Page 86 of Wings of Cruelty and Flame

“Mak,” I said gutturally.

He shot like a star, like a lightning bolt towards the wall.

One of the legion had got inside my city and taken out our shields, and the only reason they’d need to do that was sootherlegions could fly in.

“Spread out,” I yelled to my legion. “Scout the mountains, find their access point and send up a plume of fire when you’ve found it. If you see the signal, converge on the site.”

I knew in my gut there were other wyverns, just waiting for the wards to drop. Even now, they were converging on the city. They hadn’t stormed the wall, so they must have hidden among the mountains around the city. I veered eastward over the city, searching the rooftops for the domes and minaret of the mosque where I anchored the shield, where I now felt that anchor shattered apart.

“Fuck,” I breathed, the rage pausing inside me for a moment when I saw the tip of the spire had been knocked off.

Mak’s low rumble assured me they would pay for the destruction. I was still reeling at that blight on the familiar skyline I’d grown up seeing, when he soared over the merchant’s guild and didn’t even try to wheedle me into visiting his favourite vendor at the nearby souk.

There were no fires, no more crumbling buildings yet, but smoke sat acrid and metallic in my lungs, tinged with blood, and the stillness dropped inside me, letting bloodlust and rage back to the surface. The battle was inside me, boiling my blood, making my body shake. Mak was right. They would pay for invading my home.

I pushed Mak faster, wind tearing at the knot of hair on the back of my head, whipping my coat against my legs, pulling at the leather holding knives to my body. I still had every one left, hadn’t needed a single blade to deal with the wyverns outside the city, and that felt intentional.

Mak lurched faster beneath me, a fearsome roar pouring from him, the air heating around us, and everything inside me narrowed to his line of sight, searching for what he’d seen. When I saw the dark swarm in the sky above the mountains, above the Diamond of the South, my stomach plummeted. But I couldn’t let pain make me falter.

Even if—even if taking them down destroyed the Diamond, we had to do it. For the people of Red Manniston. And taking outthis legion meant they couldn’t attack another city, couldn’t fly on Daurith. I had no doubt the dark clergy had more legions, for whatever purpose, but they wouldn’t have this one.

“Send the signal,” I ordered Mak, bracing for the plume of fire when he tipped his head back, firing flame and death into the grey sky. Fine hairs blew back from my face, the taste of fire on my tongue—coal and embers and blackened wood mixed with blood and iron. A scent that had always meant home, Mak, and my legion, but which now meant enemies and death.

How many legions did the so-called clergy have? Enough to sack a city as big and important as Daurith? Wyfell had fallen into chaos so fast, and they’d had a single legion to do that—but so many clergy in dark uniforms. Kaldics, more like, in the guise of clergy.

My heart quickened as Mak let fire streak the sky and flew on, faster than the sound of his roar travelled, his wings beating the air into submission. I sucked in air, trying to centre myself when my whole body shook with power and wrath and violence. They got into my city, attacked my mosque, threatened mywife.Not a single one of them would leave alive.

There, Mak growled, jerking his head, a ring of smoke leaving his jaws. We flew through it, and then I saw what he’d fixed his sights on. A skinny cobalt led the enemy legion towards us, their numbers three, four, five times the size of the one outside the wall—the true threat. That first legion was bait, easy prey to keep us occupied while these snuck in the back way.

Well, fuck that. They wouldn’t get any further. My legion would have seen the signal, would be on their way even now. I didn’t stop to wonder if flying alone to face a legion a hundred strong was a suicide mission. The rage had me in its grip, power crackling through my veins. When we were in range, I lifted my hands, slashed and twisted them through the air, sendinga razor-edged hook into the mind of the rider atop that cobalt wyvern and—

There wasn’t one. The wyvern raced at us, wings cutting like a threat through the air, body taut and poised for attack, teeth bared—riderless. A rapid, frantic scan of the wyverns behind it showed they were the same.

I’d never seen this before, wyverns organised into a legion without riders, honed to a purpose without a bond, a mount. Mak was strangely silent under me, his unease reaching me through our tether.

What reason would a group of wyverns have for attacking the Red Star? Even the wyverns at Wyfell had riders… hadn’t they?

Shit, we were flying right at them, outnumbered a hundred to one, and they had no riders for me to compel. It was far harder to drive into the minds of wyvern, but I sucked in a breath, honed my focus, and twisted my hands through the air, spearing magic across the ever-closing distance between us and the cobalt wyvern.

I exhaled a rough breath of relief when my magic speared through the resistance of the wyvern’s mind, and for a second, I thought I could do this, weaken them long enough for Mak to fight, for the legion to get here. My heart faltered when I pierced the wyvern’s mind, laying the groundwork for my control, intending to unleash the cobalt’s fire on the rest of its group to scatter their numbers… but there was another web of control here. Not a spear like my magic, but threads of silver magic, tangled and overlapping into a net the creature had no hope of ever escaping.

Breathing faster, sweat rolling down my face, I tore my magic out of the cobalt and dove into a crimson, then an emerald, then a black, a silver, a gold, an ivory, a violet, finding the same thing every time.

I couldn’t take control of the wyverns. Someone was already controlling them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

AMEIRAH

Ilatched my eyes on the ruby wyvern as it leapt out of the way of the falling dome. I didn’t look away as it hit the ground, didn’t check to see if it splintered into pieces.

“Get me close, Raheema,” I said, a strange, frozen calm settling over me, blotting out the fiery pain raking up and down my thigh. One by one, I removed the gloves on my hands and tucked them inside the cuffs of my dress, flexing my fingers. “Close enough to touch.”

Understanding, Raheema rumbled her approval and shot across the distance between us and the rider like a flash of light. I knew she must have been in pain, too, knew I shouldn’t have pushed her so hard, but all I could see was the dome crashing, the minaret snapping, and the people of the Red Star vulnerable on the ground.

How many more wyverns would get into the city now?

Face them later,I told myself, my heart slamming my ribs as we neared the ruby, so close the scent of iron and smoke thickened.

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