Page 16 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AMEIRAH

B y the time the fires were put out, only smoke smouldering from the wreckage of homes, my legs were shaking and I could barely sit upright on Makrukh’s back. My eyes burned from the smoke, and it had coated my throat, making even my lungs raw. But we were alive. We’d made it out, and so had forty-two villagers with charred clothes, soot-stained faces, and haunted silence. I didn’t ask how many had died, but it had to be triple that number, maybe more.

Shula’s grey wyvern had a vicious scrape along his side, three plate scales raked through by the midnight wyvern’s talons, but he would heal. Zaarib bled where a tiger’s rider slashed his shoulder; I watched blood flow with satisfaction, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for Naila’s death.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Fahad, the oldest member of the legion, blurted when we landed, Varidian sliding down Makrukh’s back to the ground. I didn’t remember how I got down, my legs like jelly, my whole body shaking, but Varidian caught me and steadied me on the rocky plateau where we’d evacuated the villagers to. Rain was forming slow spots on the grey stone, too late to help put out the fires. If the rain began hours ago, would more people have survived?

Fahad grabbed Varidian’s arm in a tight grip, his lined, rugged face tense. “When you fell off Mak, I thought you were done for.”

“Not the first time I’ve cheated death,” Varidian said dismissively.

Fahad scoffed, then gave me a conspiratorial glance, his eyes twinkling. “Can you believe he’s taking credit for your spectacular rescue?” His smile deepened, warmed. “That was some bravery you showed, a-lalla.”

I swallowed, the compliment abrasive on my skin. I felt like a coward, helpless and useless when so many had died. I hadn’t helped. That wasn’t bravery. “I couldn’t let him die when I still need to yell at him,” I replied, my humour falling flat.

Varidian laid his arm across my shoulders, pulling me into his side, and I hated how badly I needed the touch. I was shaken down to my soul, and I needed this.

“It’s a dangerous journey from here to the safe house,” Aliah said, the expression on her beautiful face drawn and sad as she regarded the group of smoke-shrouded villagers staring in the same kind of shock as I felt. We were all covered in soot, and now thanks to the rain, boots sloshed through mud. “We can’t expect them to go alone.”

“I’ll take them,” Fahad offered, clapping Varidian’s shoulder before moving away, mud splashing up the ankles of his leathers as he strode for his battle-scarred crimson.

“It’d be safer with two riders, with tigers prowling the wall,” Aliah pointed out, her eyes narrowing behind us like she could see the tigers there.

In the Last Guard, the smoke and fire had blotted out any sight of the wall, but now it loomed over us, endless and so tall I couldn’t imagine any living being had ever scaled it. It was taller than the highest minaret in Strava and built of a grey stone so thick and smooth it was like looking at the end of the world.

“She’s right,” Varidian said with a sigh, not hiding his tiredness from his legion which was a surprise. His hand stroked up and down my back, the movement absent, familiar. “And some of them are too injured to walk that distance, so we’ll need more than one wyvern to fly them.”

I turned my face up into the rain as it got heavier, letting drops of it wash the ash from my skin, soothing the fire-whipped skin of my cheeks. I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t bring myself to move away from my husband even if I wanted to kill him a little.

“Mak’s the biggest,” he said, dragging a hand over his mouth and down his stubbled jaw. “It makes sense for me to go.”

“And me,” Shula input, glaring across the mountains at the wall like she’d scale it and fight every last person in Kalder. “Saif is the second biggest.”

Varidian glanced down at me. At the look in his eye, my stomach jolted, ripples of unease moving through me like a stone dropped in a pool. “No. I need you to carry Ameirah.”

“What?” I demanded softly, my heart clanging with warning. It sped, panic hitting, all my fear from the fire and murder and tigers amplified. “I’m flying on Makrukh. I’ll come with you.”

“It’s not safe,” he argued, too softly. He traced my cheek, tucking a strand of sooty violet hair behind my ear. I wanted to kick him.

“Like that was safe?” I demanded, pulling away and mourning the loss of contact. I was shaky and unsettled and I couldn’t stop seeing that boy get shredded beneath the tiger’s claws. I didn’t want to want Varidian close, but he was my safety blanket out here. “None of this is safe, Varidian.”

