The Nightbringer grabs the back of my head and squeezes. I suppress a scream, for I will not give him the satisfaction. Tears leak from my eyes, and I lash out at him. Fight, Laia, fight! I stole my dagger from Novius, picked the lock on my chains, and feigned weakness and defeat with Khuri—all for this moment. I cannot fail now.

As he looks at the Nightbringer, Elias cocks his head. He is otherworldly, eldritch as the jinn themselves. There is no empathy in his gaze. No trace of the man he was.

And though this is part of my plan, though getting captured by the Nightbringer means getting closer to the sickle—now a scythe—I wish I did not feel so desperately alone in my battle against the jinn.

Unwillingly, I look at Elias, knowing I will only be met with the Soul Catcher’s icy regard.

Instead, I see vitality in his gaze, and my body jolts in surprise. This is the Elias I met at Blackcliff. The Elias who escaped Serra with me, who exploded out of the depths of Kauf, my brother in tow.

The Elias I thought Mauth had crushed.

He blurs into motion, not attacking the Nightbringer, but moving for the jinn with the long spear—Khuri called her Umber. He disarms her with two quick thrusts of his hands, and then knocks her back into Azul.

Khuri jumps in front of Elias, glaring at him, no doubt trying to manipulate his mind. But he shakes off her magic, whipping the spear toward her too fast to follow. She crumples to the ground, stunned by the blow.

The Nightbringer flings me to the rooftop and streaks toward Khuri, who is already rising, her flame eyes scarlet. Run, every part of me screams. Escape, Laia!

I do run. After the Nightbringer, lunging for the scythe just as he reaches his precious kindred. This is it. Either I die or this scythe comes with me. There is no middle ground. I wrap my fingers around the handle and I pull with all my might. Please!

It does not budge.

The Nightbringer half turns, but I’ve drawn my dagger and I slice through the leather strap holding the scythe to the jinn’s back. It comes free, and for a moment, I am too stunned to move.

“Hold on to me.”

Elias appears beside me and pulls me to his chest, spinning me across the rooftop. We are away and my blood rises with the victory of the moment. I have the scythe. Elias is here with me. Elias, not the Soul Catcher.

I catch sight of a deep red flame—Umber. We lurch to a sudden halt and Khuri is there, her mouth curled in a snarl as she attempts to wrest the scythe from me. Elias shouts as Umber attacks, snatching back her spear and bringing it down on his shoulders. Though his magic must dull the spine-breaking blow, it does not stop it, for Elias gasps, on his knees.

“This,” Khuri says with an unnatural calm as she slowly pries my fingers from the scythe’s handle, “does not belong to you, human.” I feel her influence, her compulsion.

“Khuri!” The Nightbringer’s shout is low as a roll of thunder, laced with a terror I’ve never heard from him before. “No!”

She turns to him, startled, and I level a vicious kick at her knees. The handle of the scythe comes loose from her grip. Her legs buckle as she lurches forward, fingers crooked at me. I thrust her away, the scythe in hand, and the blade cuts through her like she’s flesh and blood instead of fire and vengeance.

Flames pour down my wrists, and I flinch back, my skin burning. Khuri scrabbles at her throat, but her strength is gone, and she slumps to the ground. She speaks then, her voice layered as if there are dozens of Khuris within her.

The son of shadow and heir of death

    Will fight and fail with his final breath.

Sorrow will ride the rays of the day,

The earth her arena and man her prey.

In flowerfall, the orphan will bow to the scythe.

In flowerfall, the daughter will pay a blood tithe.

Tears spring to my eyes at the sight of the fallen jinn. She bursts into flame, just as Shaeva once did, her ashes caught on the wind. And though she was my enemy, I can take no joy in her passing. For as she dies, the Nightbringer screams.

