Page 37 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

VARIDIAN

B lood sprayed from the fragile underbelly of a wyvern, fire burned scales and skin, and the horrific smell of death choked me. All this violence in the name of hunting my wife.

I shook with it, vibrating in my skin, my bones, my blood. Rage spread like disease, impossible to control.

Calm.

It was an order but I ignored it, twisting my hands through the air over and over, focusing on riders while I trusted Mak to remove any wyverns from our path with his huge jaws or massive tail, sometimes slamming bodily into them to snap them away. Around me, my legion fought with the experience of years of campaigns and a viciousness borne from refusing to die, refusing to lose the fight, refusing to let the Red Star burn like Wyfell.

I regretted flying away from Wyfell, leaving it to its fate when it was my duty as their prince to fight to my last breath, but I wouldn’t make the same mistake here. None of these bastards would take my home, or my wife. I thought of the shell-shocked fear on her face after Wyfell, thought of the tremble in her voice when she spoke, the rage pouring from her when she screamed so loud her voice echoed off the mountains.

Blood pounded between my ears, faster and faster. I was losing control, falling apart, but I didn’t give a shit.

You’ll care later. You know you will.

I shook my head, slashing my right hand through the air, sinking control magic through the chest of a rider with hair longer than mine and an expression so seething with hate that I sank the hooks of control deeper. I gouged his soul, his mind, his heart, and crooked a rigid finger.

Drive your sword through your own stomach, lean all your weight on it so it breaks through your back.

His mind was weak, easy to manipulate. Some took several layers of suggestion but my magic cut though this man’s like a knife through butter. In seconds, he’d driven his sword all the way through his gut and falling off the back of his mount, but the wyvern kept attacking. They’d all done the same, even when their riders fell. They didn’t erupt into screaming rage like any wyvern losing its bonded rider, didn’t go feral and mad with it. Nor did they collapse in the agony of a severed bond. This was… strange mechanical, almost automatic.

I didn’t fucking like it.

Mak twisted out of the path of razor-sharp claws, the fight pushing us closer and closer to the wall where watchmen flew and wyverns shouted warnings. I prayed Ameirah was safe behind the wall. Sabira would keep her safe, at least.

Mak’s rough grumble as he slammed his back legs into the wyvern of the dead rider was clear. What the fuck are you waiting for?

I whipped magic around the wyvern, driving hooks into its mind, its soul, until I felt the core of what made it. Like so many others, I drove it into the unyielding mountain face and suppressed my wince at the crack of its neck.

I hated killing wyverns. They were our allies, our fucking family, and killing them felt like a perversion of everything that made me Ithanysian. It coated my tongue in a sickly taste, tightened my stomach in a cramp, but I could only think of the Red Star’s vulnerability and the fact these wyverns were here for my wife right now.

“That’s the last of them,” Zaarib shouted, making both Mak and I jump as he and Dahab came up alongside us. “We got all the bastards.”

I exhaled a rough breath, casting a look around us, searching the grey sky for the others. I found Shula, Aliah, Nabil, Zaarib, and no enemy wyverns. Thank fuck for that.

I dragged a hand over my head, shaky with relief, with the rage still pumping through my blood. I needed to set eyes on Ameirah. She was the only thing that would settle the storm of emotions ruling me. She calmed me every time, her presence a balm even when I was terrified to let her close.

If I let her close, if I drew her into his madness, she’d be hurt.

Mak rumbled under his breath, turning us to face Shula and Aliah when they joined us, Nabil racing towards us, blood streaking both wyvern and him. She could be hurt anyway. This legion came to hunt her.

I knew that. I knew. Why did he think I couldn’t breathe or think or function right? I hissed and tasted salt water and power on my tongue.

“There’ll be another wave of attacks,” Aliah said, her face pale and serious under her orange scarf. Her eyes were hard when they met mine. “We need to fortify the wall, and get as many people from the surrounding areas behind it. These riders will kill anyone in their path to the lightning soul.”

Zaarib scoffed. “They don’t give a fuck about the lightning soul; it’s all an excuse to them. I know zealotry when I see it, and I didn’t see it in a single one of these riders. Whatever their motive is, though, you’re right. We pissed them off by beating this legion to a pulp. They’ll be back.”

Nabil caught up to us, his emerald panting, teeth bared beneath him. “If they’re working their way west from the wall, they’ll hit Daurith next.”

“Fuck!” True panic hit, every bit as barbed and severe as my fear for my wife. Daurith was the home of wyverns, their sanctuary. Daurith was where wyvernlings hatched and grew, where wyverns learned to fly and hunt and fight and live. It was where gentry children were sent to bond with their wyverns when their magic bloomed. It was full of younglings, babies. Static noise roared in my head.

“We can’t let that—” Shula began, but whipped around so fast my stomach jolted, afraid she’d snap her own neck. “The shields,” she whispered, her face slack, almost grey.

I felt it then. A wave of magic erupted from the heart of my home. Magic I’d poured myself into to guard the city, to keep out any enemy legions. Sweat beaded on my upper lip, my breathing heavier, faster. It had been anchored to the mosque at the heart of the Red Star. The only way it could have fell was if—

“Mak,” I said gutturally.

