Page 30 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AMEIRAH
I ’d completely forgotten about Sabira, the woman who managed Varidian’s household, who he’d told me on our wedding day was a force of nature. I was promptly reminded of her existence when she stormed across the lawn at the back of the Diamond and whacked my head with a rolled-up newspaper. I hissed, leaning away and giving her a dirty look.
Sabira, it turned out, was a formidable woman in both height and personality. A beautiful shade of orange draped her body, her matching head scarf contrasting against her lovely deep skin. Dark eyebrows slashed her oval face above fierce amber eyes that had me instantly backing up a step. She carried the confidence and danger of a woman Shula’s size
“I haven’t had to saddle a wyvern since Varidian was a youngling,” she groused. “Stubborn, mindful beasts, wyverns. A lot like princes.”
I tried not to laugh, fearing laughter would get me another whack from the newspaper.
“Look at this drivel,” she spat, actually handing me the newspaper. “Whoever the bastards who sacked Wyfell are, they’ve bought the editors of the Red Sun. Or the printing presses, I suppose.”
I made a face as I read the headline emblazoned on the front page. TERROR LIVES AMONG US, it said, and just below it: THE SECRET DANGER OF NEWCOMERS AND NEIGHBOURS ALIKE.
I skimmed the rest of the article, surprised to find accusations that gentry and clergy alike knew who the lightning had struck and were hiding them from us. Great, so they didn’t want us to trust anyone.
“This is our newspaper,” I said with a slow-creeping dread. “The Red Sun is printed here, written here.” I locked eyes with Sabira, my stomach tangling at more than just the ferocity in her gaze.
“Those damned flyers were only the beginning,” she huffed, arms crossing over her chest. I noticed a scratch through the arm of her tunic and tried not to wince. Raheema’s work, no doubt. I’d have to have words with my wyvern. “You know they landed propaganda in Tourlestyn and Morysen, too? Even the hatching city of Daurith if rumours are to be believed.”
My eyes widened. Those dark clergy were certainly determined to spread their hatred. That covered almost all of Ithanys.
“Of course you wouldn’t know,” Sabira commented, looking down her nose at me. “Typical princess, sitting on her ass while kingdoms suffer.”
Outrage sparked in my blood. “Excuse me, I was healing from two fractured ribs.”
Sabira scoffed, already walking past me. “Complain to me when your ribs are on the outside of your body.”
I shook my head in disbelief and anger as she strode off, leaving me standing on the lawn, staring after her. I didn’t like the thought of that slow creep of hysteria from Wyfell reaching the Red Star. I didn’t like how it had found us in just a week.
Wings beat the air, snapping me out of my reverie, and I jumped, tipping my head back—and exhaling a rough breath of relief when Raheema, my sky-blue wyvern, landed close enough to blow the hair back from my face.
Her low, impatient noise was easy enough to understand. Come on, what are you waiting for?
“My husband,” I said dryly, approaching her slowly, still a little cautious despite the time we’d spent together this week. She wasn’t grumpy and growling like Mak; she was fast and bright-eyed and full of boundless excitement. Mak called her a puppy, and the comparison was accurate.
Her reply assured me we didn’t need Varidian and could have so much more fun without the grumpy grandfather.
“I’ll tell Mak you said that,” I teased, stroking along her warm neck, eyeing the seating contraption Sabira had rigged up for me to safely ride. As if I hadn’t been riding Mak without one. But I wanted to learn properly, and this was the first step, so I tried not to scowl too much at the reinforced leather seat. “Where did you go anyway? You better not be terrorising those sheep again.”
There was farmland on the outskirts of the city, where Raheema had learned a tasty snack could be found in the form of sheep. But the Red Star needed that meat for the people to eat, and our wyverns were fed a shocking amount of food without sneaking off for extra meals.
I put the dangerous propaganda out of my mind when a familiar shadow blotted out the sun, Mak and Varidian landing effortlessly in front of us.
I cupped my hands in front of my mouth and yelled, “Show off.”
