Page 82 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

I drew a knife, holding it in my gloved hand and ignoring the way it shook. Adrenaline hit me until my breaths shook and I wanted to flee, but I was here and I wasn’t about to back out. Even if the silver was much, much bigger up close, and covered in dense scales, its wings tipped with spikes at every joint. How much damage would those do to Raheema if they hit her?

She growled, dismissing my worry, and slashed out with her right wing, using the sharp edge to rake a deep line down the silver’s neck. The sudden violence stole my breath. The scent of blood, the tilt of Raheema’s body in the air as she angled for a deeper gouge, the sight of teeth as big as my arm snapping at us, the deafening rage that erupted from the silver in a piercingscreech… it combined into an overwhelming panic that made me shake.

What the fuck was I doing?

A flicker of bright, violent orange formed between the pattern of scales on the wyvern’s throat, and everything went still inside me. I rammed my right leg into Raheema’s side, ordering her away, and she obeyed but growling her displeasure the whole time.

I can take her. I can destroy her.

I jolted in my seat when I felt heat rise on all sides of us, hairs standing up on my arms and the back of my neck at the kiss of hot, shuddering air.

“Raheema!” I yelled.“Move!”

She didn’t, holding us little more than three paces away from the silver, the heat oppressive now, choking off the air in my lungs.

“Don’t you dare. Fly,now—”

I beheld death in the silver’s eyes, saw obliteration in the inferno now blazing a bright, unmistakable orange against silver scales, saw my end in its parting mouth.

Raheemaroared,her screech making my ears stab with sudden pain, my heart arresting, every last hair on my body standing on end at the rage, the heat, the—thefirein that scream. It poured from her in a breath of molten power and hit the silver head-on, burning his eyes to blackened pits before he could even gasp. His next scream was so much worse, and I flinched back, pulling Raheema away as the wyvern thrashed, howling rage at the loss of his sight. His rider tried to calm him but failed.

Told you I could take him,Raheema said, more than a little smug. I couldn’t breathe, could still feel the graze of heat on my skin, the arms of death opening to clasp me.

A blur of ivory shot past us, absolutelybrimmingwith rage, and I caught my breath as Mak sank sharp teeth into the silver’s throat and shook him like a dog with a toy until the rider crashed to the ground far, far below and the wyvern went limp. Varidian didn’t watch the carnage. He fixed his eyes on me, pure, lethal rage in the bright topaz of them.

“You needed me,” I said across the scant distance, shouting to be heard over screeches and roars and the violence of scaled bodies colliding.

His nostrils flared, his expression frozen. “Go home.”

I locked my body against a flinch, reminding myself his anger came from raw grief. “No.”

Varidian speared a glare over my shoulder at Sabira, his mouth opening on a command—one she’d follow because as his prince she couldn’t defy him.

Without looking, he snapped his hand up and flicked tense fingers over his shoulder, and—and the wyvern who’d been sneaking up on his back lurched mid-motion and twisted to race to one of the nearby peaks. I forgot how to breathe when the wyvern rammed into solid stone, the crunch of bone, the snap of its neck brutal.

“You need me,” I repeated, fighting to be here even when he very clearly did not need me. What use was I when he could control riders and wyverns alike? A tremor started to crawl up my arms.

Mak shook his head one last time and let the wyvern join its dead rider on the rocky path below. When he looked at me, his crimson eyes were heavy with worry and sadness, not alive with murder like I expected. My heart pulled tight but I sat straighter on Raheema’s back. Even if Varidian sent me away, I wouldn’t flinch. I wouldn’t show him how much the reminder that I was useless hurt. I should have known better; even atop a wyvern I was the same woman with the same useless magic. If I’d hadstrength or speed or even accuracy with a knife, I could have helped.

Raheema growled that wedidhelp, that we took out one wyvern, but even that wasn’t true. We needed Mak to finish him off.

“Go, Ameirah,” Varidian said, his voice thunder and rage. “Please.”

My stomach tangled. I flinched at a rush of flame and movement in the corner of my eye, Raheema spinning us out of its path. A many-spiked crimson wyvern careened past us, fighting and twisting andscreechingas Shula’s grey locked on its tail, gnashing teeth past scales.

This battle was gritty and brutal like at the Last Guard, butcloser.Death breathed down my neck and I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I refused to wilt in my seat, but panic and doubt began to unravel me.

“You need me,” I fought, looking at Mak, at Varidian. Beyond him, Nabil shot through the sky, a plume of wicked fire right on his tail, close enough that Buchra screamed. Varidian could have been there, at his back, knocking the other wyvern out of the sky, but instead he was here, babysitting me.

My stomach clenched.

“Fine,” I breathed, defeated.

Varidian couldn’t have heard me but he saw the shape of my mouth form the word and exhaled a rough breath. I waited for his expression to soften, waited to see the man who held me at night and covered my face in kisses as he laid obsessive declaration after unhinged promise against my skin. But no part of him thawed even a millimetre.

“To the wall,” he ordered in the tone of a commander, and I hated my failure and his dismissal almost as much as I hated the relief that hit me. It was sickening, that relief—I wasgladto be leaving this chaos of bludgeoning spikes and screaming, scalding fire.

My eyes burned, but I guided Raheema back to the wall, my throat tight, eyes burning. I forced back my tears, not wanting my vision to blur. I kept my head swivelling to search for any riders sneaking up on us, my disappointment, my failure, crushing my chest.

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