Page 34 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

AMEIRAH

I t took very little to convince Sabira to mount a wyvern and follow Varidian and the Legion of Fyrevein, but I wasn’t expecting Rawiya to race to the barn after us and mount a small jewel-green wyvern with matching burn scars along her right leg and flank.

“Be careful,” Varidian’s mother warned me when she and Sabira—fierce and straight-backed atop a rich brown wyvern covered in spikes, her djellaba reinforced at the cuffs and ankles with vambraces of sturdy leather—joined me and Raheema on the lawn. “Sabira will come to the wall with you, but don’t fly further unless the legion really needs you. Your safety is paramount. We have a house guard to protect the kasbah, and a dozen other gentry experienced with flying, two even the daughters of a commander; I’m going to gather them, in case the worst happens and we need to defend the city.”

My stomach tightened, dread gathering bile in the back of my throat. All the screams, the crush, the destruction of Wyfell… it broke me a little to imagine that happening here. The souk Makrukh showed me on my first night here, the lively streets, the glittering square, the houses full of families and couples and children. The Diamond of the South, my home.

I straightened on Raheema’s back, tugging the straps around my middle and legs tighter. I wouldn’t fall out of my seat. I refused to let those bastards harm these people. My people as Varidian said that first night. I was their princess, and I would not be weak as long as they needed me. Or as long as Varidian needed me.

The thought of him facing those dark riders made me want to vomit, but I held myself together and squeezed my legs around Raheema, the two of us leaping into the sky. Sabira and her brown wyvern rose alongside us, his scales rich umber with a ripple of red and orange in the sunlight. He kept a safe distance from Raheema, which she appreciated, and his rider looked to me for orders, which I appreciated, even if it caused a little ball of dread to form in my stomach. I was the princess, I had rank, and I was in charge of this little backup mission.

Varidian was going to kill me if either of us got hurt. But no, fuck that. We weren’t getting hurt, and neither were any of our legion. We were going to assess the situation at the wall and provide backup if needed.

“Tell me you can breathe fire,” I said to Raheema, my voice pitched low.

Her exasperated sound told me I was a fool and of course she had fire. She could roast a wyvern as easily as a turkey leg and—

“Oh alright,” I interrupted. “I get the point.”

I was snappish and rough, but I was too worked up to apologise right now. I pressed my right leg against her side to guide her in an arc over the city, my chest winching tight when the Diamond left my sight. I swore to myself it wouldn’t be the last time I saw it.

“We have a house guard?” I asked Sabira as we flew over golden houses and verdant gardens and olive trees I prayed didn’t get razed to the ground. My wyvern was uncommonly serious as we flew, sensing the graveness through me. But she’d been there in Wyfell; she must have seen the destruction. Had she lived there and lost her rider before finding me? My heart ached for all the victims at Wyfell, and ached worse for the people who lifted their heads to watch us fly. Not panicked yet, their expressions fond or smiling. How long until those smiles turned to looks of horror? How long until the chatter and laughter of neighbours and friends became screams?

“We have a guard,” the Sabira confirmed, noticing my attention ahead of us, watching the Red Star’s people as they herded wayward children determined to play in the water trickling in a grate across the city, collecting rose-pink water flowers. “Not as big as Morysen or even Daurith, but five strong riders who are trained to defend us. We used to have thirty, but more are conscripted every year.”

“Will it be enough?” I asked, my stomach tight as we flew closer to the wall, its shadow casting the tight rows of houses at the edge of the fortress-city in deeper gold. “Varidian’s legion and the guard? Is it enough if those wyverns attack?”

“Of course,” Sabira replied, her voice whip-sharp, annoyed that I’d even suggest otherwise. But I didn’t miss the way her eyes tightened as we flew, or how she stroked the scales of her wyvern as if for comfort. “Alight here, on that sturdy rooftop just there. We should be able to see over the wall, but our presence won’t be seen as a threat.”

I hadn’t even thought of that—that landing on the wall might be an act of aggression. My heart quickened, lightening until it was a panicked flutter.

Raheema followed my silent instruction and landed on the warm-stone roof, sending stones skittering to the ground with her taloned feet. Sabira’s umber brown landed heavily beside us, his chest expanding with rough breaths, nostrils flaring, exhaling the scent of hot iron and blood. Goosebumps flowed down my arms as I looked over the wall and saw a group of wyverns facing my husband and friends, a far larger number than I’d expected.

“Fuck,” I hissed, my hands turning to fists around the leather reins. “How many?”

“Twenty,” Sabira said in a hard snap of a tone. “But look.” She lifted her hand, pointing at a shadow in the sky between two silvery peaks in the distance. “They’ve got fucking backup.”

I exhaled hard, grabbing my fear in a stranglehold and shoving it down, thinking of everything that happened at the Last Guard, everything I witnessed in Wyfell, letting rage fill me instead. I let my imagination run wild, let it conjure images of what the Red Star would become.

Like fucking hell.

I suppressed my shiver and turned to look at Sabira, fierce-eyed and murderous beside me. “What would you do?”

“Wait here and let the Legion of Fyrevein handle it,” she replied instantly. “Not from cowardice,” she added quickly. “But showing ourselves could completely ruin any hope we have of coming to their aid when they most need us.”

“They could be seeking shelter here, not attacking,” I said.

The look Sabira shot me was withering.

“I said could. I don’t genuinely believe—”

A deep crack of sound came from beyond the wall—the sound of twenty sets of wings flying in perfect, eerie unison.

“The way they move…” Sabira breathed, her brown face leached of its vibrance. “That’s not natural.”

And if they flew unnaturally, they would fight unnaturally, too.

“We hold here,” she said in a hard voice. “And only fly in when they need help.”