I saw Varidian laugh even if the sound didn’t reach me on the ground. I waited for him to jump down to help me mount, or at least give me instruction, but he just crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me expertly.
“Any helpful advice?”
“Climb using the braided strap,” he shouted down. “And don’t fall off.”
“Great advice,” I muttered, giving him a dark look and wrapping my hands around the strap he indicated. It ringed Raheema’s body, attaching the seat to her back, the braided leather about the thickness of my arm. Climbing was going to hurt like a bitch, especially when my fractured ribs were still healing, but I’d asked for this. I wanted to learn how to ride, and I refused to be helpless like I was in Wyfell. Riding was the first step.
I gritted my teeth and hauled myself up Raheema’s back, bracing myself with the toes of my new riding boots—custom made, along with new riding leathers that arrived yesterday—as I pulled myself up her side, hand over hand. My ribs erupted in a fire of pain, but when I made it up and strapped myself into the seat, it was bearable. The cocktail of medicine I’d taken helped with that.
“Where were you anyway?” I shouted across to Varidian.
“At the wall, making sure the towers are secure.” His expression was stern, the face of the legion commander.
“Are they?”
He nodded, his mouth in a firm line. “Holding steady, and the guards are on alert for new wyverns.”
He guided Mak as close as he could get, inspecting the buttery leather straps holding me to Raheema’s back. “Tighten that piece there, good. Lean to either side.” He watched me with wyvern-keen eyes as I did. “Good, they’ll hold. I’d usually start off slow, but with everything happening, I want you to be able to fly fast in case you need to flee another situation like Wyfell.”
“In case we need to flee,” I corrected, my voice hardening.
“Right,” he agreed, but I narrowed my eyes at his easy acceptance. “Hold onto the reins when Raheema takes flight. I want you to follow me across the Red Star. I’ll take the outside route, so we shouldn’t cross paths with many wyverns, but if you need to turn either left or right, press your thigh against her side. To go faster, drop your body to her back and she’ll do the rest. And trust yourself—and Raheema. Your bond is based on instinct, and there’s an understanding that flows between you. She’ll know what you need.”
“What if I want to stop?”
Varidian laughed. “When you’re in the air, dearling, if you stop flying you die. To land, angle her towards the ground and tell her you want to land. There’s an intricate technique I want you to learn, Ameirah. It’s called opening your mouth and speaking.”
My gaze flattened. “Funny.”
Varidian’s smile was swift, and it was good to see. Those smiles had been rare since the storm, since Fahad’s death.
“Raheema,” he said in an obvious command as Mak beat his wings, flying higher.
If Raheema could have cursed, she would have. She gave him a dirty look and craned her neck to look at me instead.
“Whatever they do, we do better,” I said, a shot of adventure and excitement hitting my blood—until she leapt off the ground like a comet and I screamed, white-knuckling the reins. It was easier to ride like this than frantically gripping Mak’s spikes and scales, but my fear of heights hadn’t gone anywhere. My stomach still plummeted as we soared into the air, my heart quickening into a frantic beat as I saw the Diamond of the South spread out beneath us, the gardens at the front flowing to the winding road that led into the city below.
A tremor went through my belly, a strange feeling alongside my fear. Excitement to fly, to explore, to go anywhere in the kingdom. But also a rightness, a feeling that I was finally where I was meant to be, soaring through the sky on the back of a wyvern. My own wyvern.
My family lied to me. Father lied to me, over and over. He said my magic was too dark, too twisted, for any wyvern to look at me twice let alone claim me as a rider, and he was wrong. Raheema stretched out beneath me, her talons skimming fluffy clouds as sky blue wings beat, carrying us after Mak and Varidian. On sure wingbeats we soared past the edges of the city and then we were over the wall, the whole world a wonder laid out for us to explore.
