Wings of Malice and Storm (Heir of Wyvara #2)
Chapter 1
AMEIRAH
Iwoke up fighting, ready to slay whoever had put chains around my body and sunk me to the bottom of a river. But it was the tightly pinned sheets of a bed that held me, not chains, and rather than jailors, a pretty, gold-eyed woman leaned over me.
“Oh, you’re beautiful,” she said with a smile a moment before I ripped my hands out of the sheets which bound them and wrapped both around her throat. “I’m—Mihrunnisa,” she choked out, water lining her bright eyes. “Varidian’s sister. Your sister.” She gave me a winning smile even as I choked her.
With a sigh, I released her.
“I could have killed you,” I muttered, frowning at the embroidered silver gloves on my hands, beadwork encircling where the fabric ended at my elbow. “Whoever put these gloves on me saved your life.”
“Oh, that was me.” Her smile didn’t waver; she went as far as to pat my knee over the covers.
“I made sure my hands were gloved first, obviously. I didn’t want to die before I could officially meet you.
I wanted to be at your marriage celebration, but…
” Her smile faded for the first time. “Well, I needed to stay here in the capital.”
I closed my eyes, pain unfurling behind my breastbone along with a healthy dose of anger. Varidian really did it. He knocked me out then shipped me off to Morysen. That stubborn, arrogant bastard. When I opened my eyes again, I was glaring. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Varidian?” Mihrunnisa asked with a laugh, scooting off the bed when I exploded from the covers, my hands shaking with fury. “Yeah, I’d be irritated if he dumped me here without a goodbye. Why was it so important that you come to Morysen, anyway?”
“Because my husband is a bastard,” I snarled, storming over to the curtained archway that led onto a balcony, scanning the city beyond. A clang went through my heart at how unfamiliar the landscape was.
Angular buildings fashioned from sandstone and silver brick sprawled out around what must be the palace, light gleaming through their windows, so similar to the flat-roofed buildings of the Red Star but without the vibrant colour.
I could make out the canvas roofs of market stalls through a gap between a gold-domed mosque and a tall, spired minaret.
Trees thrust up wherever there was space, verdant and lush, making the city smell of turmeric, cumin, and waxy leaves. Not home, but beautiful.
The sky beyond the city walls was a deep sapphire, casting the rolling desert hills in shades of cobalt and violet. It was past sunset; Varidian would be long gone. I gnashed my teeth, arms crossed over my chest. I was being rude to Mihrunnisa, but I was too hurt to care.
“So,” she said, dragging out the word as she came to stand beside me, gazing out at her city. “You and Varidian…”
I gave her a sidelong glance that would have shut up an ordinary person.
But Mihrunnisa clearly possessed the same stubbornness as my husband because she just raised her groomed eyebrows and held eye contact.
Her gold eyes were ringed with a dark line of kohl, her lashes a dark, pretty sweep against her cheekbones.
She reminded me a little of Aliah, and despite hardly knowing the Legion of Fyrevein, I wished they were here.
I wished I wasn’t alone in a city of strangers and unknown threats.
Were those so-called-clergy who threatened Wyfell here, hidden among the city ready to sow misinformation and drum up panic, to turn the world against the lightning soul?
I sighed, which Mihrunnisa wrongly interpreted and gave me a wince.
The lightning soul was inside my husband, and I didn’t know how to get her to bond to a different person.
I hardly knew anything about lightning souls at all, just that they were extremely deadly, and their presence led to deaths in the hundred thousands.
They were so dangerous, it was widely accepted they needed to be wiped out; death was the only way to deal with them, and they should never be welcomed.
The old stories did make me wonder, though, if there’d been a similar smear campaign in the past. Had robed men stood upon a platform hundreds of years ago and shouted the dangers of accepting the lightning soul?
Knowing what I did of history being retold, legends twisted, how much truth was in each story?
“Varidian and I are fine,” I said to Mihrunnisa, turning to her and surprised to find I was taller than her. “He’s just an idiot.”
She gave me a sympathetic look, patting my arm and jolting me with the casual touch. “Did he fall out another window?”
Laughter barked from me. “Another?”
She gave me a conspiratorial look, grazing her shoulder against mine. “He’ll tell you he got the scar on his left shoulder by falling off Mak, but he was sitting on the balcony with Zaarib singing ‘The Ballad of Anwar’ and he rolled off.”
