Page 26 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AMEIRAH

S creams pierced the air, rupturing the Solemn Square at a volume that made my ears hurt. I flinched when a man collided with me in his frantic attempt to flee the square, an elbow hitting my stomach, punching all the air from my lungs until I coughed. Pain bloomed where he hit me.

“Ameirah,” Varidian barked, pulling me up when I slouched, painfully winded. “Stay close.”

His eyes were tight, the blue as sharp as cut crystal. For a moment, the determination in his hard stare made me straighten my shoulders, but then a woman began to scream. Whatever hold I’d had on my fear spiralled away, and my breathing turned shallow.

We were going to die, slaughtered in a city square by men who definitely weren’t the clergy I knew.

“Did your father do this?” I shouted to be heard as Varidian and I pushed through the press of the crowd. I was tall for a woman but we were surrounded on all sides by so many people that I couldn’t see more than three heads in front of us. I could barely glimpse the sky above, what I could see darkening to a tempestuous silver that heralded more rain. I’d had quite enough rain in the last three days; we didn’t need another storm.

“No way to know,” Varidian replied, snapping his arm out in front of us when an old, bearded man almost slammed into me, his path weaving and mindless. Behind us, the crowd surged like the flow of the ocean. “I wouldn’t be surprised, but he isn’t a religious man. He wouldn’t try to wipe out a lightning soul; he’d want to capture him for power.”

“Do not run!” a voice boomed behind us—the bearded gentry, whose voice was even louder. “You have nothing to fear unless you harbour the lightning soul. To run is to be guilty.”

Fuck. A shudder worked through me. I held Varidian’s hand so tightly I might rearrange his bones. The whole crowd was fleeing, a mass panic taking over the square, and I knew every road around Solemn Square must be full of people running from the site of the execution. Ithanysians might have fought an eternal war with Kalder but we weren’t accustomed to seeing murder in front of us.

Clammy bodies surged against me, pushing me forward so suddenly that my face smacked into the broad-backed man in front of me. Pain shot up my nose, but it was bearable and I didn’t taste blood. My nose wasn’t broken. Small mercies.

To run is to be guilty. The dark clergy’s words had the opposite effect on the crowd. People ran faster, shoving, forcing their way through. In minutes, we were so crushed that I could barely find the space to draw breath.

“Ameirah,” Varidian said urgently, gripping my hand tighter. A body forced between us, but he held on with force and—that was rage in his eyes, true rage. My heart skipped. “Don’t you dare let go,” he ordered, like I was one of his legion to command.

“I won’t.”

I cried out when an elbow rammed into my back, pitching me into the man in front with so much force that my head snapped forward and I bit my tongue, the copper of blood flooding my senses. Varidian pulled on my hand, trying to bring me closer to him, but we were too far apart, and yet another body wedged between us.

“Back,” he roared, and my breath froze for a second when the young man who’d pushed me jerked violently away.

Ice crawled into my stomach, but I glanced away, not wanting Varidian to see how it unsettled me that he’d so effortlessly bent someone to his will. If he could accept me with my lethal power, I could accept him with his.

“How far?” I shouted, scrambling for a memory of how we got here, trying to remember if there were roads that branched off from this main thoroughfare where we could escape the crush.

“Too far,” Varidian said gravely, maybe hoping I wouldn’t hear.

The shouts of fear and family members’ names turned to alarmed screams, cries of terror rippling through the crowd like ocean waves, each one louder, more harrowing. What were the clergy doing, to make people scream like that?

The high sun blotted out of the sky for a moment, and goosebumps bled down my arms. I could no longer feel the sting of my new marriage mark; I was too cold. I told myself not to look, told myself I didn’t want to see what new horror had fallen over us, but I couldn’t help it. My head tipped back before I could stop it, and my breath congealed in my throat.

Wyverns.

Six of them, all as big as Shula’s grey, covered in spikes and—armour?

“Varidian,” I gasped, so quiet he had no hope of hearing me.

We were a crowd of Ithanysian people, some of us gentry with our own wyverns. The shadow of wings in the sky wasn’t a reason to run; they were cause to look up and smile, to wave a hand, to cheer if warriors had returned from the wall. But with a public execution, and grave warnings—veiled threats—from strange men filling the minds of Wyfell civilians, instead of cheers the wyverns were met with screams.

I couldn’t help but remember the midnight blue at the Last Guard, and how it had set homes and buildings alight. How it had attacked Ithanysians when it should have been bonded with an Ithanysian themselves.

“Move,” Varidian barked at someone, his voice deep and resonant in a way that chilled me. “Be calm.”