His face hardened. “And bringing you here was a mistake.”

I blinked. Those words shouldn’t have affected me, shouldn’t have hurt. “You’d be dead if I wasn’t here.”

“I’d have survived,” he disagreed, too gently, too patiently.

I wanted to argue, wanted to snap and shout. My hands shook. A roaring began inside my head.

“Why can’t we all go? More wyverns, more space to carry the villagers.”

“More risk of being detected,” Nabil cut in, his nasally voice like a whetstone to my temper. His eye roll was a spark to tinder. “Kalder knows we have a safe house nearby and they’re constantly trying to find it. A whole legion would lead them right to the doors. Is that what you want?”

My heartbeat deepened, thumping harder, slower. I met his narrowed gaze. Held eye contact. Said nothing.

Nabil looked away first. Shula chuckled under her breath. I glared at every member of my husband’s legion, meeting each of their stares with defiance and anger that barely masked my fear.

“Anyone else have a foolish question to ask?”

Hostility loomed in the air, denser with every second we glared at each other. It was so sharp it could cut me.

“No doubt Nabil has several more,” Fahad put in with a laugh, breaking the tension. I felt like an enemy in their midst. Like I’d turn my back and find a dagger buried in it. Is that how they cut Naila? With daggers? “But he’s right; we can’t risk the fortress being detected, and it’s easier to conceal a small number of wyvern.”

“That doesn’t explain why I can’t fly with them,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest and trying not to frown at the ashes and soot covering me. It could be worse; it could be blood.

“You’re young and inexperienced and unused to flying such a challenging passage,” Zaarib said, laying out my faults with zero softness.

I reached for the glove over my right hand and ripped it off, stalking forward. Varidian moved so fast I didn’t register his movement, locking his arms around me from behind. To anyone else, it would be an embrace, but my husband restrained me so I didn’t murder his friend.

“We’re missing something,” Aliah observed, tucking the ends of her scarf beneath her leather jacket, a furrow between her bright eyes. “Why do you look so rattled, Varidian?”

Did he look rattled? Good.

“Because I can kill with a touch of my bare hands,” I answered, stealing his reply, and for once it felt good to confess that. I laid it between me and his legion like a sword, like a threat. “One touch, and you’re dead.”

“We’re not a danger to you, a-lalla,” Fahad said, trying to ease tempers again. It didn’t work this time. He paused at his wyvern’s side, hesitating to mount. Feeling the explosive charge in the air.

“Like you weren’t a threat to my cousin?” I asked softly. My vision tunnelled, and I forgot there were villagers nearby, watching, listening. I didn’t care. Let them hear.

“Enough,” Shula snapped, her voice like a thunderclap. Rain tipped down on us, heavier all at once, and I wondered if she really was thunder, if she had control over the weather. “There are things you don’t know, a-lalla, and standing here arguing isn’t going to help. The longer we stand here, the more danger we’re in. Fahad, Varidian, if you’re set on flying, go now. We’ll wait for you at the fortress.”

“You do remember I outrank you?” Varidian asked, a little dry, mostly rough with annoyance—at me, no doubt.

“In title but not intelligence,” Shula retorted so quickly I almost smiled until she met my gaze, unyielding and as hard as rock. She straightened her shoulders, muscled arms relaxed at her sides. “You’ll be safe on Saif with me, I give you my word I won’t attack you or let you fall. I won’t even let you fall prey to your own stupidity.”

“That’s generous,” I muttered.

“After what your cousin did, it is generous,” Zaarib snapped, his eyes flashing with warning.

I matched his glare, daring him to start a fight.

“Can you stop glowering at my wife?” Varidian sighed, his arm flexing to pull me flush against him. His heat was like comfort and promises of safety and I didn’t trust it. “I happen to quite like her, and I’d prefer her to be in one piece when I return and not poked through with holes.”

Zaarib’s eyes sparkled as he opened his mouth.

“Don’t bother,” Aliah interrupted, rolling her eyes. “We all know filth is about to come from your mouth. You’d better go, you two. The rain’s only going to get worse. There’s a disturbance in the air; I can sense it.”

“What’s your power?” I asked, wondering what I was up against.

