. Don’t let it sow doubts within you. When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible, to fight it: your spirit. Your heart.”

The sky is dark when I leave the smithy with Darin’s scim hidden beneath my skirt. Martial squads patrol the streets in force, but I avoid them easily in my black dress, blending into the night like a wraith.

As I walk, I remember how Darin tried to defend me from the Mask during the raid, even when the man gave him the chance to run. I imagine Izzi, small and frightened yet determined to befriend me though she knew well what the cost could be. And I think of Elias, who could have been miles away from Blackcliff by now, free as he always wanted, if he’d only let Aquilla kill me.