Chapter 11
AMEIRAH
As wild and alive as my emotions were, I didn’t hesitate one second before storming across Jamaa Square to where Xiu stood, stately and beautiful and as cold as the frozen wastes on the furthest continent.
She looked exactly the same, not a single hair out of place in the waterfall of purple-sheened black that fell over the fire-red silk dress she wore.
Her eyes were already locked on mine, but as I strode towards her, Raheema issuing a low warning breath laced with hot iron and flame, I watched the hatred flare in her eyes.
I’d never found out why she loathed me so entirely.
As a child I believed she hated me—who I was at my core—and she certainly critiqued every last part of me, content to make me feel as small as an ant.
But as I grew older, and with months of distance between us now, I knew that hatred had more to do with her than me.
Did I remind her of the home she’d been unable to visit for decades?
Did I have the eyes of a mother, the smile of a sister, the bearing of a favourite aunt?
I never truly knew why she’d left her home.
Beyond veiled references to her family being far away, and mine wanting nothing to do with me, she’d told me very little despite being my handmaiden for twenty-five years.
One single wrong word and I’ll roast you, Raheema rumbled, a threat that delighted me enough to smile.
That was something I’d so rarely done in my father’s kasbah in Strava, and something I found easier and more natural now, even with my husband miles away and the world teetering on the edge of danger all around us.
With Raheema at my side, I could smile, and I watched the shock take root in Xiu as she blinked.
That one reaction was all she allowed; her face swept back into cool composure, her back straight, chin lifted, mouth flattened with disapproval. So familiar, and yet a total stranger. She was no one to me. Now I had my own family, my own wyvern, I didn’t need her.
“Sidi!” a pealing male voice cut through the low hum of voices that remained in the square—those spectators brave or stupid enough not to flee wyvernfyre, plus the royal family, the guards who surrounded us, and Xiu, watching me watch her. “Majesty! News from Daurith.”
Daurith? I jolted like I’d been struck, turning to face the direction of the voice and finding a tall, slim man in worn leathers and dirty shoes. Sweat slicked black hair to his head, his cheeks.
The last time I heard anyone talk about Daurith, the sacred hatching city had been threatened by those dark clergy and their wyverns.
But Varidian and the legion predicted the attack; they would have moved legions in to protect the younglings, surely…
? They would have warned the other legions, the commanders, and the king himself so he and the council might send warriors to defend it.
“What news from Daurith?” It was Kamaal, not the king, who responded. His voice emerged like a thunderclap, rife with foreboding menace.
“The city was attacked by wyverns,” the messenger said—hesitantly. He gulped, glanced away and said, “They’re saying the city was sacked by one of our own legions, that the lightning soul has corrupted our riders.”
“Bullshit,” Mihrunnisa exploded, then cringed when her father’s attention swung her way. She ducked her chin, hands clasped in front of herself.
“All I know is smoke rises from the city of Daurith,” the messenger said meekly, “and a lightning storm raged in the skies before the destruction.”
“What remains of the city?” King Bakshi finally demanded, the predatory angle of his tilted head at odds with the hope he’d arranged his affable face into. “Do the hatching grounds remain? The bonding square? The turmeric towers?”
“One tower was struck,” the messenger replied. “But the hatching grounds remain, and the damage is mostly to the wall and perimeter buildings.”
I exhaled a slow breath. Varidian must have gotten there in time. But for there to be rumours that the lightning soul had corrupted one of our legions… what the hell had he done down in that city? Did the messenger realise just how close he was to the truth?
“I’d like to dispatch a ground legion to guard the city against any further attacks,” Kamaal said to the king. I knew he was a renowned warrior in himself, but I hadn’t realised he was quite so involved in the placement and strategy of Ithanys’s armies.
Bakshi nodded, his expression impossible to read. Frustrated? Irate? Bored? I struggled to pin down the flash in his eyes before it vanished. He was an exceptional actor. I wouldn’t have known the little tells were there if I hadn’t been warned of him first.
“I’ll escort ummi and my sisters to the palace, then send you my recommendations for the post.”
The king was barely listening; he strode the last few steps to the messenger and clasped his shoulders. “I want you to tell me everything, every last story you heard. Leave out no detail.”
The messenger’s throat bobbed but he nodded.
Daurith attacked, in the same week Tourlestyn had been. It wasn’t a coincidence; the attacks were increasing. Those black-clad monsters were stretching their shadow across the empire.
I needed to get to the great library in the palace.
In my search for information about the lightning soul, and how to remove and contain it, or at least dim its presence in a person, I’d encountered passages dedicated to the darkness it had warred with.
Light against dark, in every single book.
But that darkness had been the Zalaam queen and her araethawn soldiers.
And yet… the lightning soul was back. Old legends, reborn in Ithanys’s new age. It made the back of my neck prickle, a warning I hadn’t yet translated. Daurith was mentioned in those old tales, too. It had been one of the first targets of the dark ones.
I looked up when Kamaal strode over to me, his expression combative.
“I’m not leaving Raheema. I don’t trust anyone with her,” I said firmly, forcing my voice to hold steady even as the ruination of Daurith had shaken me. Was Varidian there? And if he was, why had the messenger not spoken of him?
A shadow crossed Kamaal’s eyes. Chocolate brown with a ring of silver, not quite as eerie as mine but remarkable still. “Leave it with me,” he said so only I could hear, and while I didn’t trust a single person in this city… I trusted Varidian’s word that Kamaal wasn’t a danger. So I nodded.
“There’s something else,” I said quietly, glancing over my shoulder. “My handmaiden—”
But the place where Xiu had been watching me with fiery hatred in her eyes was empty. She was gone.
“Nothing,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Let’s return to the palace.”