Page 14 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

VARIDIAN

I knew this meeting could be awkward as Ameirah found her place among us and my friends got to know how funny and clever my wife was. I didn’t expect her to launch herself fearlessly from Mak’s back and try to murder my best friend.

“Ameirah!” I yelled, panic driving my heart into an erratic beat. “Zaarib, don’t let her fall.”

He shot me an outraged look. “I’ll just let her murder me, shall I?”

“Get me as close as you can without pissing off Dahab,” I urged Mak, a knot tightening in my stomach as I watched my wife dangle from the golden wyvern by one hand, her other clutching a knife I strapped to her body an hour ago.

Fuck, what was happening?

“Drop the knife,” I shouted as Mak lunged closer to Dahab’s side. “Ameirah, drop the knife and hold on with both hands.”

“No,” she growled.

Shit. I locked eyes with Zaarib when he leant over the side of his golden wyvern, looking at Ameirah as she dragged herself higher, feet grappling against scales. Utterly fearless.

“If she falls, I’ll be the one killing you,” I warned him, standing on Makrukh’s back, assessing where I’d need to jump to catch her, where I’d need to hold onto Dahab’s scales to stop our fall.

“What are you doing, madwoman?” Shula barked, lunging towards us on her bulky grey wyvern.

“Stay back,” I warned them, my heart pounding as they all closed in, like Ameirah was an enemy. “I’m serious, what the fuck is wrong with you? That’s my wife.”

They’d distracted me long enough for Ameirah to reach Zaarib where he sat astride his wyvern. Dahab flung his long golden neck from side to side, sensing a threat to his rider. My stomach dropped. It sank lower when Ameirah whipped her arm around and drove the short knife into my friend’s shoulder. He gave me a look over the top of her head to say really?

“Mak,” I breathed, a frozen calm settling over me when Dahab bucked suddenly, Ameirah’s hold on his scales tentative. Makrukh dove, angling his head toward the golden wyvern’s side. Dahab shrieked his rage, surging into the air, wriggling to knock Ameirah off his back. The noise was deafening. Terrifying with my wife’s life literally hanging in the balance.

The clearing disappeared, my vision narrowed to where Ameirah had one hand on the knife in Zaarib’s shoulder, one hand braced on the wyvern’s scales. I realised all at once that I didn’t want to lose her. Our marriage might be new, and I might have only scratched the surface of our relationship, but I couldn’t stand the thought of her dying before I knew the rest of her, before I’d spent years at her side.

When Dahab shot into the air, his neck winding in a warning that made everyone else back off except me, I knew a fall from that height could break Ameirah’s neck.

Panic tasted like blood on my tongue. I watched her fingers slip, watched blood coat her hands, making her hold slick. Her weight shifted, pulling the knife from Zaarib’s bleeding shoulder, spilling red over his clothes, and—she fell.

“Mak!”

He shot forward, his head lashing through the air, ivory wings thunderous as they carved across the clearing. A growl of rage made him shake beneath me. I watched Ameirah fall in slow motion, watched the knife tumble from her fingers, her face bleached by fear as her rage faded at once.

I stopped breathing. When Zaarib twisted dangerously in his seat and snagged her arm, a hard breath punched out of me. He stopped her fall long enough for Mak to close the distance. His side slammed into Dahab’s, drawing another screech from the gold wyvern. Mak opened his jaws so wide I feared he’d unleash a cloud of fire here in the woods and roared. It was a sound of protection and defiance and fury for anyone who would hurt his rider. Because Ameirah was his rider now, too.

I stretched out my arms, locking my hands around Ameirah’s waist, the warmth of her sending a pulse of visceral relief through my body. When I heaved her down onto Makrukh’s back, nestled safely between a spike and me, I wrapped my shaking arms around her and held on tight enough to bruise.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” I demanded, breathless.

“He killed my cousin. I saw him!” Her rage returned like the crashing waves of an ocean, and she shook in my arms. Mak rumbled a warning as he backed up and landed a safe distance away from everyone else. Aliah, Shula, Nabil and Fahad watched on with confusion and more than a little hostility. Shit. Ameirah had made herself look like an enemy to us. “I watched him dump her shredded body in Strava Square. I saw you,” she screamed at Zaarib who watched with a sort of understanding.

“Your cousin?” he asked, his usual light-heartedness absent. He leaned forward on Dahab’s back, stroking the wyvern’s neck, calming him from the protective rage far more effectively than any of Mak’s warning growls. “That filth was your cousin?”

Ameirah lunged towards him with sharp teeth bared, struggling against my grip, a sound eerily similar to Mak’s in her throat. “You say that again, and I’ll stab you in your eye. I won’t miss this time.”