I felt like the heroine of an adventure, like we’d traverse the cloud-strewn sky to explore far-flung lands, maybe liberate prisoners captured on false charges, or save wyvern eggs from thieves attempting to steal them in the dead of night. Those weren’t the only stories on my mind, though. My conversation with Shula came back to me, those tales of dark fae and darker magic tangling with what I’d seen—men in black giving kill orders, an armoured tiger slaughtering a boy, wyverns attacking our own people. There were stories of things like that happening before, ancient tales from the time of Wyvara, when tigers, wyvern, fae, and araethawn lived as neighbours. I didn’t know much about the latter, just that they were a type of fae and… they turned dark. Turned on the rest of us. If legends were accurate, the dark queen ruled over an army of them and used them as puppets.
The dark clergy weren’t puppets, though. They were men with their own minds and agenda. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Did they simply want to hunt the lightning soul, and free us of its influence? I could understand that, would even support that, but mass hysteria and violence? It didn’t add up.
My stomach dropped when Raheema swooped lower, snapping her wings tight to her sides. I wrenched out of my mind to find us diving down the side of a grey mountain, Raheema’s tongue hanging out of her mouth as she plummeted.
“Raheema!” My voice was a screech. I held the reins so tightly a bone cracked in my hand. My hair blew back from my face, wind grabbing at my clothes. “Slow down!”
Oops, was her laughing response. Can’t.
My heart slammed into my back, my stomach shooting up my throat as we neared the ground at such a speed that I knew it would kill us. Varidian yelled, Mak echoing it with a rumbling command, but my ears were buffeted by a deafening wind, my head spinning, and I couldn’t make sense of the words.
Six metres from the rocky ground, Raheema snapped out her wings like the sails of a great ship and caught the air, the wyvern version of a laugh in her chest.
“Bad wyvern!” I panted, remembering how to think, to breathe.
Fuck, that was terrifying. My blood pumped faster, though, a tingle in my hands. A dazzling mix of fear and exhilaration made me feel alive, a hundred percent present in my body.
Raheema landed elegantly beside where Mak hulked, furious, and gave both the wyverns and fae a sassy little growl.
See? We’d be fine fleeing danger. I’d be fast and Ameirah would be safe.
Judging by the way my husband’s teeth bared, Mak had translated for him. He threw his leg over Makrukh’s back and flung himself into a dismount, landing and storming towards us in the same motion. Rage cut every line in his body, every step formed of wrath and retribution. Raheema gulped.
“You never,” he said when he was close enough to be heard, her size meaning he didn’t even have to shout for his voice to reach us. “Never risk my wife that way again. That was irresponsible, reckless, and childish. I know you’re young, Raheema, but you are a mount and you’ll show some dignity and respect for that title.”
The more he spoke, the lower her head dipped and the tighter my chest wound.
“She was just having fun,” I defended her, my lips thin. “She’s learned her lesson.”
“I’m not sure she has,” Varidian argued. “Dismount. I have something else planned for us today.”
“What happened to flying?”
“Raheema happened,” he replied, biting and harsh. The same way he spoke to me in the barn yesterday. I sighed and began unstrapping myself. It took minutes to get free, and it would be a hindrance if we were in a real fight, if we were being chased and I needed to dismount quickly. I’d need to practise strapping and unstrapping this seat, or else fly without these protections. With a groan of frustration, I ripped the buckle from the last strap and detangled myself from the contraption.
“You better catch me,” I warned Varidian as I swung my leg over Raheema’s.
“Always,” he promised, his voice so deep I felt it across my skin. He was furious, a being of rage and vengeance. I pushed myself off Raheema’s sleek back—I didn’t know if she just didn’t have spikes like Mak, or if they’d grow with age—and swallowed my shout of fear at how fast I fell.
Varidian was true to his word and caught me, his arms snapping around me instantly, crushing me to his chest. I gritted my teeth, pain flaring across my ribs one by one, bringing tears to my eyes. With his own injuries, it must have hurt him, too.
“I’m fine,” I murmured, sinking my fingers into his hair and gripping tight. “I’m not hurt, and Raheema didn’t mean to scare me. This isn’t a tiger attack or an enemy wyvern in the sky. I’m fine.”
