Page 63 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

“Back,”he roared, and my breath froze for a second when the young man who’d pushed me jerked violently away.

Ice crawled into my stomach, but I glanced away, not wanting Varidian to see how it unsettled me that he’d so effortlessly bent someone to his will. If he could accept me with my lethal power, I could accept him with his.

“How far?” I shouted, scrambling for a memory of how we got here, trying to remember if there were roads that branched off from this main thoroughfare where we could escape the crush.

“Too far,” Varidian said gravely, maybe hoping I wouldn’t hear.

The shouts of fear and family members’ names turned to alarmed screams, cries of terror rippling through the crowd like ocean waves, each one louder, more harrowing. What were the clergydoing,to make people scream like that?

The high sun blotted out of the sky for a moment, and goosebumps bled down my arms. I could no longer feel the sting of my new marriage mark; I was too cold. I told myself not to look, told myself I didn’t want to see what new horror had fallen over us, but I couldn’t help it. My head tipped back before I could stop it, and my breath congealed in my throat.

Wyverns.

Six of them, all as big as Shula’s grey, covered in spikes and—armour?

“Varidian,” I gasped, so quiet he had no hope of hearing me.

We were a crowd of Ithanysian people, some of us gentry with our own wyverns. The shadow of wings in the sky wasn’t a reason to run; they were cause to look up and smile, to wave a hand, to cheer if warriors had returned from the wall. But with a public execution, and grave warnings—veiled threats—from strange men filling the minds of Wyfell civilians, instead of cheers the wyverns were met with screams.

I couldn’t help but remember the midnight blue at the Last Guard, and how it had set homes and buildings alight. How it had attacked Ithanysians when it should have been bonded with an Ithanysian themselves.

“Move,”Varidian barked at someone, his voice deep and resonant in a way that chilled me.“Be calm.”

But the hysteria was spreading at a rate that it couldn’t be contained. Someone screamed right behind me, the sound dissolving into a sob.

“What did we do to anger our god?” the woman cried. “What did we do wrong?”

I didn’t know the answer, but my stomach hollowed as the wyverns circled above us. More and more people spotted them, and bodies pushed harder against the crowd, throwing themselves against the people in front to escape the danger that flew overhead.

“To run is to be guilty,” a gentry called, his voice seeming to echo. “Be still, innocents, or else confess.”

Confess to what? This was madness! A whole city hadn’t seen the lightning strike someone, if it evenhadstruck anyone. I was starting to think this was the whole point of the announcement—chaos and mass-fear. An excuse to kill a man on stage. My stomach knotted, bile burning up my throat. In my memory I heard the man shout, pleading, trying to tell us he was just a farmer. Maybe he was a liar. Or maybe the clergy had misled us. Either way, no one stuck around to see if they’d be executednext, and no matter what orders the gentry yelled, the crowd elbowed and kicked and surged on.

A woman fell screaming to my right, and I whipped my head around, my hand already outstretched to catch her, but the crowd was a wild animal. It moved over her, swallowed her, and I lost sight of the fallen woman in seconds. That could be me. One slip and I’d be trampled. I couldn’t breathe.

“Stay close,” Varidian barked at me, his voice almost lost in the riot of noise. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think clearly. All I could do was hold onto his hand and allow the crowd to push and pull at me, making pathetic progress down the street. It was stifling, suffocating, and so hot that beads of sweat rolled off my chin. I wanted to run away with a desperation that made my skin itch, but there was no way out.

“Nabil!” a man screamed behind us, and my heart stuttered. But it was a common name; there were three Nabils in my mosque at Strava. Still, fear injected into my heart and it beat rapidly. I began to feel lightheaded.

I flinched when a wyvern let out a strident screech, wheeling over us in the sky, its wings like dark emerald against the grey clouds. Maybe I should have wished for rain; maybe it would force the wyverns from their flight. The longer they circled, watching, the clearer it became that this wasn’t a legion of the Ithanysian army. A true legion would have found a way to help, to carry people from the crush to safety. They’d have at least shouted orders; these riders circled in silence.

“Ameirah!” Varidian yelled when a wyvern ducked so low its talons could easily scalp the people packed like tinned sardines in the street. Screams cut apart the sky—defiant wyvern and terrified fae. I was jerked to the right so suddenly that Varidian’s fingers tore from mine, and I gasped for enough air to sob, frantic eyes searching the hundreds of bodies around me for his face, straining my ears for his voice.

“Varidian?” I shouted. Just another voice crying for a loved one in the crowd.“Varidian!”

Another surge wedged me between a large-bodied woman and a man I’d seen hawking hand-stitched notebooks just an hour ago. I gasped down every breath, trying to force my sobs into submission, trying to hold myself together. I wished the legion had come with us, and that was such a betrayal to Naila that my sobs won.

My hands were so sweaty that when the person behind me crashed into my back, knocking my arms forward, I felt my gloves shift. My breathing cut off. I couldn’t lose my gloves in a crush like this. I would kill everyone.

The thought made me hyperventilate, my breathing so loud I almost missed the next wyvern screech before it dove. Blood filled the air, metallic and ripe. Drops splashed my face.

“Varidian?”I screamed, sucking down ragged gasps of air so I could speak. “Varidian, please!”

My voice was lost to a roar of noise. The crowd carried me and my feet stumbled along, powerless, my ribs throbbing from being battered so many times.

A hot, sticky wind blew my hair back from my face, scented with blood and iron and—no,notwind. My hands shook inside my gloves, my palms so slick I curled my hands into fists so they wouldn’t fall off. That wasn’t wind—it was the rush of air that preceded wyvernfyre.

“Run!”I screamed, but we were already trying to run, the roads too narrow, the people too numerous. We were going to be roasted to death like Kaldic enemies. But we were Ithanysian. We bonded with wyvern, rode them, loved them like family. Why would this happen? “Run!”

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