But the hysteria was spreading at a rate that it couldn’t be contained. Someone screamed right behind me, the sound dissolving into a sob.

“What did we do to anger our god?” the woman cried. “What did we do wrong?”

I didn’t know the answer, but my stomach hollowed as the wyverns circled above us. More and more people spotted them, and bodies pushed harder against the crowd, throwing themselves against the people in front to escape the danger that flew overhead.

“To run is to be guilty,” a gentry called, his voice seeming to echo. “Be still, innocents, or else confess.”

Confess to what? This was madness! A whole city hadn’t seen the lightning strike someone, if it even had struck anyone. I was starting to think this was the whole point of the announcement—chaos and mass-fear. An excuse to kill a man on stage. My stomach knotted, bile burning up my throat. In my memory I heard the man shout, pleading, trying to tell us he was just a farmer. Maybe he was a liar. Or maybe the clergy had misled us. Either way, no one stuck around to see if they’d be executed next, and no matter what orders the gentry yelled, the crowd elbowed and kicked and surged on.

A woman fell screaming to my right, and I whipped my head around, my hand already outstretched to catch her, but the crowd was a wild animal. It moved over her, swallowed her, and I lost sight of the fallen woman in seconds. That could be me. One slip and I’d be trampled. I couldn’t breathe.

“Stay close,” Varidian barked at me, his voice almost lost in the riot of noise. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think clearly. All I could do was hold onto his hand and allow the crowd to push and pull at me, making pathetic progress down the street. It was stifling, suffocating, and so hot that beads of sweat rolled off my chin. I wanted to run away with a desperation that made my skin itch, but there was no way out.

“Nabil!” a man screamed behind us, and my heart stuttered. But it was a common name; there were three Nabils in my mosque at Strava. Still, fear injected into my heart and it beat rapidly. I began to feel lightheaded.

I flinched when a wyvern let out a strident screech, wheeling over us in the sky, its wings like dark emerald against the grey clouds. Maybe I should have wished for rain; maybe it would force the wyverns from their flight. The longer they circled, watching, the clearer it became that this wasn’t a legion of the Ithanysian army. A true legion would have found a way to help, to carry people from the crush to safety. They’d have at least shouted orders; these riders circled in silence.

“Ameirah!” Varidian yelled when a wyvern ducked so low its talons could easily scalp the people packed like tinned sardines in the street. Screams cut apart the sky—defiant wyvern and terrified fae. I was jerked to the right so suddenly that Varidian’s fingers tore from mine, and I gasped for enough air to sob, frantic eyes searching the hundreds of bodies around me for his face, straining my ears for his voice.

“Varidian?” I shouted. Just another voice crying for a loved one in the crowd. “Varidian!”

Another surge wedged me between a large-bodied woman and a man I’d seen hawking hand-stitched notebooks just an hour ago. I gasped down every breath, trying to force my sobs into submission, trying to hold myself together. I wished the legion had come with us, and that was such a betrayal to Naila that my sobs won.

My hands were so sweaty that when the person behind me crashed into my back, knocking my arms forward, I felt my gloves shift. My breathing cut off. I couldn’t lose my gloves in a crush like this. I would kill everyone.

The thought made me hyperventilate, my breathing so loud I almost missed the next wyvern screech before it dove. Blood filled the air, metallic and ripe. Drops splashed my face.

“Varidian?” I screamed, sucking down ragged gasps of air so I could speak. “Varidian, please!”

My voice was lost to a roar of noise. The crowd carried me and my feet stumbled along, powerless, my ribs throbbing from being battered so many times.

A hot, sticky wind blew my hair back from my face, scented with blood and iron and—no, not wind. My hands shook inside my gloves, my palms so slick I curled my hands into fists so they wouldn’t fall off. That wasn’t wind—it was the rush of air that preceded wyvernfyre.

“Run!” I screamed, but we were already trying to run, the roads too narrow, the people too numerous. We were going to be roasted to death like Kaldic enemies. But we were Ithanysian. We bonded with wyvern, rode them, loved them like family. Why would this happen? “Run!”

The smell hit me first—the same burned meat scent as the Last Guard. I choked back bile, my stomach revolting. I wanted Varidian’s hand in mine so badly that I sobbed, tears burning my eyes. I looked above the wall of heads in front of me, searching the sky, as if I could run out of the path of a breath of fire. I didn’t stand a chance. I’d be trapped, watching death roar towards me.

My bottom lip wobbled. I didn’t want to die.