His nostrils flared. “You could have fallen out of the saddle. You could have—”
I kissed him to stop the flow of panic from his tongue, tingles bursting up my back when he growled and yanked me closer, fingers biting into my skin as our kiss deepened.
I didn’t stop until he was gasping, until my lungs screamed for air and my head began to spin.
“That was,” he panted, his eyes sultry and low, “quite convincing.”
“Good.” I kissed him again, a brief brush this time. “I know Wyfell scared you, Varidian, but I’m alright.” My ribs blazed with pain, but I’d be fine. I was alive and that counted for a lot.
“You woke up three times last night,” he said, his voice achingly soft. He brushed a lock of violet hair from my face. “Will you talk to me about it?”
I glanced away, a knot swelling in my throat. “I can’t handle seeing them hurt,” I said in a whisper, scenes playing out in front of my eyes, replacing Varidian’s face. “Children. After Shahzia—”
I couldn’t finish. Varidian pulled me closer, until my head rested on his chest, his hand moulded to the back of my head. Raheema made a low, mournful sound and I sensed her edging closer.
“I keep seeing the boy in the Last Guard. And then Masuma in Wyfell. With all the riders and clergy attacking the city, I know she—she’s—”
“There are survivors of every attack,” Varidian said, soft but fierce. His lips met the crown of my head. “There’s horrific loss of life, I admit, but there are always survivors. Who says she wasn’t one?”
I swallowed the knot in my throat. “I get to choose what happened,” I whispered, remembering what he told me on the flight back to the Red Star.
“Believe what you need so you may sleep at night. That’s the only way I can rest some nights. I choose to believe they survived.”
I hugged him tighter but stiffened when he sucked in a sharp breath. I’d endeavoured to see his injuries for days, but he was surly and secretive about them. I drew back now, opening my mouth, but one look at the stony expression on his face and I changed tact.
“What if we—”
We both froze when a rhythmic sound reached us, repetitive like a drum. My stomach tangled. I shot a look at Varidian but he was already grabbing me, pulling me against the mountain.
“Mak, take Raheema and hide somewhere,” he hissed, his hands tightening on my body. This time I couldn’t hide my pain and his expression froze, but he kept guiding us back against the rock, angling us into a natural ridge on the mountain face. We were shielded, but barely, and I wore yellow ochre, not camouflage-grey. Varidian’s black stood out, too.
“What is it?” I whispered, my heart beating faster when that low drumming grew louder.
“Warriors,” Varidian replied, tension running through him as he pressed me against the rock, covering me with his body. “Lots of them by the sound of it.”
“Marching to the wall?” I asked, my pulse thumping so hard I felt it in my throat. I curled my fingers into the soft leather of Varidian’s coat, needing him close, terrified we’d be spotted and hurt. Killed.
Rage poured through me at that thought and I straightened. I was the only one who got to threaten my husband.
“Calm,” he breathed against my ear. “And don’t move. They’ll spot movement.”
I began to nod but stopped myself, resting my head on his shoulder so I could glimpse the mountain path beyond us. The drumming of warriors’ boots grew so loud they were undeniable, and little shivers skated down my spine. Why would we be hiding from Ithanysian warriors?
The answer came quickly—because we didn’t know they were Ithanysian. My breath strangled in my chest, images of Wyfell burning my mind, but when they came into view, they wore the black and purple striped djellaba of our army. I expelled a gust of air, relaxing against Varidian. His hands only tightened on my body, his frame like iron against mine.
“Do not,” he whispered, “move.”
Panic struck my heart into a sprint. I barely even breathed until they passed, the drumming of their footfall fading into silence again.
“What is it?” I finally dared to breathe minutes later.
Varidian’s bronze throat bobbed, a muscle feathering in his stubbled jaw. I reached up to run my thumb along it, soothing his panic. “Their route is unusual. They should pass through Willow Green and across the plains from Morysen. It’s too slow to take the mountains; I haven’t seen anyone use this pass before. And they’re going from east to west.”
“Which means what…?” I peered up at him, his stress making my pulse trip.
“They weren’t going to the wall. They were coming from it.”