I snorted, the visual so clear I could see it. My smile faded a moment later when I remembered my darling husband had abandoned me. Decided he knew what was best for me and abandoned me.
“Good,” I said fiercely. “I almost wish he had fallen off another balcony.” At Mihrunnisa’s less than subtle look, I told her, “I didn’t exactly agree to come here. He decided I was safer in Morysen.”
She winced. “My fool brother. It comes from a protective place, so try not to be too hard on him. The lightning soul has everyone scared, so I understand why he’d act so cautiously.”
I waited for her to add something about the attack on the Red Star, but she didn’t. My frown deepened. Did the people in the capital not know about the wyverns who attacked Red Manniston?
Mihrunnisa clasped my arm. “I heard a rumour that lightning was spotted at the coast west of Wenton, setting the whole ocean ablaze with lightning.”
“I doubt that,” I muttered. “People lie, Mihrunnisa.”
She drew her hand back, standing stiffly. “I’m not na?ve, no matter what you might think.”
That hadn’t crossed my mind for a second. “I wasn’t insulting your intelligence—”
“I’ll let you get settled in. There’s a cold supper on the table for you, and I’ll see you at dawn. My room is down the hall from yours if you need anything desperately.”
“Mihrunnisa,” I said when she opened the door and breezed through in a cloud of gold-embroidered fabric. “Thank you.”
She gave me a faint smile and closed the door, leaving me in an unfamiliar room with no one but myself for company. I hardly even knew how I offended her, and I found myself hoping she’d return.
I’d grown up feeling abandoned and unwanted, but after the warmth of Varidian and the Red star, even the surly camaraderie of the fortress and the legion, being left here made me cold deep in my heart. I’d never felt so alone.
I’d determined to leave Morysen behind. I had it all planned out: I’d borrow a wyvern or stow away on a cart bound for the south, use my bare hands if I needed to defend myself against ruffians, and no matter how long it took, I would return to my idiot husband and the Red Star.
I’d spent most of the night putting a plan together, but every single intention turned to smoke when I entered the castle’s mosque with Mihrunnisa on my right and the silent, foreboding queen on my left, and found instead of an imam leading the service clad in ordinary regalia, clothes as black as ink embroidered with silver.
The dark clergy who executed the innocent farmer in Wyfell were here.
I folded my hands into fists within the secrecy of my djellaba, folds of soft, purple fabric hiding my rage as the clergyman impressed the dangers of the unknown upon the gathered worshippers.
New, foreign, peculiar—these things were bad.
These things spelled danger and the downfall of the world we loved.
Like the speech in Wyfell, there was no hope, no inspiration or reassurance in the clergy’s message. Only doom. Only fearmongering.
I kept my face blank and neutral but inside I seethed. How dare this man come into a holy place and taint it with his hatred, with his propaganda? Whether the lightning soul was a threat remained to be determined, but the looks I saw exchanged around me? Those were a far more immediate danger.
None had turned my way—yet—but there was a woman in a djellaba the colour of freshly tilled earth to our left who seemed to be the subject of whispers and speculation.
I barely got a glimpse of her face, couldn’t tell if she had physical anomalies like my eyes, my hair, or if her otherness formed in different ways.
An analytical mind, a too-loud voice, an interest in taking things apart to see how they worked, adeptness at medicine and healing, a reluctance to marry.
I’d seen all these things in Strava earn whispers, as ridiculous as they were.
How long before there was another execution to ‘keep us safe?’ How long before the word sympathiser was thrown around, a neat and bloodless weapon to be turned on anyone you disliked?
I lowered my head and prayed that I was wrong. But some prayers are never meant to be answered.
“Surely you have better things to be doing,” I said hopefully, my stomach flipping when Kamaal approached the rack against the side of the open training arena in the heart of the Morysen palace.
Palace of the Great and Noble Saber was its true name, and that prestige was reflected even here—arabesque designs covered every golden wall of the training space, painstakingly carved by master craftsmen.
Each flowing mark spoke of scripture, stories, and history, the designs breaking only for narrow windows that looked out on the grove of olive trees at the back of the palace where the queen entertained people over the fragrant scents of qahwa and jasmine.
I got the sense she kept glancing through the windows as her son, Kamaal Saber, Crown Prince and eldest son of King Bakshi Saber and Queen Majida Saber, contemplated how he could most efficiently torment me today.