Page 79 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

“We’re based in Wyfell.” Fuck. Itwasthem. My blood crackled with power and rage. Beside us, Dahab twitched, responding to Zaarib’s fury. They all knew what had happened; I’d held back no detail. People had died screaming, died burning. It was an unbearable death. How was that any better than what a lightning soul would do to people?

A matching ripple of tension went through the wyverns gathered in front of us. Mak stiffened beneath me, his wariness contagious.

“While we’d appreciate any information about the sky-blue wyvern,” the stranger said, sitting straighter atop his gunmetal silver, “I’m afraid we need to inspect the city for ourselves.”

“You don’t have the authority to do that,” I replied, as mildly as I could when he was staring over my shoulder at my home, calculating how he might get his legion past us. “I’d welcome you if you return with a missive from the king or council.”

He smiled tightly, dark eyes returning to me. “We answer to no king; we serve the church. Stand aside, or we’ll consider it an act of guilt.”

So they could sack my home the way they did Wyfell? My legion pulled in tighter around me, forming a deadly hammer.

“Then please return with a missive from the clergy. We’re not accepting newcomers, no matter whose authority they fly under. For all we know,youharbour the lightning soul.”

The group recoiled like I’d struck them.

“You won’t move aside and let us enter?” the lead rider asked, his voice deepening.

I exchanged a look with my friends, checking we were prepared to do whatever it took to keep this legion out of the Red Star.

“We will not,” I informed the rider.

His eyes darkened, turning full black in a second. My breath caught. Holy fuck. “Then you give us no choice. We will have to go through you.”

He threw up his hand in a signal, and the legion moved as one deadly force of scales, claws, and eyes as black as ink.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

AMEIRAH

It took very little to convince Sabira to mount a wyvern and follow Varidian and the Legion of Fyrevein, but I wasn’t expectingRawiyato race to the barn after us and mount a small jewel-green wyvern with matching burn scars along her right leg and flank.

“Be careful,” Varidian’s mother warned me when she and Sabira—fierce and straight-backed atop a rich brown wyvern covered in spikes, her djellaba reinforced at the cuffs and ankles with vambraces of sturdy leather—joined me and Raheema on the lawn. “Sabira will come to the wall with you, but don’t fly further unless the legion really needs you. Your safety is paramount. We have a house guard to protect the kasbah, and a dozen other gentry experienced with flying, two even the daughters of a commander; I’m going to gather them, in case the worst happens and we need to defend the city.”

My stomach tightened, dread gathering bile in the back of my throat. All the screams, the crush, the destruction of Wyfell…it broke me a little to imagine that happening here. The souk Makrukh showed me on my first night here, the lively streets, the glittering square, the houses full of families and couples and children. The Diamond of the South, my home.

I straightened on Raheema’s back, tugging the straps around my middle and legs tighter. I wouldn’t fall out of my seat. I refused to let those bastards harm these people.Mypeople as Varidian said that first night. I was their princess, and I would not be weak as long as they needed me. Or as long as Varidian needed me.

The thought of him facing those dark riders made me want to vomit, but I held myself together and squeezed my legs around Raheema, the two of us leaping into the sky. Sabira and her brown wyvern rose alongside us, his scales rich umber with a ripple of red and orange in the sunlight. He kept a safe distance from Raheema, which she appreciated, and his rider looked to me for orders, whichIappreciated, even if it caused a little ball of dread to form in my stomach. I was the princess, I had rank, and I was in charge of this little backup mission.

Varidian was going to kill me if either of us got hurt. But no, fuck that. We weren’t getting hurt, and neither were any of our legion. We were going to assess the situation at the wall and provide backup if needed.

“Tell me you can breathe fire,” I said to Raheema, my voice pitched low.

Her exasperated sound told me I was a fool andof courseshe had fire. She could roast a wyvern as easily as a turkey leg and—

“Oh alright,” I interrupted. “I get the point.”

I was snappish and rough, but I was too worked up to apologise right now. I pressed my right leg against her side to guide her in an arc over the city, my chest winching tight when the Diamond left my sight. I swore to myself it wouldn’t be the last time I saw it.

“We have a house guard?” I asked Sabira as we flew over golden houses and verdant gardens and olive trees I prayed didn’t get razed to the ground. My wyvern was uncommonly serious as we flew, sensing the graveness through me. But she’d been there in Wyfell; she must have seen the destruction. Had she lived there and lost her rider before finding me? My heart ached for all the victims at Wyfell, and ached worse for the people who lifted their heads to watch us fly. Not panicked yet, their expressions fond or smiling. How long until those smiles turned to looks of horror? How long until the chatter and laughter of neighbours and friends became screams?

“We have a guard,” the Sabira confirmed, noticing my attention ahead of us, watching the Red Star’s people as they herded wayward children determined to play in the water trickling in a grate across the city, collecting rose-pink water flowers. “Not as big as Morysen or even Daurith, but five strong riders who are trained to defend us. We used to have thirty, but more are conscripted every year.”

“Will it be enough?” I asked, my stomach tight as we flew closer to the wall, its shadow casting the tight rows of houses at the edge of the fortress-city in deeper gold. “Varidian’s legion and the guard? Is it enough if those wyverns attack?”

“Of course,” Sabira replied, her voice whip-sharp, annoyed that I’d even suggest otherwise. But I didn’t miss the way her eyes tightened as we flew, or how she stroked the scales of her wyvern as if for comfort. “Alight here, on that sturdy rooftop just there. We should be able to see over the wall, but our presence won’t be seen as a threat.”

I hadn’t even thought of that—that landing on the wall might be an act of aggression. My heart quickened, lightening until it was a panicked flutter.

---