Page 35 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AMEIRAH
I urged Raheema faster, and we soared over the wall, through the bubble of protective magic, and across the sky towards where twenty five wyverns were locked in battle—and where a greater flight was now close enough to see their individual colours.
They’d be upon the legion in minutes. I didn’t know what to do, but I did know perching on a rooftop to watch while my husband was slaughtered wasn't an option.
“Go for the smallest one,” I told Raheema, glancing to my left as Sabira’s fierce brown wyvern matched us wingbeat for wingbeat. His eyes were fixed on the wyverns ahead of us, nothing but murder in their depths. Having him and Sabira at our side made me a tiny bit more confident. Seven wyverns to twenty were better than five.
Wind tugged at my hair as Raheema flew faster, pulling out strands of violet. I barely felt the sting, my whole focus on the glimpse of Varidian I was given as a deep crimson wyvern convulsed in the air, fighting his control. His magic chilled me, but as I flew close enough that the wyvern’s screams pricked my eardrums and made my ribs shake, there was pride there, too. My husband was lethal. His magic was like mine—dark and unsettling. Even as my soul recoiled when another rider drove a knife into their own wyvern’s throat, a sense of kinship and rightness filled my chest. Varidian was like me, and even better—he was mine.
There, Raheema’s soft sound interrupted my thoughts. I followed her attention to a small silver wyvern ducking and weaving around the edges of the group, zipping beneath them to rake sharp talons over the exposed bellies of my legion.
Oh, that was new. My legion. But they were. My husband was the commander of the Legion of Fyrevein, which made them mine to protect, mine to fight alongside. I shoved aside the insecurity that said I didn’t know how to fight. I hadn’t known how to fly either, yet I’d still mounted Mak on our celebration day and flown halfway across Ithanys. I could do this, too.
We were close enough now that the sound of claws meeting scales reached into my chest and made my heart skip. Close enough that the riders had spotted us. Shula did too, her wyvern snapping his head around to snarl at us and stopping short when he recognised Sabira’s mount. I met his eyes when he swung a glare to me but quickly looked away. Did he know I was the cousin of the woman he killed? Did he care?
My hands sweated inside my gloves, but I held onto the reins tighter and kept that small silver wyvern in my sights. I only permitted myself to recoil for a split second when five enemy riders stood at once on their wyverns and—and jumped off.
Fuck. He could do that? Just make riders leap off the backs of their wyverns? A chill coated my skin, but I pressed through it, taking advantage of the shock that fell over the wyverns to urge Raheema forward. She shot like an arrow around the edge of the clash, her jaws parted on rapid breaths as we both stalked the silver. Sabira remained close, staying silent but no doubt possessing a dozen opinions about my stupidity. I didn’t bother defending myself. I couldn’t take on five riders at once like Varidian, but I could do this. I could take out a single wyvern, help pick off their numbers like everyone else did.
“Madwoman!” Shula yelled across the backs of a rugged green wyvern and a luminous black. It sounded like a compliment, like a welcome greeting. She met my eyes for a second, grinning fiercely, then looked away to ram Saif into the side of the black wyvern. She didn’t knock it from the sky but did gain its full attention.
I ripped my eyes away, aware of how quickly Raheema and I could be torn from the sky, how quickly we could be killed. Heat kissed the back of my neck as someone unleashed a plume of fire, and even though we weren’t in its path my heartbeat quickened.
The silver wyvern was distracted, too. Raheema saw its eyes elsewhere and shot like a blur through the grey sky, her wings pushing us across the distance with a power and speed I didn’t know she was capable of.
I drew a knife, holding it in my gloved hand and ignoring the way it shook. Adrenaline hit me until my breaths shook and I wanted to flee, but I was here and I wasn’t about to back out. Even if the silver was much, much bigger up close, and covered in dense scales, its wings tipped with spikes at every joint. How much damage would those do to Raheema if they hit her?
She growled, dismissing my worry, and slashed out with her right wing, using the sharp edge to rake a deep line down the silver’s neck. The sudden violence stole my breath. The scent of blood, the tilt of Raheema’s body in the air as she angled for a deeper gouge, the sight of teeth as big as my arm snapping at us, the deafening rage that erupted from the silver in a piercing screech… it combined into an overwhelming panic that made me shake.
What the fuck was I doing?
A flicker of bright, violent orange formed between the pattern of scales on the wyvern’s throat, and everything went still inside me. I rammed my right leg into Raheema’s side, ordering her away, and she obeyed but growling her displeasure the whole time.
I can take her. I can destroy her.
I jolted in my seat when I felt heat rise on all sides of us, hairs standing up on my arms and the back of my neck at the kiss of hot, shuddering air.
“Raheema!” I yelled. “Move!”
She didn’t, holding us little more than three paces away from the silver, the heat oppressive now, choking off the air in my lungs.
“Don’t you dare. Fly, now—”
I beheld death in the silver’s eyes, saw obliteration in the inferno now blazing a bright, unmistakable orange against silver scales, saw my end in its parting mouth.
Raheema roared, her screech making my ears stab with sudden pain, my heart arresting, every last hair on my body standing on end at the rage, the heat, the—the fire in that scream. It poured from her in a breath of molten power and hit the silver head-on, burning his eyes to blackened pits before he could even gasp. His next scream was so much worse, and I flinched back, pulling Raheema away as the wyvern thrashed, howling rage at the loss of his sight. His rider tried to calm him but failed.
