Page 46 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

He and Shula had flown out the minute the storm broke to search the area for Fahad and Varidian. They returned hours later, soaked through from the light rain that refused to stop, with a void of hope in their eyes. No one had spoken the words, but it was becoming more and more obvious that they weren’t coming back. No dramatic entrances, no triumphant wyvern cry cutting the silence. Varidian was lost to the storm, and he wasn’t coming back.

“What now?” Aliah asked, glancing up from the knife she’d been polishing for an hour, her beautiful face tired and grave. We’d exchanged a few words, but it was hard to be friendly and conversational when two people were missing. When my husband was probably dead. When he’d left me with people my own cousin had deceived. When this legion hadkilledher.

It was easier to look at Zaarib now knowing he wasn’t the one who shredded Naila’s body, even if I couldn’t quite forget the way he’d walked into Strava square and left her there, as if she were trash to be discarded. He didn’t kill her. Neither did Shula, Aliah, or even Nabil, even if he was a bastard. Shula’s wyvern killed Naila because she hurt his rider. Broke her heart was probably more accurate. That fact, and the way Shula still mourned her, missed her, made hating the legion complicated.

I stayed when I wanted to run away. And here I still was, because they hadn’t kicked me out either despite distrusting me. And because, deep down, I wanted to go back to the Diamond, where I’d felt the tiniest glimmer of hope for my future, where Rawiya had shown affection and approval, where Varidian himself had said he wanted me.

Mostly, I wanted Varidian to come back.

“This article,” Nabil seethed, throwing himself into the seat beside me with his attention on Aliah. His black hair clung to the sharp features of his face, making him look even harsher, his leathers shedding raindrops everywhere. I glared at the droplets that darkened my dress—another one borrowed from a wardrobe in the room I’d claimed. “They’re blaming the storm on the legions, because of god’s disapproval that we haven’t won the war and destroyed Kalder yet.”

“Pretty sure clouds are to blame for the storm,” I muttered, staring unseeingly at the pages of a book I’d found. It was ancient and dusty and probably written during the Wyvara period. I’d read two whole pages in the entire time I’d sat here.

“Try telling the media that,” Nabil muttered, kicking his legs out in front of him. “Every little thing that happens, they blame it on the legions. As if winning a war can happen overnight. None of these bastards have even been to the wall, let alone fought a Kaldic tiger. The editor isn’t even gentry; what the fuck would she know about riding a wyvern?”

“Could you avoid being uncouth for one second?” Aliah sighed, tiredness weighing her eyelids.

“No,” Nabil argued, thumping his fist on the table and making me jump. Panic shot cold down my arms, my spine, and my thighs.You can kill him with a touch,I reminded myself until the fear settled. “I can’t. Because of the storm, they’re upping their recruitment. They want to fill twenty legions by the end of the year.”

“That’s… a lot of new riders,” I said, engaging in conversation mostly to distract myself from the spiky cold of past fears. I put down my book and peered at the newspaper, edging it towards me so I could read the headlines on the wrinkled paper. Spots darkened it where it had been exposed to rain, but I saw enough to get the gist. Nabil was right; they presented the storm as a punishment for allowing Kalder to continue existing. They argued for legions to demolish the wall, invade Kalder, and wipe out every last person in that country.

“Shit,” I breathed, pushing the paper away.

“Exactly,” Nabil said emphatically, slightly less hostile than he’d been when we first met. He stabbed the air as he spoke. “It’s fucked up. People will read this and believe it. They’ll send more of their children to the legions, and they’ll be lost on the wall fighting tiger after fucking tiger.”

The image of the young boy getting savaged by the tiger flashed through my mind, and I shut my eyes. That only intensified the memory. I wrenched them open again, flicking through the soggy pages of paper for another distraction,glancing up when Nabil made a throaty sound of disgust at the two-page spread of the king’s latest portrait. It wasn’t the first time I’d sensed his dislike of our regis, and I’d felt the same sentiment from the others.

“I don’t understand it,” I said, shaking my head, my violet hair dry for the first time in days. “You fight for the king—every legion flies for him—but you can’t stand the sight of him.”

“I don’t fight for that streak of cum,” Nabil said so severely that a laugh burst from me before I knew it. “You couldn’t pay or threaten me to fight for him. I fight for Ithanys, for every innocent murdered because they live too close to the wall, for everyone throughout history who’s died for this fucked up war.” His voice quietened, his mouth pinched. “I fight because I see an end to the fighting, and I won’t stop until that vision becomes reality.”

There was a weight to his words, and I thought of all those lives lost on both sides. Most people couldn’t remember why we were fighting anymore; it had been so long, all we knew was when Kalder slaughtered Ithanysians, we retaliated, and vice versa with our wyvern kills.

“Is it going to end?” I asked sceptically. I couldn’t picture either kingdom backing down. War was a way of life now, ingrained in the identity of both peoples. I wasn’t sure any of us would know how to live without the shadow of it hanging over us.

“You sound like Varidian,” Nabil muttered, casting a measuring look at me with small eyes. “He’s a sceptical bastard, too.”

The sound of his name sent an arrow into my chest. Over the last few days, I’d mourned every secret dream I’d had of our marriage, every hope and wish for my future, and my brief, fledgling peace. For a few hours, I’d felt welcome and wanted.For a few hours, I’d had a place to belong, and now I didn’t know where I was supposed to go.

Going back to Strava wasn’t an option. I’d rather answer the summons of the legions and train for death.

“Who would you have run the country, then?” I asked Nabil, desperate to outrun my thoughts. “The clergy?”

Like the royal family, the holy leaders of Ithanys had power over how laws were governed, towns were run, and people were held accountable for crimes. The king had the highest power and ultimate decision, but his council was made up of gentry—landowners like my father, who ran their own towns and cities, possessed magic, and bonded with wyverns—and clergy from the many mosques across Ithanys, to ensure the teachings and wisdom of god guided them in all decisions. And to make sure they were held accountable to laws themselves, instead of getting swayed by coin and power.

Although I had to wonder if sometimes the wisdom of god would tell us to find peace with Kalder and end all this.

“The clergy would be no better,” Nabil muttered, shaking his head and flinging raindrops from the ends of his hair.

“Gentry, then?” I asked dryly. How convenient that Nabil thought gentry should run the country when he was gentry. “The king is gentry in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Stop poking holes in my anger. Let me be annoyed,” he muttered, making both Aliah and I smile for a moment before the yawning absence of Varidian and Fahad returned, killing both smiles.

“It wouldn’t hurt to have a new king who isn’t so consumed with his own reflection,” Nabil said after a while. “It wouldn’t hurt to have Varidian back, either.”

“Varidian isn’t the heir,” Aliah pointed out, setting down the knife she was sharpening. “And talk like this could get you killed.”

Nabil’s eyes slid to me.

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