Page 80 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

Raheema followed my silent instruction and landed on the warm-stone roof, sending stones skittering to the ground withher taloned feet. Sabira’s umber brown landed heavily beside us, his chest expanding with rough breaths, nostrils flaring, exhaling the scent of hot iron and blood. Goosebumps flowed down my arms as I looked over the wall and saw a group of wyverns facing my husband and friends, a far larger number than I’d expected.

“Fuck,” I hissed, my hands turning to fists around the leather reins. “How many?”

“Twenty,” Sabira said in a hard snap of a tone. “But look.” She lifted her hand, pointing at a shadow in the sky between two silvery peaks in the distance. “They’ve got fucking backup.”

I exhaled hard, grabbing my fear in a stranglehold and shoving it down, thinking of everything that happened at the Last Guard, everything I witnessed in Wyfell, letting rage fill me instead. I let my imagination run wild, let it conjure images of what the Red Star would become.

Like fucking hell.

I suppressed my shiver and turned to look at Sabira, fierce-eyed and murderous beside me. “What would you do?”

“Wait here and let the Legion of Fyrevein handle it,” she replied instantly. “Not from cowardice,” she added quickly. “But showing ourselves could completely ruin any hope we have of coming to their aid when they most need us.”

“They could be seeking shelter here, not attacking,” I said.

The look Sabira shot me was withering.

“I saidcould.I don’t genuinely believe—”

A deep crack of sound came from beyond the wall—the sound of twenty sets of wings flying in perfect, eerie unison.

“The way they move…” Sabira breathed, her brown face leached of its vibrance. “That’s not natural.”

And if they flew unnaturally, they would fight unnaturally, too.

“We hold here,” she said in a hard voice. “And only fly in when they need help.”

I noticed she said when, not if. “We hold here,” I agreed, sucking in a breath when the legions collided in a mess of wings, talons, and teeth. No fire, but I scanned the throats and bellies of wyverns, waiting for the telltale glow.

“I can’t stand this,” I hissed, not tearing my stare away from that clash of riders when Raheema nudged my leg with her sky-blue nose, sending a rush of comfort and confidence towards me.They’re a dangerous legion, and Makrukh is one of the most powerful wyverns in Ithanys; they’ll rip our enemies to shreds and gorge on their innards.

I could have done without the imagery. When I blinked, I saw scales spewing blood and gore. When my eyes refocused on the legions, I gasped when I saw a dark green wyvern diving towards Shula’s brawny grey. I startled forward, as if I could stop the wyvern’s sharp teeth sinking into Saif’s leg, but the straps holding me to Raheema held firm. Saif killed my cousin, my only friend, and I hated him for it, but… Shula was my friend. She was kind and secretly sweet and I didn’t want to watch her die.

“Do we ride now?”

“No,” Sabira growled. “They can still win.”

“How?” Varidian’s legion were surrounded, fighting on all sides, and it was only a matter of time before—

Mak’s throat erupted with an orange glow so bright I had to squint. His scream of fire caught four wyverns, instantly incinerating their riders’ hands and faces. Harrowing screams reached us even at the edge of the Red Star, but the way they cut off abruptly as those riders died made my blood chill.

Even with riders dead, collapsed over their mounts’ backs, the wyvernsstillattacked, their eyes as black at night, their own throats blooming with fire. Blood trickled from charred skin, over scales, and dripped into the sky. I couldn’t breathe. Icouldn’t sit still and watch, not again. When I blinked, I saw the boy and his mother murdered by these bastards, the image never really leaving my mind. I wouldn’t watch anyone else die.

“You have no training, and no real experience on a wyvern,” Sabira growled, her eyes hard when I met them. “Right now, you’ll be a fatal distraction.”

“Then why the hell did you come with me?”

“Because I’ve known your husband since before he could walk, and he loves you. I won’t let you race off to get yourself killed.”

“You have so much faith in me,” I drawled, the urge to act burning under my skin, surging through my blood. Ineededto move, to fight alongside Varidian, alongside his legion and—

Sabira was right. I didn’t even knowhowto fight. But I had Raheema, I was a rider, and I had a wyvern. That had to count for something.

I’ll melt the bones inside their skin bags,Raheema promised in a low rumble. Delightful. But her determination had me sitting straighter.

“Ameirah,” Sabira warned as my wyvern crept closer to the roof’s edge, talons scratching stone, her muscles bunched and ready to leap.

I kept my eyes on Mak’s ivory form, glimpsing him in the chaos as wyverns dove and slashed and struck out at each other, foregoing fire when they were in close quarters even if throats glowed with the threat of flames. They couldn’t risk setting themselves alight, I realised, and committed that to memory lest I light myself up.

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