Page 62 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

“This man saw the lightning strike!” the bearded clergy yelled, his voice rising. An old man in a dirty kaftan was brought forward, struggling between two clergy, fear in the whites of his eyes as he stared at the crowd. “He lives in a hut near the wall and witnessed the single strike.”

“Fuck,” Varidian breathed. “Don’t look, Ameirah.”

I stared at my husband with questions in my eyes, but he was already two steps ahead of me, figuring out what this really was—not a plea for information, but a warning in blood.

“But we have reason to believe he’s harbouring them,” the clergy shouted, his voice impassioned the way I’d heard so many imams through my life. But no imam would spread fear and panic like this. Their subtle magic was in calming fears, soothing panic. I’d seen an imam solve a quarrel between feuding brothers with a single line of scripture and a pointed look. There were no soothing fears or easing tempers here; all this did was make me feel unsafe, and judging by the restlessness around us, others felt the same.

“This man saw the lightning strike, watched it spread its darkness into one of us, and refuses to tell us who. He’ll damn us all to protect the lightning soul!”

“He doesn’t even know who it struck,” Varidian muttered. “I doubt he even saw the strike.”

“Will you tell us the identity of the lightning soul?” the bearded clergyman demanded as the man tried to tear free. If he could just jump off the stone platform and into the crowd, he could disappear. But the men holding him were tall and broad and clearly strong. What kind of holy men were these? The ice spread further through me until I shuddered.

None at allwas the clear answer. But why the sigil?

“No!” the man shouted, his panic clear. He lunged forward and the crowd gasped, leaning away in fear. Could no one else see that his panic was real? If they did, they ignored it in favour of their own. “Let me go, I don’t know anything! What are you doing? I’m just an olive farmer.”

“We need to get him away from them,” I whispered, shifting on my feet.

Varidian’s grip tightened until he risked bruising me. “We can’t without getting ourselves killed. We’ll be implicated.”

Fuck. I hated that he was right. “Can’t Mak—”

“We will not tolerate lightning soul sympathisers,” the clergy shouted, his voice like a thunderclap, like a storm itself. “They would send us all to our deaths to seek their own power. But Wyfell is under the control of the church, and we will not allow that evil to take you for itself.”

It happened before I could even notice the shorter, clean-shaven clergy break from the lines on the platform. His hand whisked across the farmer’s throat, so fast that there was a moment before blood spilled. From this far back, I didn’t see the knife, only the blood, and then the body of the man as he thudded to the platform.

There was a moment of silence, of shock. And then the chaos began.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AMEIRAH

Screams pierced the air, rupturing the Solemn Square at a volume that made my ears hurt. I flinched when a man collided with me in his frantic attempt to flee the square, an elbow hitting my stomach, punching all the air from my lungs until I coughed. Pain bloomed where he hit me.

“Ameirah,” Varidian barked, pulling me up when I slouched, painfully winded. “Stay close.”

His eyes were tight, the blue as sharp as cut crystal. For a moment, the determination in his hard stare made me straighten my shoulders, but then a woman began to scream. Whatever hold I’d had on my fear spiralled away, and my breathing turned shallow.

We were going to die, slaughtered in a city square by men who definitely weren’t the clergy I knew.

“Did your father do this?” I shouted to be heard as Varidian and I pushed through the press of the crowd. I was tall for a woman but we were surrounded on all sides by so many peoplethat I couldn’t see more than three heads in front of us. I could barely glimpse the sky above, what I could see darkening to a tempestuous silver that heralded more rain. I’d had quite enough rain in the last three days; we didn’t need another storm.

“No way to know,” Varidian replied, snapping his arm out in front of us when an old, bearded man almost slammed into me, his path weaving and mindless. Behind us, the crowd surged like the flow of the ocean. “I wouldn’t be surprised, but he isn’t a religious man. He wouldn’t try to wipe out a lightning soul; he’d want to capture him for power.”

“Do not run!”a voice boomed behind us—the bearded gentry, whose voice was even louder. “You have nothing to fear unless you harbour the lightning soul. To run is to be guilty.”

Fuck. A shudder worked through me. I held Varidian’s hand so tightly I might rearrange his bones. The whole crowd was fleeing, a mass panic taking over the square, and I knew every road around Solemn Square must be full of people running from the site of the execution. Ithanysians might have fought an eternal war with Kalder but we weren’t accustomed to seeing murder in front of us.

Clammy bodies surged against me, pushing me forward so suddenly that my face smacked into the broad-backed man in front of me. Pain shot up my nose, but it was bearable and I didn’t taste blood. My nose wasn’t broken. Small mercies.

To run is to be guilty.The dark clergy’s words had the opposite effect on the crowd. People ran faster, shoving, forcing their way through. In minutes, we were so crushed that I could barely find the space to draw breath.

“Ameirah,” Varidian said urgently, gripping my hand tighter. A body forced between us, but he held on with force and—that was rage in his eyes, true rage. My heart skipped. “Don’t you dare let go,” he ordered, like I was one of his legion to command.

“I won’t.”

I cried out when an elbow rammed into my back, pitching me into the man in front with so much force that my head snapped forward and I bit my tongue, the copper of blood flooding my senses. Varidian pulled on my hand, trying to bring me closer to him, but we were too far apart, and yet another body wedged between us.

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