Chapter 10 #2
Blood spilled down the pearly scales of Raheema’s leg, a whetstone against which my fury sharpened itself.
My magic churned, so close I could taste the bitterness of death on the back of my tongue.
Muhannad’s jaws parted, eerily like a smile, and he blew a ring of taunting smoke at Raheema as she backed up, a constant growl in her throat.
And then the smug, cruel creature looked across the square directly at me.
My heart jumped, stomach churning when eyes the colour of bitter limes met mine and held in a challenge and declaration.
I forced a smirk onto my face, made it settle there, my own challenge and declaration. Hers. Hers and never yours.
Raheema drove her legs into the floor while his eyes were on me and leapt into the air, snapping her wings out so close to the spectators along the edges that they leaned back with cries of surprise and distress.
I wished she’d taken their damned heads off.
Their shrieks were the only warning Muhannad was granted before Raheema propelled herself onto his back, digging talons and teeth into his back.
She ground her jaws to sink past toughened scales, finding a scar—a scar where his natural armour had been ripped off in some long past battle.
As if all the time he’d been sizing up her weaknesses, my clever wyvern had done the same and marked each one as a target.
Muhannad roared, spinning in a circle, his tail lashing into the legs of the first rows of the crowd, sending them satisfyingly onto their asses.
His head thrashed from side to side, lethal rage deepening his growl, and though his horns pierced Raheema’s smaller body, she never let go.
She’d sunk her sharp teeth into him and refused to surrender her prey, gnashing to get deeper purchase until finally, when Muhannad’s body bucked off the ground, she ripped out flesh and scale and blood, and dropped down of her own volition.
She spat the chunk of gore at his feet and licked the blood from her mouth, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream at her for goading him, for working him into a blood frenzy.
“Finish it,” King Bakshi ordered, loud enough to pierce the howling wind in my ears.
I whipped my head around to stare at him, and he lazily met my eyes. I had to physically drag my gaze away, inch by inch. I walked a dangerous line, but I couldn’t afford to cross it. To show insolence at that level would be treason.
You finish it, I told Raheema, fixing my eyes on the two wyverns, the difference in their sizes making my blood cold, apprehension a frigid sweat down my back. He favours his left wing; shred the right.
I know, she spat back, her eyes aglow as Muhannad launched at her and she leapt into the air, nimble enough to evade his blow.
With his size and wingspan, he didn’t have the space to get airborne, and the hot, metallic breath that punched through his nostrils said he was well aware of that, and furious about it.
He saw her next dive coming and was ready, rearing onto his powerful legs and scything sharp wings towards her, to the oohs and aahs of the crowd.
Raheema’s wingbeats hit me like physical blows as she frantically changed tack, avoiding the gutting blow he’d aimed at her vulnerable belly, but not the wicked line he tore down her leg.
She remained in the air, but tilted, and I could hardly breathe as Muhannad wound up for his next attack.
And I understood how he’d never walked off a battlefield in defeat, how he’d won every fight he’d ever flown into.
He was ruthless and cared about nothing but victory.
Because his dark throat began to glow, fire summoned to blast Raheema out of the air.
Despite the hundreds of people gathered, despite the king who’d presented him as his champion, his win all but handed to him, he would unleash fire in Jamaa Square.
Was that how he’d won so many battles? He killed everyone except his own legion—enemy and ally, threat and innocent alike.
The cheers turned to screams as people rushed to get out of the way of that lethal threat. Getting caught in its path was certain death, and worse—the most painful death. There was no worse fate.
Queen Adeela was already on her feet, the charms on her detailed headdress rattling, her mouth parted on words I couldn’t hear as Muhannad and Raheema roared at once, their screams both a promise of death.
The Saber siblings leapt to their feet on either side of me, backing away as heat shimmered in the air, hot enough to blow the hair back from my face.
I stood slowly but didn’t retreat, standing there to bear witness to the death that would fall. But whose?
“Ameirah,” Mihrunnisa shouted above the wyvern screams. She grabbed my upper arm, twisting me half away from the bonding square that had become a slaughterhouse. “We need to get out of here.”
“Stop,” the king yelled, his voice carrying through a net of magic. “Muhannad, stop!”
But the black wyvern parted his jaws, far beyond commands and reason.
I planted my feet, equally resistant. I didn’t budge as Raheema zipped through the sky, her injured leg trailing as her wings hammered the air, carrying her in an arching path as Muhannad’s throat glowed bright orange, fire pouring up his tongue now.
Mihrunnisa managed to drag me back two steps but no further.
I tore my arm free, ripped off my glove, and took one desperate step forward as Raheema flipped without warning—away from the blaze of orange fire that blast from Muhannad’s parted maw, scorched a black line on the square’s boundary wall, and blackened a tree to ashes.
It would take a minute, maybe longer for his mighty inhale to produce more fire, so even though heat singed my skin through my fine clothes, I cast my glove to the ground and raced forward a step—only one before Kamaal grabbed both my shoulders, heaving me back.
“I promised my brother I would keep you safe, and that does not entail allowing you to race into a wyvern battle,” he barked in the same unyielding voice he issued training instructions.
This was the soldier whose reputation swept all of Ithanys, whose prowess and lethal ability was so renowned they told stories of him in medinas, gentry homes, and humble shacks alike.
End him, I screamed down my link to Raheema, struggling against Kamaal’s hold. It has to be now, Raheema!
She was already angling her wings to bring her closer, blood dripping from her wounds.
She flew through the pain and dove without warning, beating those fragile wings as she kicked out her legs and raked talons through Muhannad’s black wings.
Deep enough to gouge, to split the membrane.
But not enough to stop his head whipping into the back of Raheema’s neck, teeth locking onto the place beneath her nubby horns.
“Raheema!” I screamed, terrified by how close those wicked teeth were to her neck, how easily he could twist his jaw and rip out her throat. Kamaal struggled to hold me back as I thrashed.
She shredded his wings until membrane hung like tatters from strips of muscle, then jumped back. Blood ran down her head, down her neck, but she was still flying, still breathing. Still fighting.
And when his enormous body thrashed, that spiked head winding, absolutely livid, Raheema used all her strength, her weight, and her stubborn rage, to throw herself into his chest, locking wings and talons and fangs alike in his throat.
As quickly as that, she tore it out. Tossed it across the square where it landed at the feet of Bakshi as the king froze, staring in outrage and shock.
And I knew, with the back of my neck tingling in warning, we would pay for this.
For killing his war wyvern, for ruining his plans, whatever they were, for me.
But joy and relief poured into the chambers of my heart, and right now, I couldn’t give a single shit about what the future held. Raheema was alive. Bleeding, limping, bitten, and scratched, but alive.
Kamaal released me with a grunt, and I took off running and didn’t stop until I was beneath her. Raheema’s silvery-blue head lowered to press against mine, and a laugh of disbelief left me, scattering through the square. We did it. She beat a war-wyvern.
And even though Raheema held my attention, our link full of her relief and grumbling annoyance that I hadn’t believed in her right to the end, I felt the prickle on the side of my face.
Felt the stare, the rage and power within it, and expected to find the king.
But when I looked across the square, it was Xiu, my old handmaiden, whose eyes were fixed on me with the hatred she’d regarded me with all my life.