Page 4 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame (Heir of Wyvara #1)

CHAPTER THREE

AMEIRAH

I gorged on food as delicately as I could when I was starving—having careless attendants meant no one had brought me breakfast this morning and I was too nervous and caught up in my own thoughts to remember—and tried to ignore the attention of the huge man at my side. He was so tall that even sitting he towered over me, his shoulders twice as wide as mine. Fuck, he was enormous, and looming, with a presence so powerful I felt it cast far from the table where we sat, in view of everyone.

I snuck glances at him every now and then, catching him watching the way I sucked honey from my fingers one notable time. If nothing else, I could guess our marriage would be heated.

Please don’t let him have a dull personality. Or worse—be obsessed with war to the point I felt like a mistress and battle his true wife. I cast a look across the many tables to where my cousin Khalid regaled unwilling victims with stories of his legion. Warfare was his entire personality.

I should speak to Varidian, start up a conversation.

I reached for my wine and tipped it slowly down my throat, composing my thoughts, casting around for something memorable and poignant for the first words I spoke to my husband.

May our marriage be prosperous and happy. Too dull.

Thank you for turning up and not abandoning me like I secretly feared. Too needy.

Do you mind awfully if I climb you like a tree just to see if I truly would fit on one of those massive shoulders? Absolutely fucking not.

I mean, I wanted to. His scent had long since wrapped around me, an intoxicating blend of amber, oud, and a spice I couldn’t quite place. He smelled so good it was unfair. A man couldn’t look that good, smell so maddeningly delicious, and be married to me. That was just… well, I didn’t know, but a dozen different sensations assaulted me at once and it was overwhelming.

I’d just decided to tell him he looked exceptionally handsome—true, not boring, and not quite as desperate as my other remark—when a ripple of excitement and noise went through the guests. The king stood, and when usually a hush would fall at his presence, the hum only grew.

“Oh joy,” I muttered under my breath. “Just what I always dreamed of: two hundred people cheering for my impending deflowering.”

A low rumble of thunder sounded, and I startled, my heart knocking into my ribs. But no, that was just my husband laughing. A startled glance at him showed his eyes had crinkled, his smile hooked deeper on the right side than the left.

“You didn’t hear what I said,” I breathed in horror.

His eyes met mine, creased in a smile, his irises a honeyed shade of amber. “Of course not, dearling.”

I groaned, a flush of heat moving through my face to my chest, tingling my ears. He undoubtedly heard. But he’d laughed, and he was smiling—that was a good sign, right?

Because I was looking at him, I saw the scrunch of his nose and the disgust enter his eyes when more calls went through the crowd, their excitement building. At least this was the portion of the night where I left this villa behind forever. I wouldn’t be any less an oddity in my next home, but at least I wouldn’t have to see the dislike in my father’s eyes or the anger on my brothers’ faces.

I wondered if Varidian knew he’d married a killer. Wondered if he knew I could kill him with a single brush of my fingertips.

“They don’t need to sound so… chipper,” he said quietly, the remark for my ears. “Don’t listen to their demands; there are two people in this marriage, not two hundred.”

“Tell that to them,” I drawled.

His words warmed my chest and my face for opposing reasons. Did he think I’d be a coward when it came to our wedding night? Did he think I wasn’t prepared for a true consummation? I needed this marriage to work as much as he did. Even if he collected the heads of tigers he killed or was accustomed to wearing pink, fluffy slippers, I was determined to keep him as a shield against my past, my family, and worse.

Since Shahzia’s death I knew it was only a matter of time before I was executed for possessing such dangerous magic. Sooner or later, shunning me wouldn’t be enough, and the sneers in the hallways and pointed remarks would turn to accusations. I’d hang for this dark magic in my fingertips. But it was far harder to accuse a king’s daughter-in-law than a gentry’s girl.

“Come on,” Varidian said. He rose to his feet in a powerful flow of motion and held out a hand to me. “We’ll satisfy the vultures’ needs, then talk at home when we won’t be overheard.”

“At home,” I echoed, my stomach in knots. I’d given plenty of thought to leaving my childhood villa behind, but absolutely no thought to going to his home beyond a passing thought that he lived in Red Manniston in the south. I’d be in a whole new city, in a new home, with my husband.

“I promise it’s not a rat-infested hovel,” he said, those warm eyes still crinkled.

I accepted his proffered hand and rose. The eyes of all our wedding guests pierced me like needles. Not entirely unpleasant, but not particularly welcome, either. Wine had flowed freely, food had been devoured from hand-painted plates, every last trace of desserts scraped from gilt-edged bowls with spoons fashioned with chunks of precious stone in each handle, and as the night wore on all those favourable glances had sharpened. Like I knew it would, the earlier admiration of me as a bride had turned to criticism of me as a woman. Strangely, the same had happened to my husband—a dashing groom no longer, now he was the source of speculation and suspicion.

