Page 31 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

I stretched out my arms, locking my hands around Ameirah’s waist, the warmth of her sending a pulse of visceral relief through my body. When I heaved her down onto Makrukh’s back, nestled safely between a spike and me, I wrapped my shaking arms around her and held on tight enough to bruise.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” I demanded, breathless.

“He killed my cousin. Isawhim!” Her rage returned like the crashing waves of an ocean, and she shook in my arms. Mak rumbled a warning as he backed up and landed a safe distance away from everyone else. Aliah, Shula, Nabil and Fahad watched on with confusion and more than a little hostility. Shit. Ameirahhad made herself look like an enemy to us. “I watched him dump her shredded body in Strava Square.I saw you,”she screamed at Zaarib who watched with a sort of understanding.

“Your cousin?” he asked, his usual light-heartedness absent. He leaned forward on Dahab’s back, stroking the wyvern’s neck, calming him from the protective rage far more effectively than any of Mak’s warning growls. “That filth was yourcousin?”

Ameirah lunged towards him with sharp teeth bared, struggling against my grip, a sound eerily similar to Mak’s in her throat. “You say that again, and I’ll stab you in your eye. I won’t miss this time.”

A shiver of cold went down my back. She’d stabbed his shoulder, but where had she been aiming?

“Your cousin was a traitor and a liar. She infiltrated our legion and betrayed us to our enemy. We almost died, every one of us. Your husband included.”

A ringing started in my ears.

“Kaawa was your cousin?” We never knew her family name, didn’t know where she came from. She tricked us, won us over, and then lured us into a trap and left us for dead.

Ameirah shook her head, even that movement aggressive. “Her name is Naila. Andyoukilled her.”

“Me?” Zaarib’s eyes sharpened, his jaw fixed. “I’m just the one who disposed of her body. And I’d do it again. She fed information to Kalder. Shespiedon us for them.”

Ameirah had begun to struggle again, desperate to launch herself at Zaarib and slice his throat with another knife, but now she froze. “What? Naila wasn’t a spy. You—you mistook her for someone else.”

“I’ve only disposed of one body in Strava Square,” Zaarib said coldly, his face the one he showed our enemies. I glared at him in silent warning, protectiveness for my wife rising.

“Zaarib,” Aliah chided, shaking her head as she looked from him to Ameirah, fuming in my arms. “What he says is true,” she said calmly, sadly. “If Kaawa was your cousin, we saw a different side to her than you did. She pretended to be our friend, pretended to love us, and then she showed herself to be a snake. No offence, Varidian.”

“None taken,” I muttered, kissing the top of Ameirah’s head, trying to calm her down.

“She betrayed us,” Aliah said to Ameirah, her tone meaning my wife didn’t immediately attempt her murder. “I’m sorry, but that’s why she was executed.”

“Executed,” Ameirah echoed, stiffening against me. “Not just… killed. Executed?”

“Yes,” Aliah confirmed. It wasn’t the whole truth; we’d never got to carry out that execution order but no one else knew that.

Warning rang through me like a bell clanging, and I held my wife tighter. This wasn’t going to end well. Kaawa was Ameirah’s cousin. Daughter of the aunt and uncle I met at the wedding celebration. A sick feeling started in my stomach.

“We need to go,” Nabil cut in, not entirely sympathetic. He shifted astride his emerald wyvern. “We convened for a reason, unless you’re forgetting. We have a mission.”

He sat lower in his seat when Ameirah’s head swung his way, and I imagined her expression had to be seething for Nabil to wither the way he did.

“Which legion carried out the order?” she asked, like I knew she would. She was too intelligent to not put the pieces together.

“Ours,” I answered softly, quietly. She jolted against me, breathing harder.

“Yours.Thislegion. My husband’s legion.”

“People are dying on the border,” Nabil complained.

“Hush,” Aliah hissed, her eyes flashing in warning. To Ameirah, she said, “If we hadn’t executed her, she would have spread more sensitive information to Kalder.”

Ameirah shook her head. Her voice was hollow. “You’re all killers. Will you murder me next?”

“Fuck no,” I breathed, aghast. “Ameirah, no.”

“You won’t, but they might,” she said, pointing at each one of my legion, one after another.

“We don’t kill innocents, a-lalla,” Fahad said, watching all of us, reading the energy and shift of anger among us. “You have nothing to fear from us.”

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