Chapter 21
AMEIRAH
Ashimmer of warm, welcoming magic lapped at my skin, and it was so jarring when I’d braced for biting pain, cuts, and glass gouging through my skin into muscle, that I jumped.
“Easy,” Kamaal murmured, the wind soft enough here for me to hear him clearer. “We have a few seconds before Kaazhim flies through, so listen closely. The king sent us here to retrieve something—”
“A journal,” I filled in, staring at the vaulted building we’d flown into—cavernous and high, with small windows along the top of the room that sun rays slanted through, dust motes dancing within them.
Square windows lined the building, not arched, and the space was far wider than the slim, angular tower.
We really had flown through the window. It was a doorway, somehow.
“A journal,” Kamaal repeated, as if this was news to him. “We need to do everything to make sure he doesn’t get it.”
“I already decided that, thanks,” I muttered, scanning the space. “It could give us an advantage.”
“Good, you’ve accepted we’re an us.”
I didn’t tell him I’d meant the Legion of Fyrevein and I. If they survived. “Tell me you have a plan.”
“I have many plans.”
I ground my teeth. “For this, for today, to get me the hell out of here.”
“I’m working on it,” Kamaal replied, lowering his voice as Raya flew deeper into the vast room, and Kaazhim’s dark green wyvern finally made an appearance. I saw its wings from the corner of my eye but didn’t look at the rider.
Working on it wasn’t a yes. My shoulders sank. My only ally, and even he couldn’t help me. No, not my only ally. I jolted and waited until Raya took a wider arc around the building, giving us some distance from Kaazhim as his gentry cronies came through the window.
“When I was in the dungeon, your father threatened Mihrunnisa. He said if I didn’t do as he wanted, he’d lock her up down there with me.”
“Fuck,” Kamaal spat with as much feeling as I’d heard him. “I should have got her out before we left.”
“Too late now,” I murmured, staring out one of the high windows as Raya soared past them. The city beyond was none I’d ever seen before, none I’d even heard described in old stories.
Spires made of spiralling white stone thrust up from a city formed of purple-leafed trees, vaulted buildings in a style I’d never seen, and pearly bridges that stretched over the tributaries of a silver river, upon which lilac light from the sky rippled. Not golden—the sun was lilac.
It was too late to help Mihrunnisa because we were no longer in Ithanys.