Fire scorched the air, screams spiking, visceral, petrified. I avoided the roar of flame by mere chance. If it had been two metres to the left, I would be dead. I choked on short, breathless sobs and stared at the empty swath of space where there’d been thirty people a minute ago. Now there were only bones and smoke, flames licking at whatever bits of flesh remained.

A roar of noise filled my head.

There was a moment of stillness, suspended and unnatural. Shock infected all of us. And then all at once, people flooded into the space left by disintegrated fae, trampling bones, single-minded as the mouth of a wider road became visible. I was ashamed to be one of them, ashamed to feel bones shatter beneath my feet, to hear them crack as I ran for that road with every ounce of strength in my body.

It was a blur of ragged breaths, pumping arms, stumbling steps, and senseless noise thumping through my ears, a hollow rush that was silence and screams all at once. By some miracle, I escaped the crush of bodies on the main thoroughfare. My skin tingled and burned as I waited for wyvernfyre. They could easily burn the tan-stone buildings on either side of us to ashes, but it felt safer with their shelter. I stumbled after the people in front of me, my whole body trembling, my mind full of horrified stillness.

People had been burned to death. Our own people, by our own wyverns. What the fuck was happening?

“Keep up, Masuma,” a short woman around Shula’s age urged, her hand covered in ashes but wrapped around the small fist of a girl who could be no older than four. My heart knocked into my ribs, breathing impossible. I didn’t want to watch this girl be murdered like the boy in the Last Guard. I didn’t want to watch anyone else die, least of all children.

The wide street fed us out into the meat market, the scent of raw meat and offal perfuming the air, almost cutting through the smell of burned fae flesh that was permanently seared into my nostrils. I kept Masuma and her mother in my line of sight, the shakiest edge of my fear honed into something with more purpose. If nothing else today, I wouldn’t let another child die.

I didn’t understand what was at stake, what the game was—why men on tiger back wore black clergy robes at the Last Guard, why they invaded a peaceful market city and unleashed our own creatures upon us. It was a puzzle lacking so many pieces that I wanted to scream.

A shadow cut across the narrow thoroughfare I fled down and I froze, breath like shards of glass in my lungs. Instinct took over. I lunged across the paved street and grabbed the woman’s arm. There was no time to explain; I yanked her and Masuma into the doorway of a brick storehouse to our left.

“Wyvern,” I panted, my breath thin, pain spreading further with each inhale I took.

The young woman’s eyes widened but she huddled her daughter into the doorway with me, understanding instantly. Her breaths were almost as fast as mine.

“Shh, Masuma,” she whispered when the girl began to speak. “We have to be very quiet.”

Masuma was around Shahzia’s age, around the age where my magic festered and I killed her. I pulled my gloves up my arms, my heart rapping my throbbing ribs as the shadow of the wyvern grew larger, passing overhead. We would be hidden from this angle, but others were racing down the road in full view. I screwed my eyes shut when the temperature spiked, hot air slapping my face. The screams were harrowing.

When I dared to open my eyes, Masuma’s mother was softly crying and everyone on the road was dead.

Why? Because they ran? If I wasn’t so terrified, rage would have beat against my breast.

It was deadly quiet on the road now. The quiet of horror and death. The market was in flames around us but a pocket of silence covered this street. Rain began to speckle the ground, strangely soundless.

“Stay here,” I whispered.

We couldn’t stay here forever; if I could reach Varidian and Mak, we could fly out of Wyfell. I didn’t let myself entertain the thought that he burned in that first blast of fire. He was fine. He survived a storm. He had a reputation of cheating death. Varidian was alive.

“Thank you,” Masuma’s mother whispered, her hand finding my arm, squeezing tight. It was such a shock to be touched that I froze for a moment. “Thank you,” she repeated.

I managed to nod, a little stunned. I was so used to people hating me for my magic, my lineage, that it was a revelation to be appreciated for my actions. I straightened my back and peered around the doorway, stepping out when it was clear. A long breath left me, and I turned back to the mother and her daughter to tell them it was safe—

And I froze to the spot when the ground shook at the end of the road, sending tremors up my legs.

The huge dark emerald wyvern I’d seen flying landed opposite me so hard that whatever stalls survived the blaze now collapsed, the crash making me flinch. My heart beat so hard I felt it through my whole body. I very slowly held my hand out to Masuma’s mother, telling her to stay put, not taking my eyes off the enormous emerald as its head dipped, weaving in a sign of aggression. A promise of vengeance and fire.

Its throat lit up with liquid fire, and I froze, paralysed in place.

