Page 64 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

The smell hit me first—the same burned meat scent as the Last Guard. I choked back bile, my stomach revolting. I wanted Varidian’s hand in mine so badly that I sobbed, tears burning myeyes. I looked above the wall of heads in front of me, searching the sky, as if I could run out of the path of a breath of fire. I didn’t stand a chance. I’d be trapped, watching death roar towards me.

My bottom lip wobbled. I didn’t want to die.

Fire scorched the air, screams spiking, visceral, petrified. I avoided the roar of flame by mere chance. If it had been two metres to the left, I would be dead. I choked on short, breathless sobs and stared at the empty swath of space where there’d been thirty people a minute ago. Now there were only bones and smoke, flames licking at whatever bits of flesh remained.

A roar of noise filled my head.

There was a moment of stillness, suspended and unnatural. Shock infected all of us. And then all at once, people flooded into the space left by disintegrated fae, trampling bones, single-minded as the mouth of a wider road became visible. I was ashamed to be one of them, ashamed to feel bones shatter beneath my feet, to hear them crack as I ran for that road with every ounce of strength in my body.

It was a blur of ragged breaths, pumping arms, stumbling steps, and senseless noise thumping through my ears, a hollow rush that was silence and screams all at once. By some miracle, I escaped the crush of bodies on the main thoroughfare. My skin tingled and burned as I waited for wyvernfyre. They could easily burn the tan-stone buildings on either side of us to ashes, but it felt safer with their shelter. I stumbled after the people in front of me, my whole body trembling, my mind full of horrified stillness.

People had been burned to death. Our own people, by our own wyverns. What the fuck was happening?

“Keep up, Masuma,” a short woman around Shula’s age urged, her hand covered in ashes but wrapped around the small fist of a girl who could be no older than four. My heart knocked into my ribs, breathing impossible. I didn’t want to watch thisgirl be murdered like the boy in the Last Guard. I didn’t want to watch anyone else die, least of all children.

The wide street fed us out into the meat market, the scent of raw meat and offal perfuming the air, almost cutting through the smell of burned fae flesh that was permanently seared into my nostrils. I kept Masuma and her mother in my line of sight, the shakiest edge of my fear honed into something with more purpose. If nothing else today, I wouldn’t let another child die.

I didn’t understand what was at stake, what the game was—why men on tiger back wore black clergy robes at the Last Guard, why they invaded a peaceful market city and unleashed our own creatures upon us. It was a puzzle lacking so many pieces that I wanted to scream.

A shadow cut across the narrow thoroughfare I fled down and I froze, breath like shards of glass in my lungs. Instinct took over. I lunged across the paved street and grabbed the woman’s arm. There was no time to explain; I yanked her and Masuma into the doorway of a brick storehouse to our left.

“Wyvern,” I panted, my breath thin, pain spreading further with each inhale I took.

The young woman’s eyes widened but she huddled her daughter into the doorway with me, understanding instantly. Her breaths were almost as fast as mine.

“Shh, Masuma,” she whispered when the girl began to speak. “We have to be very quiet.”

Masuma was around Shahzia’s age, around the age where my magic festered and I killed her. I pulled my gloves up my arms, my heart rapping my throbbing ribs as the shadow of the wyvern grew larger, passing overhead. We would be hidden from this angle, but others were racing down the road in full view. I screwed my eyes shut when the temperature spiked, hot air slapping my face. The screams were harrowing.

When I dared to open my eyes, Masuma’s mother was softly crying and everyone on the road was dead.

Why? Because they ran? If I wasn’t so terrified, rage would have beat against my breast.

It was deadly quiet on the road now. The quiet of horror and death. The market was in flames around us but a pocket of silence covered this street. Rain began to speckle the ground, strangely soundless.

“Stay here,” I whispered.

We couldn’t stay here forever; if I could reach Varidian and Mak, we could fly out of Wyfell. I didn’t let myself entertain the thought that he burned in that first blast of fire. He was fine. He survived a storm. He had a reputation of cheating death. Varidian wasalive.

“Thank you,” Masuma’s mother whispered, her hand finding my arm, squeezing tight. It was such a shock to be touched that I froze for a moment. “Thank you,” she repeated.

I managed to nod, a little stunned. I was so used to people hating me for my magic, my lineage, that it was a revelation to be appreciated for my actions. I straightened my back and peered around the doorway, stepping out when it was clear. A long breath left me, and I turned back to the mother and her daughter to tell them it was safe—

And I froze to the spot when the ground shook at the end of the road, sending tremors up my legs.

The huge dark emerald wyvern I’d seen flying landed opposite me so hard that whatever stalls survived the blaze now collapsed, the crash making me flinch. My heart beat so hard I felt it through my whole body. I very slowly held my hand out to Masuma’s mother, telling her to stay put, not taking my eyes off the enormous emerald as its head dipped, weaving in a sign of aggression. A promise of vengeance and fire.

Its throat lit up with liquid fire, and I froze, paralysed in place.

Instinct yelled at me to run, but I refused to look like prey. Wyverns would chase prey, so I held my ground, survival instinctscreamingat me to race back into the doorway. But I refused to watch another child be killed by whoever had ridden these wyverns into Wyfell.

“Run,” Masuma’s mother hissed, her voice quiet but carrying so much emotion.

“Don’t move,” I whispered back, taking a slow, retreating step, scanning my surroundings for anything I could shelter behind. Most of the souk had been charred to ruins, nothing left that would provide enough coverage. There were other storehouses dotted around the market, but would I reach them in time to hide beneath their stone roofs? And would that save me anyway? The buildings of the Last Guard had been brick and they’d been nothing but wreckage when we arrived.

I backed up another step and knew I stared my death in its sharp, slitted eyes. And if I was going to be murdered either way, I would die seeking survival.

Fuck this.

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