A shiver of cold went down my back. She’d stabbed his shoulder, but where had she been aiming?

“Your cousin was a traitor and a liar. She infiltrated our legion and betrayed us to our enemy. We almost died, every one of us. Your husband included.”

A ringing started in my ears.

“Kaawa was your cousin?” We never knew her family name, didn’t know where she came from. She tricked us, won us over, and then lured us into a trap and left us for dead.

Ameirah shook her head, even that movement aggressive. “Her name is Naila. And you killed her.”

“Me?” Zaarib’s eyes sharpened, his jaw fixed. “I’m just the one who disposed of her body. And I’d do it again. She fed information to Kalder. She spied on us for them.”

Ameirah had begun to struggle again, desperate to launch herself at Zaarib and slice his throat with another knife, but now she froze. “What? Naila wasn’t a spy. You—you mistook her for someone else.”

“I’ve only disposed of one body in Strava Square,” Zaarib said coldly, his face the one he showed our enemies. I glared at him in silent warning, protectiveness for my wife rising.

“Zaarib,” Aliah chided, shaking her head as she looked from him to Ameirah, fuming in my arms. “What he says is true,” she said calmly, sadly. “If Kaawa was your cousin, we saw a different side to her than you did. She pretended to be our friend, pretended to love us, and then she showed herself to be a snake. No offence, Varidian.”

“None taken,” I muttered, kissing the top of Ameirah’s head, trying to calm her down.

“She betrayed us,” Aliah said to Ameirah, her tone meaning my wife didn’t immediately attempt her murder. “I’m sorry, but that’s why she was executed.”

“Executed,” Ameirah echoed, stiffening against me. “Not just… killed. Executed?”

“Yes,” Aliah confirmed. It wasn’t the whole truth; we’d never got to carry out that execution order but no one else knew that.

Warning rang through me like a bell clanging, and I held my wife tighter. This wasn’t going to end well. Kaawa was Ameirah’s cousin. Daughter of the aunt and uncle I met at the wedding celebration. A sick feeling started in my stomach.

“We need to go,” Nabil cut in, not entirely sympathetic. He shifted astride his emerald wyvern. “We convened for a reason, unless you’re forgetting. We have a mission.”

He sat lower in his seat when Ameirah’s head swung his way, and I imagined her expression had to be seething for Nabil to wither the way he did.

“Which legion carried out the order?” she asked, like I knew she would. She was too intelligent to not put the pieces together.

“Ours,” I answered softly, quietly. She jolted against me, breathing harder.

“Yours. This legion. My husband’s legion.”

“People are dying on the border,” Nabil complained.

“Hush,” Aliah hissed, her eyes flashing in warning. To Ameirah, she said, “If we hadn’t executed her, she would have spread more sensitive information to Kalder.”

Ameirah shook her head. Her voice was hollow. “You’re all killers. Will you murder me next?”

“Fuck no,” I breathed, aghast. “Ameirah, no.”

“You won’t, but they might,” she said, pointing at each one of my legion, one after another.

“We don’t kill innocents, a-lalla,” Fahad said, watching all of us, reading the energy and shift of anger among us. “You have nothing to fear from us.”

Ameirah shook her head, a laugh under her breath.

“Did you know your cousin was a Kaldic spy?” Zaarib asked, watching her too closely for my liking.

“She wasn’t a spy,” Ameirah snapped, her hands curling into fists. She still wasn’t holding onto Mak; it was like she’d forgotten to be afraid of heights in her rage. “You’re a liar.”

“She was a liar.”

“Alright,” I cut in, giving Zaarib a warning look. He knew better than to start arguments with hot-headed women. “This is getting us nowhere. Ameirah, we will talk about this later, I promise.”

“Talk about you murdering my cousin,” she said so quietly I almost missed it. “I don’t want to talk about anything with you. But the asshole’s right; people are dying, so let’s go.”

My stomach tangled into a knot. I would be angry too, and if someone told me a member of my family was a traitor, I’d refuse to believe them, too.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, brushing another kiss to her shoulder. She didn’t relax. If anything, she stiffened.

“Apologies mean nothing from a killer.”

I recoiled, the words hitting me like a physical blow. Even Mak stopped rumbling, falling utterly silent.

“Let’s go,” Fahad said bleakly, his eyes heavy with something I couldn’t read despite knowing him for years. “We’ve wasted too much time.”

I didn’t want to fly into battle with my wife both inexperienced in fighting and angry at me.

But as my legion shot into the air one by one, I didn’t have much choice.

“If I could undo it, I would,” I said against her ear as Makrukh carried us into the sky.

Ameirah said nothing.