I noticed she said when, not if. “We hold here,” I agreed, sucking in a breath when the legions collided in a mess of wings, talons, and teeth. No fire, but I scanned the throats and bellies of wyverns, waiting for the telltale glow.

“I can’t stand this,” I hissed, not tearing my stare away from that clash of riders when Raheema nudged my leg with her sky-blue nose, sending a rush of comfort and confidence towards me. They’re a dangerous legion, and Makrukh is one of the most powerful wyverns in Ithanys; they’ll rip our enemies to shreds and gorge on their innards.

I could have done without the imagery. When I blinked, I saw scales spewing blood and gore. When my eyes refocused on the legions, I gasped when I saw a dark green wyvern diving towards Shula’s brawny grey. I startled forward, as if I could stop the wyvern’s sharp teeth sinking into Saif’s leg, but the straps holding me to Raheema held firm. Saif killed my cousin, my only friend, and I hated him for it, but… Shula was my friend. She was kind and secretly sweet and I didn’t want to watch her die.

“Do we ride now?”

“No,” Sabira growled. “They can still win.”

“How?” Varidian’s legion were surrounded, fighting on all sides, and it was only a matter of time before—

Mak’s throat erupted with an orange glow so bright I had to squint. His scream of fire caught four wyverns, instantly incinerating their riders’ hands and faces. Harrowing screams reached us even at the edge of the Red Star, but the way they cut off abruptly as those riders died made my blood chill.

Even with riders dead, collapsed over their mounts’ backs, the wyverns still attacked, their eyes as black at night, their own throats blooming with fire. Blood trickled from charred skin, over scales, and dripped into the sky. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sit still and watch, not again. When I blinked, I saw the boy and his mother murdered by these bastards, the image never really leaving my mind. I wouldn’t watch anyone else die.

“You have no training, and no real experience on a wyvern,” Sabira growled, her eyes hard when I met them. “Right now, you’ll be a fatal distraction.”

“Then why the hell did you come with me?”

“Because I’ve known your husband since before he could walk, and he loves you. I won’t let you race off to get yourself killed.”

“You have so much faith in me,” I drawled, the urge to act burning under my skin, surging through my blood. I needed to move, to fight alongside Varidian, alongside his legion and—

Sabira was right. I didn’t even know how to fight. But I had Raheema, I was a rider, and I had a wyvern. That had to count for something.

I’ll melt the bones inside their skin bags, Raheema promised in a low rumble. Delightful. But her determination had me sitting straighter.

“Ameirah,” Sabira warned as my wyvern crept closer to the roof’s edge, talons scratching stone, her muscles bunched and ready to leap.

I kept my eyes on Mak’s ivory form, glimpsing him in the chaos as wyverns dove and slashed and struck out at each other, foregoing fire when they were in close quarters even if throats glowed with the threat of flames. They couldn’t risk setting themselves alight, I realised, and committed that to memory lest I light myself up.

Shit, I really did need to learn how to fight. Varidian was going to be so furious when he saw me diving into a battle I didn’t know how to wage.

A space opened between a deep sapphire wyvern and Aliah’s burgundy, giving me a split second glimpse of Varidian, sitting tall on Mak’s back, his face wiped of emotion, his hands raised. My heart skipped. He was alive and okay, but… what was he doing?

One wyvern bucked like a horse trying to unseat its rider, and I lunged as far forward as the straps would let me, craning my neck to see. I swore blood rolled down the wyvern’s head between its horns but I couldn’t see the source of it, couldn’t see who had harmed it and—

The rider. Its own rider had driven a sword into the wyvern’s head. I caught my breath, recoiling hard as the wyvern began to fall, slowly at first and then all at once.

The rider killed their own mount. Goosebumps covered my arms.

Unnatural, Raheema said in a low sound. I stroked her scales absently, processing what I’d seen, what had happened. Varidian controlled the rider, made the man kill his wyvern.

“Hold,” Sabira ordered, but when her wyvern shifted beneath her I wasn’t sure if she was talking to us or him. My stomach tangled just at the thought of harming Raheema and I’d only met her a week ago. My breath strangled when it happened again, a woman in a black headscarf driving a dagger into the weakness between the plates of scales, her wyvern bucking with a scream that made me jump.

This was good. Enemies were falling. Less of them held their place in the air to attack Varidian, the legion, and our city but… I couldn’t shake the cold in me, the horror. And he deserved better than that, when I’d told him everything I was capable of, when I told him about killing Raheema, and he didn’t even blink.

I sucked in a slow breath and tightened my grip on the reins. Sabira was right. Varidian could handle himself, and his legion was a furore of roars and violence as our enemies struggled to recover. Nabil threw dagger after dagger, too far away to see if he landed them. Zaarib stayed close to Mak and Varidian, Dahab sinking wicked teeth into throats and flanks and legs of any creature that got too close. I could no longer see Aliah and Shula in the chaos, but if the others were anything to judge by, they were fine. They were all fine.

And I was foolish for thinking they needed me of all people to rescue them, that a legion this capable needed—

Sabira sucked in a sharp breath, and that sound from a woman so unshakeable made everything inside me go still.

“What?” I demanded.

“Makrukh,” Sabira said, that single word enough to send pure panic through me. I squeezed my thighs around Raheema and she shot off the roof, leaping into the sky. I didn’t know how long it would take for Rawiya to gather the guard and other riders, but we might not have that time.

Mak was already injured, the scrapes on his belly closed but far from fully healed. It was a vulnerability any enemy wyvern would exploit.

“Ameirah!” Sabira yelled, following me on her wyvern, the look in his eyes as fierce and defiant as in Raheema’s. “You don’t even know how to fight.”

“That’s not going to stop me.”