“Khuri!” The sorrow in his keen turns my blood to ice, for I have heard such pain before. His cry is my father moaning in his jail cell and my sister’s neck snapping. It is Nan stifling her wails in her fist as she mourned her only child and Izzi telling me she was scared as she breathed her last. It is every death I’ve ever suffered, but so much worse, for he had only just gotten Khuri back. He had fought a thousand years to get her back.

“I’m sorry.” The scythe falls from my nerveless fingers. “Oh skies, I’m so sorry—”

The air near me glows the faintest gold. “Flee, Laia of Serra,” Rehmat whispers, its sadness palpable. “Flee, lest he burn you to ash.”

I do not know if Elias heard Rehmat, or if he simply senses the Nightbringer’s rage building like a tempest over a warm sea. It does not matter. As my eyes meet those of the jinn, the Soul Catcher’s arm comes around me, and seconds later, we are on the wind.

XXVII: The Soul Catcher

The soldier in me tallies up the jinns’ weaknesses: Umber succumbing to my magic as I siphoned away her life force; the glaive wounding Khuri; the scythe killing her.

The Soul Catcher in me yearns for the Waiting Place, rattled by Khuri’s prophecy. I need the peace of the trees, the focus that the ghosts give me. I need Mauth to ease my mind.

And the human in me marvels at the feel of this girl in my arms—that she lives, that she not only survived the Nightbringer but wielded his weapon.

“I had it in my hands,” she whispers as we windwalk. “I had it and I lost it.”

When we stop, it is with a crash at the top of a dry gully choked with scree and spindly trees. I take the brunt of the fall, wincing at the rocks slicing through my clothing. Branches groan in the fierce wind tearing across the desert, and Laia tucks her head into her arm, shielding her eyes from the sand.

“Elias, are you all—”

“Fine.” I lift her off me quickly, then back away a few feet. The sky above is ablaze with stars and we are so far from Aish that it isn’t even a glow on the horizon.

It’s hard to make out Laia’s face in the dark. But that’s a relief. “The foretelling we heard,” I tell her. “Those first two lines were about me.”

“You?” She gets gingerly to her feet. “The son of shadow and heir of death—”

“Will fight and fail with his final breath.” I pause for a long moment. “You know the cost of my failure. You’ve seen it firsthand.”

“It is just a foretelling,” Laia says. “Not all foretellings are real—”

“Shaeva’s foretelling came to pass,” I say. “Every line of it. And she, too, was a jinn. You were right, you know. The Nightbringer is doing something to the ghosts. I nearly found out what it was. But—”

“But you saved me instead.” Laia looks at me like she knows my insides. “Elias.” Her voice is strained. “I’m not sorry. You came back to me—I’ve missed—”

“You’ll have to make your way back to wherever it is you’re going,” I say. “I’ve been away from the forest for long enough.”

She closes the distance between us, grabbing my hand before I can windwalk away. Her fingers are twined between mine, and I think of the night she spent with me in Blackcliff. Before she left, she tried to give my blade back. The words she spoke carry layers of meaning now that they did not have then.

You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you.

“Talk to me,” she says now. “Just for a moment.” The gully is filled with scraggly trees that are blue in the starlight. But she finds a long, flat rock and sits, pulling me down with her.

“Look at me, Elias.” She takes my chin in her hand. “The Nightbringer baited you. And I gave him the perfect bait. He knows you, like he knows all humans. He expected you to help me and knew you would later feel guilty about it. He’s always a step ahead of us. But the cost this time is thousands of lives—tens of thousands—”

“The concerns of the human world are not—”

“He’s playing a tune and you are dancing to it. That is your concern. The Nightbringer wants you chained to the Waiting Place. It serves his purposes perfectly. Because if you are trying to control things there, you are not fighting out here.”

“If I am chained to the Waiting Place, it is because of my own choices—not because of the Nightbringer.”

“You’re chained because of me.” She releases me, her face in her hands. Seeing her this way feels wrong. No, I realize. It feels wrong to see her this way and not give her comfort.