He shot like a star, like a lightning bolt towards the wall.

One of the legion had got inside my city and taken out our shields, and the only reason they’d need to do that was so other legions could fly in.

“Spread out,” I yelled to my legion. “Scout the mountains, find their access point and send up a plume of fire when you’ve found it. If you see the signal, converge on the site.”

I knew in my gut there were other wyverns, just waiting for the wards to drop. Even now, they were converging on the city. They hadn’t stormed the wall, so they must have hidden among the mountains around the city. I veered eastward over the city, searching the rooftops for the domes and minaret of the mosque where I anchored the shield, where I now felt that anchor shattered apart.

“Fuck,” I breathed, the rage pausing inside me for a moment when I saw the tip of the spire had been knocked off.

Mak’s low rumble assured me they would pay for the destruction. I was still reeling at that blight on the familiar skyline I’d grown up seeing, when he soared over the merchant’s guild and didn’t even try to wheedle me into visiting his favourite vendor at the nearby souk.

There were no fires, no more crumbling buildings yet, but smoke sat acrid and metallic in my lungs, tinged with blood, and the stillness dropped inside me, letting bloodlust and rage back to the surface. The battle was inside me, boiling my blood, making my body shake. Mak was right. They would pay for invading my home.

I pushed Mak faster, wind tearing at the knot of hair on the back of my head, whipping my coat against my legs, pulling at the leather holding knives to my body. I still had every one left, hadn’t needed a single blade to deal with the wyverns outside the city, and that felt intentional.

Mak lurched faster beneath me, a fearsome roar pouring from him, the air heating around us, and everything inside me narrowed to his line of sight, searching for what he’d seen. When I saw the dark swarm in the sky above the mountains, above the Diamond of the South, my stomach plummeted. But I couldn’t let pain make me falter.

Even if—even if taking them down destroyed the Diamond, we had to do it. For the people of Red Manniston. And taking out this legion meant they couldn’t attack another city, couldn’t fly on Daurith. I had no doubt the dark clergy had more legions, for whatever purpose, but they wouldn’t have this one.

“Send the signal,” I ordered Mak, bracing for the plume of fire when he tipped his head back, firing flame and death into the grey sky. Fine hairs blew back from my face, the taste of fire on my tongue—coal and embers and blackened wood mixed with blood and iron. A scent that had always meant home, Mak, and my legion, but which now meant enemies and death.

How many legions did the so-called clergy have? Enough to sack a city as big and important as Daurith? Wyfell had fallen into chaos so fast, and they’d had a single legion to do that—but so many clergy in dark uniforms. Kaldics, more like, in the guise of clergy.

My heart quickened as Mak let fire streak the sky and flew on, faster than the sound of his roar travelled, his wings beating the air into submission. I sucked in air, trying to centre myself when my whole body shook with power and wrath and violence. They got into my city, attacked my mosque, threatened my wife. Not a single one of them would leave alive.

There, Mak growled, jerking his head, a ring of smoke leaving his jaws. We flew through it, and then I saw what he’d fixed his sights on. A skinny cobalt led the enemy legion towards us, their numbers three, four, five times the size of the one outside the wall—the true threat. That first legion was bait, easy prey to keep us occupied while these snuck in the back way.

Well, fuck that. They wouldn’t get any further. My legion would have seen the signal, would be on their way even now. I didn’t stop to wonder if flying alone to face a legion a hundred strong was a suicide mission. The rage had me in its grip, power crackling through my veins. When we were in range, I lifted my hands, slashed and twisted them through the air, sending a razor-edged hook into the mind of the rider atop that cobalt wyvern and—

There wasn’t one. The wyvern raced at us, wings cutting like a threat through the air, body taut and poised for attack, teeth bared—riderless. A rapid, frantic scan of the wyverns behind it showed they were the same.

I’d never seen this before, wyverns organised into a legion without riders, honed to a purpose without a bond, a mount. Mak was strangely silent under me, his unease reaching me through our tether.

What reason would a group of wyverns have for attacking the Red Star? Even the wyverns at Wyfell had riders… hadn’t they?

Shit, we were flying right at them, outnumbered a hundred to one, and they had no riders for me to compel. It was far harder to drive into the minds of wyvern, but I sucked in a breath, honed my focus, and twisted my hands through the air, spearing magic across the ever-closing distance between us and the cobalt wyvern.

I exhaled a rough breath of relief when my magic speared through the resistance of the wyvern’s mind, and for a second, I thought I could do this, weaken them long enough for Mak to fight, for the legion to get here. My heart faltered when I pierced the wyvern’s mind, laying the groundwork for my control, intending to unleash the cobalt’s fire on the rest of its group to scatter their numbers… but there was another web of control here. Not a spear like my magic, but threads of silver magic, tangled and overlapping into a net the creature had no hope of ever escaping.

Breathing faster, sweat rolling down my face, I tore my magic out of the cobalt and dove into a crimson, then an emerald, then a black, a silver, a gold, an ivory, a violet, finding the same thing every time.

I couldn’t take control of the wyverns. Someone was already controlling them.