Page 33 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

I sat stiff on Makrukh’s back, wide eyes taking in the burning village. When we grew close enough to make out the shape of winding stone streets, I forced myself not to turn away from the sight of people running from the flames, carrying children or treasured possessions bundled in their arms. Even if I wanted to cry at the sight, I watched. Those people were going to burn.

“We need to help them,” I shouted over the roar of flame and wind. I couldn’t stand the thought of them burning.

Varidian’s arm tightened around my waist, and for a moment that touch didn’t make me want to vomit or murder him. I could kill him later, when there wasn’t a village collapsing beneath us.

“Something is wrong here,” he said against my ear, his body frozen and tense behind me. “Mak, do you see the tigers?”

Makrukh rumbled his reply, his neck swivelling to search the village as he made slow passes over the burning streets. The heat of the flames was like a wall, slamming into us. The Wall of Hydaran itself loomed close, casting a tall shadow over the mountains.

Around us, wings beat at the sky. The legion awaiting Varidian’s orders, I realised with nausea. Because he was a prince and ranked the highest as commander. Which meant Naila’s death…

“Kalder don’t set fires,” he said, cutting my thought in half. “This is wyvern work.”

“But… we’re still in Ithanys, aren’t we?”

“We are,” Varidian agreed grimly. When I turned my head to look at him, he was assessing the village with a cold calculation I’d almost call cunning. “But this wouldn’t be the first wyvern attack so close to the border this year. There’s something we don’t understand happening.”

Below us, a woman in ragged, blackened clothes screamed a name, over and over. The cold inside me intensified. Who had she lost? Were they in one of these blazing buildings, or lost in the streets? Smoke had obscured most of the winding pathways, the buildings crammed close together on either side of them. Easy for fire to jump from one home to another.

I coughed, turning my face into my shoulder as the smoke thickened. My eyes burned, itchy.

Below, the woman screamed—louder, sharper. I looked down again and sucked in a gasp of blackening smoke. A timber had fallen across the narrow path, fire crawling across its surface, and on the other side a boy, no older than five, was surrounded by flames. A bubble of water was the only barrier between him and the fire, and whatever fledgling magic he had was getting steadily smaller. He had minutes at most before the fire reached him. Before we were forced to watch a child perish.

“Varidian,” I breathed, jerking forward, my heart in my throat.

“Shit. Hold on, Ameirah. Zaarib, Shula, Aliah, find water to put this shit out.”

“From where?” Shula yelled back, her scowl making her look very similar to her brutal wyvern.

“Fahad, Nabil, start getting people out—as many as can fit on wyvern back.”

Varidian didn’t stick around to answer Shula’s question. His hand flexed on my middle, his only warning before Makrukh dove suddenly, carrying us into the smoke, towards the hot, boiling fire.

Goosebumps covered my arms and fear cut through me so deeply that I gasped for air, close to hyperventilating. We were flying right into the fire, past buildings streaming flames, the mortar between bricks melted until structures collapsed with sounds louder than anything I’d ever heard.

This wasn’t an adventure; this was terrifying. Death lurked in every flicker and flame, ready to devour. On the tallest building, the purple pennant of House Saber burned, its edges curled and blackened, the wolf’s head in the middle the only part of it left. Whoever had attacked the Last Guard, they were enemies of the king, enemies of Ithanys.

How the hell did Kalder get a wyvern? Armoured cats could shred a body to blood and bones, but they couldn’t do this. I might have explained it as a normal fire, but bricks and mortar andleadhad melted. This was wyvernfyre.

I jumped when Varidian released my waist, gasping down more smoke until my body shook with a cough. A solid wall of heat hit me, enough to make my skin prickle with warning. Oh fuck, I was going to die. I’d fall off Mak’s back and plummet into the burning wreckage of the house beneath us. My thighs screamed from the exertion of gripping the wyvern’s back.

“Hold on,” Varidian ordered again, his voice low and as hard as stone. It was a command that made me tighten my hold on Mak and dig the toes of my shoes into his scales even if I wanted to cry and scream and run away.

But I couldn’t run away. We were close enough now to see the fear on the boy’s face, the tears running over soot-darkened skin, and the perilous flicker of his water dome. He was almost out of power. Almost dead.

“Get as close as you can,” Varidian ordered Makrukh. “Ameirah, don’t let go no matter what.”

“What are you going to do?” I demanded, screaming when Mak nosedived and Varidian leaned so far left he hung on by the force of his legs alone.

Hot air tore at my face, ripping my air out of my lungs, but fear made me ice cold inside as Varidian leaned further, hanging off Makrukh’s side, his arms outstretched.

“Are you insane?”I screamed, panic drumming against my ribcage.

He didn’t reply. Great, I was going to lose my husband a mere day after marrying him. Everyone would think I pushed him off the wyvern’s back. My hands grew sweaty where I held onto Makrukh. I didn’t want to admit they were shaking, or that quivers ran through my legs.

I’d never been so afraid before. I hadn’t known it was possible tobethis scared. It was so hot, so suffocating, and both fae screams and wyvern screeches filled the air, stabbing my head. I barely heard myself when I cried out at Makrukh’s sudden dip, his wings brushing the tops of ruined buildings, sending bricks tumbling. The flames were so loud, crackling, devouring, that I didn’t even hear the bricks hit the ground.

“Be careful!” I yelled pointlessly.

---