Page 22 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AMEIRAH
I ’d found that if I hid out in a front room of the fortress, no one bothered me past sunset. I’d taken to curling up in a chair by the window, with a fire crackling in the stone fireplace and the light only bright enough for me to read another book pilfered from the small library on the first floor. I read a page, scanned the fortress grounds beyond the window, read another page, and repeated my search.
I’d done this for the last two nights, but tonight the hopelessness was so strong that by the time exhaustion wrapped around me and the sky was pitch outside, I stopped scanning the sky. He wasn’t coming back. My husband was gone.
“Fuck,” I said thickly, resting the book on my knee to wipe the sudden flow of tears from my face. My eyes stung viciously as another rush of tears fell. I tried so hard not to remember the too-short time we’d spent together, but memories assaulted me.
Do not mistake my feelings, Ameirah Saber. I want you so much it’s torture to be in a bedroom with you. It’s almost comical that you believe I don’t want you when I have so many ideas of the things we could do on that bed behind us. Or perhaps on this dresser.
Ameirah Saber. I’d been allowed two days of being his wife, forty-eight hours of bearing that name with pleasant surprise and a bit of pride, a lot of hope. Two days. It was enough to make me resent fate. Was that all I was due? Two measly fucking days of being wanted?
An hour later, I scrubbed my face dry, ignored my sniffling nose, and hauled myself out of the chair. Tonight, I’d sleep restlessly, and tomorrow… I’d figure out a way to live here forever. From what I knew there was no permanent custodian of the fortress, only locals from nearby Willow Green who came every few weeks to refresh the food in the stores. Maybe I could convince the legion to let me stay and manage the house on a more permanent basis.
My brief idea of training for a legion died quickly when I realised I needed a wyvern to be a rider.
The fortress was hushed as I extinguished the fire and torches and made my way towards the staircase. I’d just reached the long hallway when the front door exploded open with a slam loud enough to echo through the whole damn fortress. A dark, hulking figure blotted out the starlight in the doorway, made of ink and night and obsidian.
My breath caught. A wave of ice-cold fear went down my spine and I froze there, staring at the shadowed figure, my heart hammering a thousand beats a minute. Rooted in surprise, it took me ten seconds to reach for the knife beneath my dress. The handle was cool in my palm as I whipped it free and pointed it at the intruder. Surely, the others must have heard the door slam. Surely they’d come to my rescue.
The panic was so severe that I forgot I could simply tear off my gloves and kill this bastard with my hands.
“The storm failed to kill me, so you’ve decided to stab me to death, have you, menace?”
The gravel-rough voice went through me like a whip strike and I lunged forward, casting the knife to the floor. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I was shaking too hard to move with any grace but I didn’t dare stop moving.
“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded, racing down the cold hallway to my husband. “We all thought you were dead!”
“I should be,” he replied, whatever humour had been in his voice a moment ago stripped bare, leaving only exhaustion and a sort of emptiness.
He trudged forward to meet me, leaving the door gaping wide. It had finally stopped raining this evening, even the slow drizzle drying up, but Varidian was soaked through. I winced when I pulled him into a fierce hug. The weight and pressure of him against my body was like a dagger to my heart. He nearly died. He was nearly lost in the storm, but now he was here, shaking and cold and real. Alive.
His arms came around me, gripping with a desperation that made my heart heavy, and his head dropped onto my shoulder. For a long moment it didn’t matter that I’d only known him for two days, and he’d been gone for longer than we’d spent together. He was my husband, and he needed my care.
Strength suffused my bones and straightened my back, driving off my shaky relief and the last scraps of panic.
“Come out of the cold,” I murmured, releasing him to close the door and usher him into the room I’d just exited. The fire had died, but warmth clung to the air. I pushed him into the chair by the window and busied myself building a fire back in the grate. “Is Makrukh okay?”
Varidian’s reply was quiet, a little rough. “As okay as he can be. He took a scrape to his side when rain drove us from the sky, but he’s healed from worse in the past.”
“And Fahad?” I asked, wiping my hands on the skirt of my dress as I stood.
Varidian didn’t reply. He just stared at the tapestry hung on the wall opposite, unmoving, barely breathing.
“Varidian?” I murmured, closing the distance between us, reaching out to run my fingers through his hair when he didn’t move.
“He’s—” His throat worked over a swallow. “The wind was brutal, even worse than the rain. The safe house is two miles from the wall, far enough that there was nothing to shelter us from the weather for that last hour. It was bad enough for everyone walking on the ground, but in the skies…”
I kept running my fingers through his hair, perching on the arm of the chair. “He didn’t make it?”
“No,” Varidian confirmed in a quiet, guttered voice. “His neck snapped the second he hit the ground. I knew it when his wyvern screamed. Mak tried to bring her back, to get her to fly with us, but she was inconsolable. She flew into the storm. I don’t know if—if she survived.”
I pulled Varidian closer, holding him fiercely as he shook, his breaths beginning to gasp. Whatever adrenaline had carried him through the storm would wane, leaving him wrecked by grief and exhaustion.