Who was his mother, to give him such evil magic? I didn’t care—I didn’t know my own mother, so why would I care about his—but the guests were dying to know.

I cast a sideways glance at my handsome new husband and wondered if it bothered him. He must have heard the remarks. Now, those same people threw up their hands and cheered good-naturedly, ushering us back through the throng of seats and tables towards where a wagon undoubtedly waited at the front of the villa to carry us across desert and through woodland, to where Red Manniston sat surrounded by mountains on all sides.

I began to chew my lip, but the loud tsk of disapproval from my aunt made me release it before I could wear a hole into my bottom lip. It probably wasn’t very bridal to have a bloody lip on your wedding day.

“Five minutes of hell, and then we can escape,” Varidian said under his breath, so quiet I wasn’t sure if he was encouraging me or himself. The scent of him thickened when he stepped closer, oud and spice heady as it surrounded me. He hadn’t released my hand, his fingers a warm, reassuring weight wrapped around mine. I tried not to notice that his hand was dry where mine was clammy. The stares fixed on us as we walked through the natural aisle of the garden didn’t help, and neither did the tropical heat that hit this side of the house around sunset every day.

“Make than ten minutes,” I muttered when King Bakshi Saber stepped into our path, his rich brown face a little flush, his eyes glossy with merriment.

I flattened a smile between my lips. I’d never seen the king drunk before. Had never seen him this close, actually. I glimpsed him once during a parade in nearby Tourlestyn when I was a child, and even then, all I remembered was a beaming smile, a cloud of black hair, and clothes so detailed and in so many clashing colours, they bordered hideous.

My almost-smile died a swift death when my father joined the king in front of us, the welcoming smile on his face more brittle. Strangely, where my father faked his pride and affection, King Bakshi’s seemed real.

“Let me get another look at my new daughter,” King Bakshi said, his cheeks rounded as he grinned and reached out to me. I sensed no menace in him, so I didn’t cringe from his touch. He was the king; I’d have endured him no matter what, since I didn’t have a death wish and I was using my new relation to him as a shield, but it was nice to not have my stomach sink when someone drew me closer.

His hands fell on my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length as he perused my face.

I waited for some burning remark about my power or my absent mother or my family line, but King Bakshi just said, “Welcome to the family. If you’re anything as magnificent as your father tells us, we’re very lucky to have you.”

I didn’t hide my shock quickly enough.

“No need to be modest, daughter,” King Bakshi said, squeezing my shoulders before he released me, stepping out of my personal space which was nice. He was nice. The king was nice. This was all very weird. Our ruler was kind and welcoming and my husband had a face shaped by god and shoulders as big as boulders. I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it. I wanted to burst out laughing just to alleviate some of the manic energy inside me, but I’d only look mad.

“I’m lucky to join such an exalted family.” The words weren’t completely empty; while I’d never grown up with dreams of marrying a prince and living a fairy tale life, I grew up reading fables of heroes, villains, and daring rescues. The Saber family were directly descended from the first warrior queen of Ithanys. “I’ve read a dozen different stories about Aleena Saber. She’s my favourite hero.”

Bakshi’s smile grew so wide it must have hurt. He clapped my father on the shoulder, his voice boisterously loud when he said, “You raised your girl well, Falael.”

“I’m certainly happy with how she turned out,” he replied, like a true politician. He was happy with the elevation of rank and his beloved chest of gold. I barely repressed an eye roll; if the king weren’t here, I would have let him see it.

“I look forward to getting to know you better,” King Bakshi said to me, the setting sun hitting the metallic embroidery on his kaftan in a way that made his whole chest blaze like purple and gold fire. “You’ll join us for the sun banquet next month, surely.”

“I—” I cast a look at Varidian, not for permission but for clarification. I’d never been to a banquet at the royal castle in Morysen before. Had never been inside the castle before.

Varidian snorted—not at me, at his father. “Yeah, we’ll see. Nice of you to show your face, Father.” He sketched a bow that bordered insolent. “I’d better get my new wife home before the guests riot at the delay to her most important deflowering.”

I elbowed the bastard. It was probably bad practice to elbow one’s new spouse, but his sharp-honed amusement turned to something true when he looked down at me. He had to look down because the man was an absolute giant. I wasn’t particularly small for a woman, but Varidian must have been six-foot-three. I probably shouldn’t elbow a six-foot-three man I was now tied to for the rest of my life, but he deserved the elbow. And it made him grin, for a reason I couldn’t fathom.

“Come, dearling.” Varidian said, reminding me that his hand still wrapped around mine when it tightened. “Say your goodbyes and I’ll whisk you away to Red Manniston.”

