Chapter 2
VARIDIAN
Lightning crackled in my veins as Makrukh’s ivory wings caught a rush of wind and sailed out of the shadow of the Undaur Mountains.
I commanded the crackling flare of magic to cool, to calm, but it was harder to keep in check with Ameirah gone.
I had no one to blame for that but myself, though sending Ameirah to Morysen was the safest choice.
If my bastard father, the King of Ithanys, was behind the gathering darkness, the dark-robed zealots, and the wyverns who attacked my home, the capital was the only place Ameirah would be safe.
He wouldn’t loose those fiends upon his own home, his shining, glorious city. It was the right thing to do.
I just wished it hurt less. I’d expected Ameirah’s absence to gnaw at me like a broken tooth, but instead it was a deep stab wound to a vital area, steadily leaking blood and vital fluid. She’d call me dramatic if I ever said the words to her, but it truly felt like I’d die without her.
Mak whipped his head around, a low sound in the back of his huge, scaled throat. I couldn’t understand him word for word, but our link meant his meaning came across. If you don’t focus, we’re both riding to our deaths.
Even if he was right, I rolled my eyes. “I miss my wife. Sue me.”
I waited for him to roll his eyes right back, or give me a sassy growl, but instead it was a low keen of sympathy. He missed Ameirah, too. I reached forward to pat the warm scales of his neck, but I had no reassuring words. I didn’t know when it would be safe for her to come home.
When the darkness was gone, when the dark robed bastards were eradicated from our cities, was the obvious answer, but how long would that take?
I couldn’t weather that kind of separation from Ameirah.
I’d be lucky to last another week. It had been seven days since Mak and I flew her to the rolling hills several miles west of Morysen, sheltering in the dense desert trees that covered them as I handed my unconscious (but still recognisably furious) wife to Kamaal with a promise of slow, unbearable death if anything happened to her.
My brother would keep her safe. Mihrunnisa would keep an eye on her, too. Even so, I didn’t like how close she’d be to my father. He wouldn’t kill her, wouldn’t hurt her, unless he tried to use her magic like he did to me. Unless, like me, she resisted.
It was too fucking late for those worries. Kamaal would keep her safe. He was lethal in a fight, and his heart was forged in fae steel—hard and unbending but good, right to his core.
I snapped out of the gnawing worry when Aliah’s sleek burgundy wyvern came close alongside Mak, bloodlust shining in her jade green eyes and the spikes at the tip of her tail a clear threat to her enemies.
Too close, Mak rumbled at her.
She snapped her teeth. I’ll show you too close.
“Habiba,” Aliah yelled over the wind, and I physically saw the wyvern’s body move with a sigh as she put her teeth away.
“There’s nothing out of place around the city, but I’m worried about the hills on the other side,” Aliah shouted to me, pointing beyond the grassy hills that protected the nests of Daurith, where deeper shadows hid among taller hills.
This close to the coast, rough winds battered the grasses, whistling through gaps between the aviary towers that stood above the short stone houses where the fae of Daurith lived.
Those famous towers were known for their solid turmeric-yellow stone, with arched landings where wyverns would launch their flight, and flat, perilous bridges that soared from tower to tower, cutting through the sky, just barely wide enough for a wyvern to walk.
“There could be a legion hiding in the hills,” Aliah shouted. “Or a force of ground warriors.”
“How close can you get?” I asked over the wind, assessing the hunched curves of the hills for a glimmer of movement. I tried to ignore the wind that kicked up, the skies that darkened overhead.
Control yourself.
Barked, steely words. The first words the lightning soul had spoken to me all day. I didn’t know her name, didn’t have anything to call her except lightning soul.
I’m in control.
You’re emotional and volatile. Get a hold of yourself unless you want lightning to strike those wyvernlings’ towers.
I hissed a breath through my teeth, but she was right. Any one of those yellow towers could act as a lightning rod, and the result would be disastrous. We’d come to protect the young, not kill them ourselves.
Breathe, she ordered me. And think of that wicked mate of yours.
I knew she meant think of the threat Ameirah made that she’d kill me if anything happened to you, but thinking of my wife grounded me.
I wished she were here at my side, even if I would have been terrified for her to ride into danger.
And it was danger, no matter how pastoral and quiet the scene laid in front of us.