“Aether,” she replied, a strange look in her eyes—sadness, not suspicion or anger like everyone else displayed. “I sense the spirit world, and it’s unsettled.”

“That’s… a rare power,” I murmured, remembering the stories I’d read about those who wielded aether. The most powerful could use it to drown a whole island in gauzy, life-sapping magic. A veil would surround a place and by the time it drew back, all would be dead. The less powerful could use it to soothe a fever or heal a wound or ease a terminally ill person to eternal sleep.

“Only one in a hundred thousand fae possesses it,” Nabil input, sounding marginally less like an asshole, though not by much.

Varidian lowered his head, his mouth by my ear. “Can I trust you not to murder anyone while I’m gone?”

“No.”

“Please, Ameirah.” I didn’t like this pleading tone. I didn’t appreciate how it softened me and brought out sympathy when I was content to be furious with him.

“Fine,” I muttered, scowling at the wyvern’s and riders around us. “I’ll wait until you’re back to kill them.”

He kissed the top of my head and drew back, leaving the place his lips had touched tingling but the rest of me cold. The rain pounded down harder, running off my leathers but still managing to soak through to my bones.

“Be careful,” he said when I turned to scowl at him. He caught my gaze and held it for a long moment. “You’ll be safe in the fortress, and Shula will keep you atop Saif but—be careful.”

When I blinked, I saw buildings buckling under the violence of crackling flames, and scorched skin turned from brown to blackened and raw, shapes and faces unrecognisable. I saw the boy shredded on the ground, the tiger standing over him, blood on its maw. I could smell it. Burned flesh and blood and acrid wood fire.

“Don’t die before I can murder you,” I forced past my tight throat. I wanted to draw Varidian back to me, wanted to hold him close and use my fury at him to ward off the memories, those visions, all those deaths.

He brushed a wet strand of hair off my cheek, thoughts shaded within his eyes. “I won’t die before I can earn your forgiveness.” His gaze lifted to something beyond me—Shula. “Help her mount. And if I find out any one of you made a single snide remark about Ameirah, you know what’ll happen.”

Aliah groaned, her eyes creased in a wince. “Stop threatening us with that.”

“No.” Varidian wrenched me closer, stunning me with a brief kiss to my lips before he pulled away and scaled Makrukh in a rush of power and movement.

“Threatening you with what?” I asked no one in particular, feeling cold and bereft as Varidian settled atop Makrukh, Fahad mounting his scarred crimson wyvern in a move so practised that it was clear he’d been riding all his life. I brushed aside the ache that formed behind my breastbone.

“Shit scooping,” Nabil answered, his rat-like face narrowed even further, his face pinched like he’d tasted sour lemon. “It’s a favourite punishment of our illustrious prince’s.”

While I stood there, staring at the Wall of Hydaran as I fought a rising wave of dread, Aliah and Zaarib explained the plan to the refugees of the Last Guard. Twelve injured villagers were helped onto the wyverns’ backs, others gathering on the path, ready to follow them to the safe house. How big was the house, to take this many people?

I jumped at a touch to my back, a strange rush of emotion hitting me, making my eyes sting when I realised it was Makrukh’s ivory wing nudging me aside. Protecting me so I didn’t get knocked over when he took off.

“Safe skies,” Aliah called, the signature farewell of wyvern riders.

“Safe skies,” I echoed along with the others, my voice rough.

I backed up, my stomach in knots as Mak used his powerful thighs to propel himself into the air, those leathery wings kicking up a windstorm as he beat them, scaling higher, higher. I swallowed, my nausea worsening. But I didn’t want to be sick again. Even if I now had to climb onto an unfamiliar wyvern with a stranger.

That didn’t stop you yesterday, my mind reminded me. But that was different; Varidian was my husband and Shula was… nothing to me. Yet, I supposed. If she was anything, she was an enemy.

“Come on, a-lalla,” she barked, not particularly kindly. “No use mooning at the sky. It’ll be hours before they’re back.”

Great. I tore my stare from the rain-veiled sky, hating the way my heart pricked through with pain. I wanted to kill him mere hours ago. I still did. The sight of my husband flying away shouldn’t hurt so much.

But I couldn’t deny the pain.