Page 81 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

Shit, I really did need to learn how to fight. Varidian was going to be so furious when he saw me diving into a battle I didn’t know how to wage.

A space opened between a deep sapphire wyvern and Aliah’s burgundy, giving me a split second glimpse of Varidian, sittingtall on Mak’s back, his face wiped of emotion, his hands raised. My heart skipped. He was alive and okay, but… what was he doing?

One wyvern bucked like a horse trying to unseat its rider, and I lunged as far forward as the straps would let me, craning my neck tosee.I swore blood rolled down the wyvern’s head between its horns but I couldn’t see the source of it, couldn’t see who had harmed it and—

The rider. Its own rider had driven a sword into the wyvern’s head. I caught my breath, recoiling hard as the wyvern began to fall, slowly at first and then all at once.

The rider killed their own mount. Goosebumps covered my arms.

Unnatural,Raheema said in a low sound. I stroked her scales absently, processing what I’d seen, what had happened. Varidian controlled the rider, made the man kill his wyvern.

“Hold,” Sabira ordered, but when her wyvern shifted beneath her I wasn’t sure if she was talking to us or him. My stomach tangled just at the thought of harming Raheema and I’d only met her a week ago. My breath strangled when it happened again, a woman in a black headscarf driving a dagger into the weakness between the plates of scales, her wyvern bucking with a scream that made me jump.

This was good. Enemies were falling. Less of them held their place in the air to attack Varidian, the legion, and our city but… I couldn’t shake the cold in me, the horror. And he deserved better than that, when I’d told him everything I was capable of, when I told him about killing Raheema, and he didn’t even blink.

I sucked in a slow breath and tightened my grip on the reins. Sabira was right. Varidian could handle himself, and his legion was a furore of roars and violence as our enemies struggled to recover. Nabil threw dagger after dagger, too far away to see if he landed them. Zaarib stayed close to Mak and Varidian, Dahabsinking wicked teeth into throats and flanks and legs of any creature that got too close. I could no longer see Aliah and Shula in the chaos, but if the others were anything to judge by, they were fine. They were all fine.

And I was foolish for thinking they needed me of all people to rescue them, that a legion this capable needed—

Sabira sucked in a sharp breath, and that sound from a woman so unshakeable made everything inside me go still.

“What?” I demanded.

“Makrukh,” Sabira said, that single word enough to send pure panic through me. I squeezed my thighs around Raheema and she shot off the roof, leaping into the sky. I didn’t know how long it would take for Rawiya to gather the guard and other riders, but we might nothavethat time.

Mak was already injured, the scrapes on his belly closed but far from fully healed. It was a vulnerability any enemy wyvern would exploit.

“Ameirah!” Sabira yelled, following me on her wyvern, the look in his eyes as fierce and defiant as in Raheema’s. “You don’t even know how to fight.”

“That’s not going to stop me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

AMEIRAH

Iurged Raheema faster, and we soared over the wall, through the bubble of protective magic, and across the sky towards where twenty five wyverns were locked in battle—and where a greater flight was now close enough to see their individual colours.

They’d be upon the legion in minutes. I didn’t know what to do, but I did know perching on a rooftop to watch while my husband was slaughtered wasn't an option.

“Go for the smallest one,” I told Raheema, glancing to my left as Sabira’s fierce brown wyvern matched us wingbeat for wingbeat. His eyes were fixed on the wyverns ahead of us, nothing but murder in their depths. Having him and Sabira at our side made me a tiny bit more confident. Seven wyverns to twenty were better than five.

Wind tugged at my hair as Raheema flew faster, pulling out strands of violet. I barely felt the sting, my whole focus on the glimpse of Varidian I was given as a deep crimson wyvernconvulsed in the air, fighting his control. His magic chilled me, but as I flew close enough that the wyvern’s screams pricked my eardrums and made my ribs shake, there was pride there, too. My husband was lethal. His magic was like mine—dark and unsettling. Even as my soul recoiled when another rider drove a knife into their own wyvern’s throat, a sense of kinship and rightness filled my chest. Varidian was like me, and even better—he was mine.

There,Raheema’s soft sound interrupted my thoughts. I followed her attention to a small silver wyvern ducking and weaving around the edges of the group, zipping beneath them to rake sharp talons over the exposed bellies of my legion.

Oh, that was new.Mylegion. But they were. My husband was the commander of the Legion of Fyrevein, which made them mine to protect, mine to fight alongside. I shoved aside the insecurity that said I didn’t know how to fight. I hadn’t known how to fly either, yet I’d still mounted Mak on our celebration day and flown halfway across Ithanys. I could do this, too.

We were close enough now that the sound of claws meeting scales reached into my chest and made my heart skip. Close enough that the riders had spotted us. Shula did too, her wyvern snapping his head around to snarl at us and stopping short when he recognised Sabira’s mount. I met his eyes when he swung a glare to me but quickly looked away. Did he know I was the cousin of the woman he killed? Did he care?

My hands sweated inside my gloves, but I held onto the reins tighter and kept that small silver wyvern in my sights. I only permitted myself to recoil for a split second when five enemy riders stood at once on their wyverns and—and jumped off.

Fuck. He could do that? Just make riders leap off the backs of their wyverns? A chill coated my skin, but I pressed through it, taking advantage of the shock that fell over the wyverns to urge Raheema forward. She shot like an arrow around the edgeof the clash, her jaws parted on rapid breaths as we both stalked the silver. Sabira remained close, staying silent but no doubt possessing a dozen opinions about my stupidity. I didn’t bother defending myself. I couldn’t take on five riders at once like Varidian, but I could dothis.I could take out a single wyvern, help pick off their numbers like everyone else did.

“Madwoman!” Shula yelled across the backs of a rugged green wyvern and a luminous black. It sounded like a compliment, like a welcome greeting. She met my eyes for a second, grinning fiercely, then looked away to ram Saif into the side of the black wyvern. She didn’t knock it from the sky but did gain its full attention.

I ripped my eyes away, aware of how quickly Raheema and I could be torn from the sky, how quickly we could be killed. Heat kissed the back of my neck as someone unleashed a plume of fire, and even though we weren’t in its path my heartbeat quickened.

The silver wyvern was distracted, too. Raheema saw its eyes elsewhere and shot like a blur through the grey sky, her wings pushing us across the distance with a power and speed I didn’t know she was capable of.

---