We’d taken turns watching the sacred city in the week since the attack on Red Manniston, along with the small home guard in Daurith, but all we’d seen were glimpses of shadows that might be nothing at all—until this morning, when Nabil and the Daurith watchman spotted a dark-winged wyvern flying above the clouds.
“Tight formation, Mak,” I shouted over the wind, and he relayed the order to the mounts of my legion, everyone falling into place, forming an arrowhead we’d used to break apart Kaldic threats for years.
It was still surreal, unnatural, that our enemies were wyverns.
What the hell happened, for our own creatures to turn against us?
Kalder could still be behind this. They might have stolen and trained the wyvern, found a fae who could wield control like I could.
But deep in my gut, it didn’t feel true. It felt bigger.
“What the fuck is that?” Nabil yelled, Buchra echoing him with a low rumble where his green wyvern flew at the tail of our formation.
It took me a moment to find what had caught his attention and then my stomach sank. I’d never once seen one in person, but it was familiar enough from the textbooks I studied in the academy. Far, far bigger than I’d expected, its wooden arm as tall as the hill it had sheltered behind.
“A trebuchet,” Zaarib yelled from my right, his panic making my own heart kick up even as the lightning soul warned me to stay calm. “Anyone remember how to take one of these down?”
“Burn the shit out of it?” Shula suggested, her and Saif wearing matching brutal expressions.
“Take out the arm,” I agreed. “Shula, Nabil, warn the house guard. Get Chakir Kissami on the guard tower now.”
They peeled off immediately to follow the order, rousing Zaarib’s uncle and his battle-hardened wyvern to block the main road into Daurith.
“Tight arrow formation,” I yelled as the wind picked up, responding to my emotions.
Aliah and Zaarib pulled close; I angled my chin towards that mighty wooden trebuchet with the power to destroy the entire city of Daurith.
We’d planned for wyverns, for soldiers, but not this. “Wyvern, call your fire.”
Mak responded with an eager rumble, his ivory wings beating the air as the air heated around us, the scent of hot iron and bubbling blood surrounding us. Fire hot enough to burn bone.
We flew as fast as lightning over the hatching grounds, the turmeric towers, the streets paved in yellow stone, the city square where bonding ceremonies were held three times a year.
Where a single glance down showed fae younglings walking with their parents, older siblings, and trainers, trailed by wyvernlings no bigger than horses.
“Faster!” Zaarib shouted as he spotted them too, the wind stealing the power from his words until I barely heard them. When he dropped low over Dahab, I followed suit with Aliah.
You’re not flying fast enough, the lightning soul said in her crisp, ageless voice. Look. Look at the sling; it already moves. It already carries fire.
I sucked in a sharp breath, tasting the electric charge of lightning in the air as I saw she was right. A dark, crimson glow already gathered at the base of the trebuchet’s arm.
“It’s moving!” Aliah cried. “Can we cut it off before it fires?”
Not at this speed.
A weight pressed on my shoulders as I realised what she meant. We couldn’t do it together, but I could. With her magic, with the strength it suffused my veins with, I could do it.
Overhead, clouds churned, blocking out the sun, and I glanced at them once before I made my decision.
“Faster, Mak,” I urged, my heart clattering against my ribs as the electric, ozone scent grew, the air crackling against my leathers and his scales. He didn’t flinch, but I sensed his worry. One misstep and everyone would know who lived within me. One misstep and I’d be hunted, executed.
Don’t fight the pain, the lightning soul advised. Let it flow through you even as it hurts as all great power hurts. Will you pay the price?
Would I allow her mark on my body to grow?
To save the wyverns and younglings of Daurith?
I might be damning myself, but I would. Children were sacred, innocent.
I’d seen enough innocents killed that the thought of them suffering while I could help was unbearable.
I wouldn’t have Ameirah be ashamed of me.
I would make her proud, always. Even if she was furious that I sent her away.
It started in my fingertips, then my palms. Crackling, intense power that was so cold it burned, or so hot it froze my skin, my muscles, my bones within them.
I hissed through my teeth at the foretold pain, but I curled my hands into fists, using my thighs to keep my seat on Mak, and endured the bite of the power as it flowed up my arms and into my chest, carving its silver patterns into my skin.
The sky turned as dark as ink over us, flickers of lightning now visible within the clouds.
“A storm!” Aliah warned. “Will it put out the fire?”