Instinct yelled at me to run, but I refused to look like prey. Wyverns would chase prey, so I held my ground, survival instinct screaming at me to race back into the doorway. But I refused to watch another child be killed by whoever had ridden these wyverns into Wyfell.

“Run,” Masuma’s mother hissed, her voice quiet but carrying so much emotion.

“Don’t move,” I whispered back, taking a slow, retreating step, scanning my surroundings for anything I could shelter behind. Most of the souk had been charred to ruins, nothing left that would provide enough coverage. There were other storehouses dotted around the market, but would I reach them in time to hide beneath their stone roofs? And would that save me anyway? The buildings of the Last Guard had been brick and they’d been nothing but wreckage when we arrived.

I backed up another step and knew I stared my death in its sharp, slitted eyes. And if I was going to be murdered either way, I would die seeking survival.

Fuck this.

I turned and ran, pushing my body to the limit, ignoring the crack of pain through my crushed ribs. I tore off the glove on my right hand, my arm like jelly beneath, but dangerous, always dangerous. If I could sneak up on the wyvern, somehow get behind it, I might be able to kill it before it could roast me alive. Not that I’d ever killed anything as big as a wyvern. Wyverns were legendary creatures, and it was pure delusion to think something as small and insignificant as one fae could kill a legend, but it was all I had, the only bit of hope I had left.

I ran, and swung around the side of the storehouse, racing in a circuitous route—

I screamed when the wyvern dropped from the rain-dark sky to land in front of me. My throat burned with the sound. I tasted blood.

The emerald hit the earth so hard I was knocked off my feet and landed with a sob on my ass on the wet ground. I was so panicked I’d forgotten the wyvern could simply fly. Fuck. Fuck!

I scrambled to get my feet underneath me, but my arms buckled when I put weight on them. I was shaking too hard to get up, and I hated myself right then, hated my fear, my limitations, my mortal body.

Fire burned gold in the wyvern’s throat, and I knew it was the end. My senses sharpened, the taste of blood, sweat, and ash intense on my tongue, the wind hitting me like a furnace until I shook harder, all my hairs standing on end, the beating of wings hitting my ears like explosions.

I sucked in a final shuddering breath and screwed my eyes shut, trying in vain to push off the ground, to fight to my feet, to run. I made it to my knees when an earthquake sent me back to my ass, and I sobbed.

Terror made me shrink in on myself when a fierce wyvern cry cleaved the air, filling the world until there was nothing but that scream, that rage, that warning. With near-death clarity, I knew the exact meaning of that scream.

Touch my rider, and I will end your entire line.

Wait.

I tore my gritty eyes open, air hitting my lungs when I gasped. A second wyvern had landed in front of me, crouched low between me and the emerald with a powerful growl rumbling from its blue-silver throat. It was smaller than the other, but its size gave it speed; I flinched when it slashed out a wing and raked wicked claws across the emerald’s throat. Blood spilled, not enough to kill but to serve as a warning. The emerald roared its rage but… backed off.

A shiver of ice went down my spine. Had the blue wyvern decided it wanted to devour me itself? Did it think my bones would be especially crunchy, my skin sweetened by sweat?

My stare jumped from sky blue to emerald to sky blue to emerald, surprise jolting my heart when I realised neither bore a rider.

I shook so hard my teeth knocked together, crawling backwards when the sleek blue wyvern turned to face me. The sheer size of those feet, those talons… My stomach cramped, vomit rushing to the back of my throat.

“I—I would taste—rotten,” I gasped, my head spinning, my hands shaking so hard I stood no chance of pushing off the ground.

The wyvern let out a rumbling sound like when Makrukh laughed. A shot of pure terror hit my system, allowing me to get to my feet. I swayed, but I was standing.

My head spun. I was so scared, so breathless, so full of pain, that it took me a moment to realise the wyvern had dipped its head to look at me closer. Not snaking violently like the emerald but assessing me.

The short grunt it let out hit me with that eerie understanding again. Well, come on, then. Let’s go.

“Go… where?”

I swore exasperation entered the blue’s quicksilver eyes.

“Where’s your rider?” I whispered, trying to stay on my feet when the whole world swirled and tilted around me. I craned my neck, searching the wyvern’s back for a rider in familiar House colours, for a legion rider instead of one of those dark clergy, but there was no one sat astride the wyvern.

And it hit me when the wyvern nudged her face forward, bumping my stomach with her scaly snout like Mak did. Her soft noise very clearly said right here.

“You’re mad,” I told her in a rushed breath, not entirely sure how I knew she was female. I meant to say something else, come up with a better protest, but a heavier, much larger wyvern landed behind me, and the quake knocked me off my feet.