Say my goodbyes? I glanced around the garden, the ache in my heart more for the places I’d retreated to read than the people within it. My brothers watched with veiled dislike and envy, not a single ounce of brotherly love in their bodies. Xiu, I was glad to leave behind. I didn’t care that her features were similar to mine; I didn’t look at her and see home, I saw a wicked woman who delighted in wounding me with her words.

The only person I would miss was already gone. Even Naila’s parents and brother didn’t cause a pang in my chest despite being my aunt, uncle, and cousin. They took their cues from Father and shunned me, too. That, or they despised me for the power in my fingertips. Or they feared me. It could have been any, or all, of the above. There was no love between us. No love between me and anyone, truthfully. I’d miss the kitchens that offered a warm haven in the dead of winter. I’d miss the window seat in my room where I could watch Strava from a safe distance. I’d miss the library where new adventures could be found every month. But the people?

“Goodbye, Father,” I said, barely able to hide my relief and happiness to leave him far behind. I turned to my husband and said, “Done. Shall we leave?”

The look he gave me was both baffled and intrigued. I liked the latter more than I dared admit. It was his glossy hair; it had addled my mind.

“It was an honour to meet you,” I told the king, ignoring Varidian’s snort—louder than even the last one. “I hope we’ll meet again soon, and I look forward to getting to know you, too.”

There, that was something a literary heroine would say—competent, friendly, and mature. Wonders were truly possible when I didn’t speak my first, second, or third thought. My first had been holy fuck, I’m talking to the king. Very inappropriate.

Did he know what my power was? He had to—most people in Strava knew I’d killed my sister and an innocent clergy. Surely word had reached the king. And yet he’d allowed me to marry his son.

“You’re a credit to our family,” King Bakshir said with a wide smile, stepping out of our path when I lifted a gloved hand to push a lock of hair from my face. “Varidian,” he said with a nod, his greeting frostier than mine.

“Give my love to Kamaal and Mihrunnisa,” Varidian replied, his glacial voice warming by a few degrees. “Tell them I’ll see them soon.”

“At the sun banquet,” King Bakshir replied in the same tone. My eyes bounced between the two men, one tall and muscular, the other shorter and dressed like a peacock, both scowling.

“If god wills it,” Varidian threw dismissively over his shoulder, already tugging me away from the king and my father, the stares of our guests sliding off him like water on wyvern scales.

“Well,” I murmured, my ears hot at all the stares. “You two certainly don’t get along.”

Varidian snorted loudly. “However did you guess?”

I cast him a dry, amused glance, and realised all at once how easy it was to smile around Varidian. “What happened?”

“A lot,” he replied cryptically, gesturing me onto the straight, paved path that led down the side of the villa to the wide plain of grass at the front—a luxury in the desert. As if father expected people to believe it had sprung up naturally, an oasis gifted by god, instead of him importing it from halfway across Ithanys.

“Your things have already been sent ahead of us,” Varidian told me, glancing down at me with that same baffled, intrigued look as earlier. “Do you want one last tour around your home? Maybe you could show me where you spent your childhood.”

“Maybe I could not,” I quipped before I could think. I winced, braced for a rebuke about the rudeness of girls and the peaceable maturity of grown women, but Varidian regarded me with something close to understanding. I didn’t like it. The urge to break the sudden sadness was so loud I opened my mouth to remark on the tightness of his kaftan—not a wise subject, but I was desperate. But the path took an abrupt right angle, leading us to the front of the house… where a white wyvern waited, hulking on the grass curled up with its head resting on a huge, scaly leg.

“Um.”

I stared at the wyvern, at every ivory scale on its body, every opalescent spike that ran between huge horns and all the way down its spine. It was huge , at least twice the size of Hajar, father’s grumpy wyvern. My stomach twisted into a coiled knot. I’d never been quite so close to a wyvern, despite almost every gentry in Ithanys being bonded to one. I’d never been allowed close to one.

Father’s voice rang through my head, hitting my chest with the precision and severity of a whip. You’re a hazard, Ameirah. A shadow in our kingdom of light. With that magic, you could kill every last person in Ithanys. What wyvern would even have you?

“Where are your riding leathers?” Varidian asked, approaching the wyvern and coming to an abrupt, jerking stop when I planted my feet, staring at the white wyvern with spiky panic. “My head of house Saabira couldn’t find them among your things.”

Misinterpreting my mounting stress, Varidian was quick to add, “I never told her to scour your possessions, but the woman has a stubborn will all her own. She doesn’t care for things like personal space and boundaries, but she’s good at heart. Do you know where your leathers are?”

All I could do was shake my head. Where were my riding leathers? I didn’t have any. I didn’t have a wyvern, so what would be the point?

“Don’t worry,” he said, closing the small bit of distance between us, his hand warm in mine. “It’s a temperate day, so the cold shouldn’t cut through you quite as badly. I have a spare coat you can borrow.”

