Page 32 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

Ameirah shook her head, a laugh under her breath.

“Did you know your cousin was a Kaldic spy?” Zaarib asked, watching her too closely for my liking.

“Shewasn’ta spy,” Ameirah snapped, her hands curling into fists. She still wasn’t holding onto Mak; it was like she’d forgotten to be afraid of heights in her rage. “You’re a liar.”

“Shewas a liar.”

“Alright,” I cut in, giving Zaarib a warning look. He knew better than to start arguments with hot-headed women. “This is getting us nowhere. Ameirah, we will talk about this later, I promise.”

“Talk about you murdering my cousin,” she said so quietly I almost missed it. “I don’t want to talk aboutanythingwith you. But the asshole’s right; people are dying, so let’s go.”

My stomach tangled into a knot. I would be angry too, and if someone told me a member of my family was a traitor, I’d refuse to believe them, too.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, brushing another kiss to her shoulder. She didn’t relax. If anything, she stiffened.

“Apologies mean nothing from a killer.”

I recoiled, the words hitting me like a physical blow. Even Mak stopped rumbling, falling utterly silent.

“Let’s go,” Fahad said bleakly, his eyes heavy with something I couldn’t read despite knowing him for years. “We’ve wasted too much time.”

I didn’t want to fly into battle with my wife both inexperienced in fighting and angry at me.

But as my legion shot into the air one by one, I didn’t have much choice.

“If I could undo it, I would,” I said against her ear as Makrukh carried us into the sky.

Ameirah said nothing.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AMEIRAH

Istruggled to breathe, betrayal closing like a noose around my throat. Varidian’s legion killed Naila, my cousin, my only friend, the person I loved more than anyone in the world. The man I saw discard her shredded, broken body in the town square was my husband’s best friend.

I remembered running across Strava Square towards her, screaming her name. Her face was smeared in blood but recognisable, her pale gold headscarf so soiled it resembled crimson silk. I remembered the face of the man who left her there; he turned when I screamed, hatred moulding his face into an evil mask that haunted my dreams. It had been two years, but I still remembered the feeling of her blood soaking, cold, into my dress as I dropped beside her, clutching her body to me. I remembered the dark smears it left on my gloves and the way my heart beat unnaturally hard.

When I realised she wasn’t just hurt but dead, I’d laid her gently on the ground and ripped off my gloves. But by the time I looked up, her killer was gone.

I flexed my hands inside their gloves now, my heart beating just as hard. Air tore past me, ripping out strands of hair as Makrukh flew at the head of the legion’s formation, but I barely felt any of it. Varidian’s arm across my waist was like a dead weight instead of a tantalising comfort. My skin didn’t tingle anymore. His legion killed Naila.

I’d never felt a betrayal as sharp as this before. The betrayal of my father’s love turning to hate happened slowly, a slow slide of months after Shahzia’s death. At first he didn’t sharpen his tongue against me, didn’t look at me with resentment or fear; those moments came sparingly until the shock of her and the clergy’s death wore off, leaving only clarity. His daughter had killed his youngest. I was a killer.

But I neverintendedto hurt anyone. Varidian and his legion, though… theyexecutedNaila. Executed. There were ribbons of blood wound around her body, bled from hundreds of cuts. What did theydoto her?

I opened my mouth to demand that answer, but my breath caught when I looked up from where I’d been glaring at a spot on Makrukh’s pale neck. We’d flown over the seemingly endless mountain range that covered most of eastern Ithanys, the jagged peaks flowing right to the wall. Sharp, crooked spires still reached for the sky all around us, these formed of a silver rock that was almost purple, and with the backdrop of the azure sky, it was beautiful. But the streak of violent orange to our right made my heart skip, and so did the dark smoke staining the air above where houses burned.

“What’s the name of the village?” I asked, the first words I’d spoken in two hours.

Varidian’s voice was rough and deep when he answered. “It didn’t have a name a hundred years ago. Now we call it the Last Guard.”

My stomach knotted when the scent of that smoke reached us, acrid and bitter. My throat tickled but I fought the cough back. What kind of gentry would I be to cough at smoke, when we were born to ride beings who breathed fire and destruction?

But it was one thing to grow up hearing stories of fire and destruction and quite another to see it painted across the mountains, the fire so thick in places I struggled to see the buildings beneath. My stomach turned as the smoke settled heavy over me, and when the first screams reached my ears, I nearly threw up. I wanted to beg Makrukh to fly away, to carry me far from the death and howling fear we raced towards, but if we fled, people would die.

Cold deluged my body.Icould die here.

It had seemed like an adventure this morning. Flying to a far-flung village to defeat enemies and save people in need. But there was nothing gleaming and magical about this. There was only grit and gore and those guttural screams as people died.

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