“I’ve known him my whole life. Fahad was a guard on the walls of the Red Star before he was conscripted. He’s married to one of ummi’s closest friends.”
Each word came raspier than the last. I held him tighter, stroking his hair, pain burrowing into my chest. I knew the pain of losing someone you loved, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, especially not my husband. It would be worse for Varidian. Fahad was killed by the storm but he survived. The guilt would sink its teeth into him soon. I didn’t have the right words of comfort. With a loss so keen and deep, there were no right words.
I held him for long, long minutes, and with each one he leaned heavier against me, his hands coming up to grasp fistfuls of my dress. Raspy breaths turned to shuddering sobs that broke my heart, and I held him through them all. The fire offered a faint glow but the room was otherwise dark, the fortress silent in respect for Varidian’s loss. None of the others had heard the slam of the door after all, or else they thought it was Zaarib storming outside for another gruelling training session.
When Varidian’s cries turned to hollow silence, I squeezed him to me and then let go. “I’ll make mint tea. It’ll help with the chill. When did you last eat?”
He shook his head, lost. “I don’t know. I foraged berries from the woods when we were driven from the sky but that was near dawn.”
My heart squeezed, a sharp pain shot like an arrow through the organ. “Do you want me to wake the others? They’re just upstairs.”
“No,” he said quickly, reaching for my hand. “I don’t want to—to have to tell them—”
“I understand,” I assured him, my voice so gentle I hardly recognised it. “And tomorrow, I can tell them if it’s still too difficult.”
Varidian nodded, scrubbing his hands over his tired face as I got to my feet and headed for the door.
“Should I take food for Makrukh?” And what did wyvern eat, anyway? I hardly thought a lamb tagine would satisfy them.
Varidian shook his head listlessly. “He’ll terrorise the nearby farm’s livestock if he gets hungry.” His eyes sharpened on me when I approached the hallway. “You’ll come back.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I’ll come back,” I swore, and made quick work of brewing tea, setting leftover tagine on the heat—edible but lacking the flavour of Aliah’s cooking. While that was heating, I rushed out to the wyvern house behind the fortress with a huge cloth I stole, dunked in boiling water to disinfect, then soaked in turmeric and verbena. It was far from an expert healer’s treatment, but it was better than nothing.
“Makrukh,” I called gently when I let myself into the massive brick and wood structure, passing the wyverns of the legion, avoiding looking at Shula’s grey. I flinched at the memory of Naila’s shredded body, but my grief had been dullened by two years. Varidian’s was fresh and as sharp as wyvern claws.
A rustle came from a stall at the end of the long stable-like building, and Makrukh’s white, pearlescent head poked above the door. His scales weren’t as gleaming as usual, their luminescence almost dead. He made a low, pitiful sound as I neared, his red eyes heavy-lidded with the same exhaustion as his rider.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For bringing him home.” I reached out to brush his snout, leaving a yellow mark from the turmeric. “I’m glad you’re home, too. Although I hear you were injured.”
Mak replied with a lowing sound, exhaling a rough sigh that blew my hair back from my face.
“I brought something that might help. Can you show me where you’re hurt?”
In an instant, he narrowed his eyes at me, baring his teeth on a warning rumble.
My stomach flip-flopped but I held my ground.
“If you don’t get it treated, it could get infected,” I said in a low voice the other wyvern wouldn’t overhear. “You can trust me, Mak. I promise.”
His eyes narrowed further. This time my heart didn’t skip.
“Come on, big guy.” I shooed him back, opening the stall door when he lifted his head, letting myself inside with the sheet soaked in medicinal plants. “Show me the wound, let me apply this poultice, then I’ll get out of your hair.” I paused. “Scales.”
More life returned to me now Varidian was back. I could breathe again, feel again, and my heart was no longer like a stone in my chest. Guilt swirled that I was relieved even when a man was dead and his wyvern missing, but I couldn’t help it. My husband was alive. Makrukh was alive. The world seemed a lot less bleak than it had an hour ago.
“You can be brave,” I told Mak when he narrowed his eyes in warning. “You flew right into the fire at the Last Guard, and roared in the face of an armoured tiger so horrifying it gives me nightmares. You flew through a three-day storm and returned your rider safely to his wife, and I’m so grateful I can’t put it into words.”
He huffed a heavy sigh, a whining growl leaving him like a petulant child complaining.
“If you’re brave enough to do all that, to fly into war, you can show me where you’ve been grazed.” I held his red stare. “Trust me, I won’t hurt you.” I held up the cloth. “I might dye your scales yellow for a few days, but I promise not to make any jokes about yellow belly.”
His next sigh was more a growl, still a little grumpy, a little moody. But he manoeuvred himself onto his side so I could see the wicked scratch on his underbelly.
I inhaled a hiss through my teeth. “That must hurt, Mak. You’re very strong to keep flying even while you’re in pain.”
He almost rolled his eyes, but I remembered what Varidian said about inflating Mak’s ego by calling him big. I guessed the same could be said of any kind of praise, and calling him big, strong, and brave would soothe his pride.