“Thank you,” I managed to croak, eyeing the giant creature who slumbered on the lawn. The scent of iron and flame filled the air as the wyvern woke with a long stretch and a slow exhale, and I froze. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I forgot how to breathe. When the wyvern climbed to his feet, stretching his leathery white wings like a cat waking from a nap in the sunlight, I realised I’d been off in my estimation. He was easily three times Hajar’s height. Maybe four. He must have been twenty-five feet tall. He could probably see into my third-storey bedroom with that long, spiked neck of his. I stumbled back a step and the creature marked the movement with narrowing red eyes.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

When Varidian laughed suddenly, I realised I’d said that aloud. He cut off the sound when he realised I was truly afraid.

How ridiculous. A gentry, afraid of a wyvern. Gentry were born on wyvern back, raised atop their fierce scales, and died between the spikes of a wyvern’s spine.

“He’s a teddy bear,” Varidian said, startling me with a soft stroke of his thumb over my knuckles. “I know Makrukh has a reputation, but he’s only so deadly against our enemies. Not my wife. Right, Mak?”

Makrukh tilted his head, surveying me. I thought I would be sick as his red eyes narrowed, but I managed to swallow the bile back into my stomach. He flicked a look in Varidian’s direction that made my husband scowl.

“Best behaviour,” he warned his wyvern, squeezing my hand before he let go. I was tempted to throw myself after him and grab his hand back. “I’ll find that spare coat and let you two get acquainted.”

I flashed my husband a wide-eyed stare, too afraid to wonder why I needed a jacket, and what he meant about the temperature. I didn’t put those things together for a long minute; I darted skittish glances at the wyvern watching me with a head twenty times the size of mine.

“I’m Ameirah,” I breathed, because a name was as good a place to start as any. I’d never been taught the correct procedures for meeting a wyvern; what I knew was cobbled together from a hundred different books. When he huffed, nostrils flaring, my mouth ran faster than my mind and I blurted, “I don’t have to ask your name, of course. Makrukh, the Knife of the Moon, the wyvern who saved Reaper’s Gate from collapse. You’re a legend. I love legends,” I finished lamely, all my bravery and panic exhausted in a single burst of speech.

Makrukh turned his huge head to give Varidian a long look as my husband returned with a hip-length leather coat buttoned over his resplendent wedding clothes. Another was draped over his arm, the cuffs and collar embellished with flames and serpents in a contrasting deep maroon. Black and maroon. My family colours, now. My stomach swooped.

“Shush,” Varidian huffed at his wyvern like the hulking beast really was a housecat. “Here, Ameirah.”

Oh, dear. A delicious ripple of warmth went through me at the sound of my name in his rich, rumbly voice. Parts of me clenched that really ought to have minded their own business.

“Thank you,” I said absently, pulling the leather coat over my takchita and marvelling at the softness of the leather. The Jaouhari family were hardly paupers, but there was a marked difference between the leather goods I owned and this piece. I resisted the urge to brush my cheek to its buttery softness—and froze when Varidian stepped into my space, pulling both sides of the coat closed and fastening the buttons.

“I’m capable of buttoning a coat, you know,” I said, both irritated and warmed all the way through by the gesture.

Makrukh huffed a laugh, perfuming the garden with iron and fire.

“Humour your husband,” Varidian said warmly. He brushed my jaw with a knuckle when he finished buttoning my coat, rendering me both mute and dumb by the touch.

Maybe this marriage would be more than a shield for me. I certainly wouldn’t hate more touches and caring gestures like this. My mind filled with a cacophony of images and fantasies, so many that I didn’t understand Varidian’s meaning for a moment.

“Do you need help mounting him in that dress?”

Did I need…

Help mounting him.

Mounting Makrukh, a living legend, a wyvern as tall as most houses.

My eyes were as wide as saucers. “You mean for me to—to ride your wyvern?”

“I know it’s bad etiquette and your wyvern will be affronted by you riding another mount, but since they flew ahead of you to the Red Star, I thought you’d fly with me.”

“They flew ahead of me?”

Varidian nodded absently, distracted by the rise of music from the gardens where we’d first met. Bawdy voices followed. “Since your wyvern isn't here, I guessed you’d sent them ahead of you. It was smart,” he added, fixing his attention back on me. “Is that a regular occurrence? Is my dear wife smart?”

His dear wife was on the verge of screaming and running away. But one look at the villa behind me and my resolve strengthened. There was a reason the Jaouhari sigil was a golden scorpion, and I had no desire to be stung ever again. Whatever happened, I would never come back here. I’d have a new home, and make a place for myself there, where no one would know the worst parts of me. Maybe no one would know I accidentally killed my little sister. Maybe no one would know I was a killer.

I didn’t answer Varidian’s question. I eyed Makrukh who watched us with an unsettling level of intelligence and said, “I believe I will need help mounting.”