Told you I could take him, Raheema said, more than a little smug. I couldn’t breathe, could still feel the graze of heat on my skin, the arms of death opening to clasp me.
A blur of ivory shot past us, absolutely brimming with rage, and I caught my breath as Mak sank sharp teeth into the silver’s throat and shook him like a dog with a toy until the rider crashed to the ground far, far below and the wyvern went limp. Varidian didn’t watch the carnage. He fixed his eyes on me, pure, lethal rage in the bright topaz of them.
“You needed me,” I said across the scant distance, shouting to be heard over screeches and roars and the violence of scaled bodies colliding.
His nostrils flared, his expression frozen. “Go home.”
I locked my body against a flinch, reminding myself his anger came from raw grief. “No.”
Varidian speared a glare over my shoulder at Sabira, his mouth opening on a command—one she’d follow because as his prince she couldn’t defy him.
Without looking, he snapped his hand up and flicked tense fingers over his shoulder, and—and the wyvern who’d been sneaking up on his back lurched mid-motion and twisted to race to one of the nearby peaks. I forgot how to breathe when the wyvern rammed into solid stone, the crunch of bone, the snap of its neck brutal.
“You need me,” I repeated, fighting to be here even when he very clearly did not need me. What use was I when he could control riders and wyverns alike? A tremor started to crawl up my arms.
Mak shook his head one last time and let the wyvern join its dead rider on the rocky path below. When he looked at me, his crimson eyes were heavy with worry and sadness, not alive with murder like I expected. My heart pulled tight but I sat straighter on Raheema’s back. Even if Varidian sent me away, I wouldn’t flinch. I wouldn’t show him how much the reminder that I was useless hurt. I should have known better; even atop a wyvern I was the same woman with the same useless magic. If I’d had strength or speed or even accuracy with a knife, I could have helped.
Raheema growled that we did help, that we took out one wyvern, but even that wasn’t true. We needed Mak to finish him off.
“Go, Ameirah,” Varidian said, his voice thunder and rage. “Please.”
My stomach tangled. I flinched at a rush of flame and movement in the corner of my eye, Raheema spinning us out of its path. A many-spiked crimson wyvern careened past us, fighting and twisting and screeching as Shula’s grey locked on its tail, gnashing teeth past scales.
This battle was gritty and brutal like at the Last Guard, but closer. Death breathed down my neck and I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I refused to wilt in my seat, but panic and doubt began to unravel me.
“You need me,” I fought, looking at Mak, at Varidian. Beyond him, Nabil shot through the sky, a plume of wicked fire right on his tail, close enough that Buchra screamed. Varidian could have been there, at his back, knocking the other wyvern out of the sky, but instead he was here, babysitting me.
My stomach clenched.
“Fine,” I breathed, defeated.
Varidian couldn’t have heard me but he saw the shape of my mouth form the word and exhaled a rough breath. I waited for his expression to soften, waited to see the man who held me at night and covered my face in kisses as he laid obsessive declaration after unhinged promise against my skin. But no part of him thawed even a millimetre.
“To the wall,” he ordered in the tone of a commander, and I hated my failure and his dismissal almost as much as I hated the relief that hit me. It was sickening, that relief—I was glad to be leaving this chaos of bludgeoning spikes and screaming, scalding fire.
My eyes burned, but I guided Raheema back to the wall, my throat tight, eyes burning. I forced back my tears, not wanting my vision to blur. I kept my head swivelling to search for any riders sneaking up on us, my disappointment, my failure, crushing my chest.
Another wyvern seized with a cry and dropped from the sky, my husband whittling the enemy legion’s numbers to single figures. How many were left now? Eight? Six? I searched behind them, scanning the mountains for the other wyverns who crept up on us, but found nothing. He’d killed them, too. Varidian was capable and dangerous and all the things I loved and—and he didn’t need me.
I’ll be more helpful in the next battle, I tried to convince myself. I would perfect my mounting, learn to guide Raheema in battle, practise all those manoeuvres the legion could do. I’d be useful. I’d never have to run from another fight. But now, this time…
I hated it, but Raheema and I retreated. She hated it too, bristling beneath me, sky-blue wings cutting angrily through the air, her tail lashing like a furious cat’s. I stroked her scales with a gloved hand, my heart a painful knot in my chest.
“A-lalla,” Sabira hissed, her wyvern lurching suddenly closer. It was the title more than her proximity that sent a rush of diamond-bright alertness into me. I straightened in my seat.
When she had my attention, Sabira pointed to the edge of the wall, where solid tan stone met the rugged knives of mountains, far enough from the watchtowers that the dark shadow of the wyvern perched on the tower failed to see what we did: a broad, spiked ruby clawing its way up the face of the wall, talon by talon, until it reached the top.
Sneaking into my city, my home, to threaten my people.
“We stop them,” I decreed, meeting Sabira’s eyes. My voice came out in the cool, hard tone Varidian had used when commanding her. “We do not let them enter the city.”
We hesitated a moment too long. The ruby wyvern clawed its way to the top of the wall, and in a vicious slash, raked a wicked-sharp talon across the fragile underbelly of the guard wyvern.
Guts spilled, pouring down the wall, a stain on gold stone. The wyvern’s scream echoed all the way to the skies, sending me forward in my seat.
Both mount and rider crashed from the wall and the ruby didn’t even pause to watch dispassionately, instead jumping down the other side of the wall. Into the Red Star.
Into my kasbah.