It took me less than two minutes to spread the wet, yellow cloth over Mak’s wound. The scratches were deep, gouged through the soft scales of his belly in a dozen different places. I didn’t know much about wyvern physiology, but it seemed Varidian was right and Mak would be fine.
“Thank you,” I said when I was done, Mak grumbling in the back of his throat. I caught his huge snout and pressed a kiss to his scales. “You’ll heal just fine. Maybe you’ll even have a dangerous-looking scar that’ll make other wyverns fear you even more.”
His narrowed eyes widened a little, as if he hadn’t considered that.
“Rest now,” I ordered him, stepping back and grabbing the stall door. “It’ll help you heal faster.”
He nudged me with his nose and I smiled at the unspoken thank you.
I latched the door again but paused there. “I meant what I said. Thank you for bringing my husband back safely. I owe you at least three sparkly crystals.”
Mak grumbled, stretching out in his stall.
“Ten?” I exclaimed, as if I understood his noises. “Dream on, big guy. I might— might —consider four.”
Playing along now, Mak made another low noise, his eyes meeting mine, brighter than they’d been when I entered the stall.
“Eight? You’re delusional, my friend.”
He paused to contemplate, then rumbled a soft noise.
“Six?” I tapped my bottom lip, thinking about it. “I suppose you do deserve them. Fine, you drive a very hard bargain, Mak. Six stones it is.”
His low, vibrating rumble was clear laughter. He settled down with his head resting on his front legs and slow-blinked at me.
“I’ll come see you in the morning,” I promised, taking a step back into the aisle. “Sleep well.”
When I returned to the kitchen and washed my hands, the tagine was hot and the tea well steeped. I filled a bowl with the former and a cup with the latter and carried both into the room at the front of the fortress where I’d left Varidian.
“Your gloves are yellow,” he said, taking the bowl from me and watching as I set the cup on the windowsill beside us, perching on the arm of the chair again. I didn’t want to be far from him. Today I’d begun to accept that he was gone forever, that he’d died out there, and having him back now intensified every fledgling emotion I’d had before he left.
I liked him and knew that would grow into far more than like. I was attached to him, proud to have him as my husband and, it turned out, fiercely protective of him. He was mine. I didn’t take my eyes off him as he ate, or as he set the bowl aside and pulled me down into his lap for a long hug.
“Seriously,” he said, seeming to have recovered a little. “Your gloves are yellow.”
“Turmeric,” I explained, brushing my hand over his arm, feeling the warmth and solidness of him. He needed a hot bath and new clothes, or he’d succumb to the chill no doubt setting in. “I took a poultice to Makrukh.”
Varidian raised an eyebrow. “And returned with both your hands. Impressive. He’s extra grumpy when he's injured.”
“I noticed.” Varidian was trembling, even with hot food inside him. “You need to remove these wet clothes and bathe, Varidian.”
He stiffened, as tense as an iron rod. “Later. Now I need—stay with me for a while.”
“You’ll get a chill,” I protested, brushing a wayward strand of black hair from his eye. “The clothes are dangerous, Varidian.”
He shook his head, some of the life leaving his eyes. But he locked his arms around my body and leaned back into the chair, stubbornness entering his expression. “Wet clothes won’t kill me. Being without you another minute might.”
“You’re being dramatic,” I said, but softly, a strange note of fondness entering my voice. He’d been gone for days, but he and Fahad were all the legion had spoken about—their escapades, their battles, all the times Varidian had led them to the wall and back to the fortress, all the ways he cared for them even at his own cost. “A bath would be far more beneficial to you than holding me.”
His lips curved at the very edges. “You’re severely underestimating the power of your touch. A kiss alone could cure a cold.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, it could, could it?”
His smile was strained and sad but there, nonetheless. “Kisses are powerful things. They can start and end wars. They can heal a heart or break one. They can make a grieving man see a glimmer of light in a wall of impenetrable darkness.”
My heart softened, melting inside me. “Like I said,” I teased, brushing the ends of his hair. “Dramatic. You could have simply asked for a kiss and I would have given you one.”
“So cruel to deny me,” he moaned, clutching his chest. “And after that pretty speech.”
“It was a very pretty speech,” I allowed, shifting so I could rest my hands on his shoulders, my palms to the damp leathers. “You have a talented way with words, Varidian Saber.”
“What you mean,” he said, his eyes a little brighter, his arms coming around my back, “is I have a talented tongue.”
The time apart had withered my memory. His eyes weren’t amber at all but a stunning shade of topaz blue.
I scoffed. “I’ve seen no evidence of that.”
His hand flexed on my back. “Is that so? Even after our wedding night, dearling?”
Heat spread through me like ink in water. “I’m not sure I’d use the word talented.”
“Your legs shook as you came on my face.”
I pinched his shoulder. “Don’t sound so smug.” But his eyes were light and the smile sat more naturally on his stubbled face. “Anyone could have given me that reaction.”
A little darkness entered his expression. “You think so?”
My heart kicked up when his hands tightened around my waist, yanking me closer. “I do.”
“Let’s rectify that, shall we?”