Chapter 29
AMEIRAH
“Fly, Raya!” Kamaal roared over the shouts of fae and the wyvern screeches that filled the sky. “As fast as you can, take us east!”
East? From this angle in the city, east would deliver us to Earlsorn, or Strava. I had no intention of going anywhere near my former home, but if it got us out of the city, I’d handle it.
All around us, in every direction, leathery wings beat the air, talons carved paths through the sky, and fire raged.
Bright orange plumes painted blackened streaks across the tallest spires, the medina, and homes—homes that had been full of families—were ablaze.
Smoke rose in dark columns from so many corners of the city that I couldn’t count them, and for a second, the raging grief inside me stumbled.
Had the king’s dark wyverns attacked their own people?
Had he unleashed them upon his own city, the shining capital of an empire he would allow to succumb to darkness?
It was a very short leap to assume he was working with the queen who incinerated the journal, and that he sent her after me to destroy it once he’d used my blood, my family connection, to find the manor.
“What else can you do with your power?” Kamaal shouted, snapping me out of it. He cut his arm through the air in a powerful arc and a wave of silver power hit the two wyverns at the head of the formation. “Can you summon deathfyre yet?”
“Can I summon what?” I demanded, the furore and heat of the fire hitting my face, making my skin prickle.
He sank low over Raya, pushing me flat to her neck as she flew over the industrial district’s sprawling warehouses and tall factories.
Even the mighty forges of those factories had died, no smoke pouring from their tall chimneys, as if the workers had fled.
But fled who? Who was in charge of this assault—and why Morysen?
“Deathfyre,” Kamaal shouted, his words almost stolen by the wind. A storm was gathering; I felt it in the crackle of energy and danger over my skin. The fire and wyverns were bad enough, but to be caught in a storm too? Outrunning them would be impossible. “Summon it, Ameirah.”
I threw a glance over my shoulder as Raya wheeled, avoiding a blaze, spewing orange flames into the sky, grazing her silver underbelly.
The heat of it made my eyes water, my nose prickle.
Those dark wyverns raced after us, their riders single-minded as they hunted us.
I counted seven wyverns, led by two riders on a gunmetal wyvern with a barbed tail and a sleek ruby that reminded me unsettlingly of the wyvern that snuck into the Red Star and knocked out our shields.
Not the same wyvern, but maybe a relative.
“Faster, Raya,” I yelled, my heart shooting panic-laced blood through me when I locked eyes with the pockmarked-faced rider of the gunmetal wyvern.
I’d never seen him before, but the black eyes, the intense, predatory expression, and the way he tilted his head as he stared at me were familiar.
He was of the same ilk as those clergy Kaazhim forced me to kill in the council chamber.
Something more than fae, something inhuman. “Faster!”
Kamaal twisted atop Raya’s back and drew his arm back as if he wielded a spear to deliver a killing blow. Bright silver magic fired across the smoky sky, more dagger than spear as sharp arcs of it sailed unerringly for the two riders at the head of the formation.
There was no space in my head for what had just happened in Riverren, no room in my chest for more than icy panic as those riders batted away Kamaal’s magic like the silver blades were no more than annoying gnats.
“Shit,” he swore. “Ameirah, anytime you want to try something would be great.”
“I could kill us as easily as them!” I snapped. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Fucking Jaouhari,” he snarled, and it took me a heartbeat, as hurt lanced through my chest, realising he was talking about my father. “Sometimes I think this is exactly why he didn’t allow you training or a wyvern. You would be less of a threat.”
Mihrunnisa had said something similar, but I didn’t have time to contemplate it right now.
“In the Red Star, I sent out a wave that killed all the wyverns, but—”
“Fuck the buts—do it!”
Barked commands from a man used to issuing orders. And being obeyed. But I wasn’t his soldier, and I wasn’t trained in warfare and combat.
“Raya!” Kamaal roared as she banked hard, twisting right—to avoid the whip of that spiked tail I realised a moment too late. My heart shot into my throat, restricting my breathing until I grew lightheaded.
It went against every instinct, but I closed my eyes, my heartbeat a ragged, stuttering thing as I reached deep inside myself, feeling for the core of cold, dark magic that killed all those wyverns. All I remembered from that frantic battle was wanting my magic to rise, wanting to kill the wyverns.
I felt Kamaal twist again, firing more of that silver magic at the wyverns. Judging by his muttered curse, they pushed it away again.
I want these riders to fall from the sky. I want their wyverns wiped free of this world. I want to kill them. All of them.
My breathing came harder, each wisp of air into my lungs a battle as I lifted my bare hand from my thigh and peeled my eyes open, pinpointing the gunmetal grey and ruby and their riders.
There was something wrong with them, something that made my skin crawl and my magic hiss at me.
Not as visceral as my reaction to the Zalaam queen but—the same.
It was the same source, the same corruption of power.
Were these riders hers, then? Were they the araethawn she speared dark magic into and twisted into something poisonous and hungry?
Or were these fae, subjected to the same dark ritual that poured venom and magic into people, twisting their very nature until their magic was something other, something wrong. Dark, writhing death, like mine.
When the rider on the ruby wyvern smiled slowly—younger than the other man but with the same shining black eyes, same bottomless hunger—I tilted my head, an answering predator rising in my blood.
These riders were born of darkness, but I wielded death itself, and I welcomed it. I didn’t shy from the rush of hot and cold magic that soared up my body and down my arms.
“Get down,” I barked at Kamaal, whipping both hands around as the power gathered, built, and raged.
It blasted from me in a wave of dark, shuddering light.
Not quite smoke, not quite shadow. It incinerated the riders where they sat, burning.
A fire to turn sand to glass, to transmute, to cleanse.
The screams made me flinch, threw me into memories of Shahzia screaming, but Raya’s booming wingbeats dragged me out of the past.
The wyverns didn’t drop from the sky, didn’t turn to ashes on the smoke-laced wind, but they did pause, and that was all we needed.
“Their eyes,” Kamaal breathed.”
“I know,” I said, staring. “They’re pure black.”
“No, they’re—”
A wyvern’s roar cut through his voice, through the sky, through the foundations of the city itself, and I lifted my hand again, something deep within me going still, quiet as it readied for a worse fight, for true battle.
“Hold your fire!” Kamaal barked, knocking my hand aside with his palm flat to my leather-clad arm. So close to touching my skin, as if the man had a damn death wish.
Or he was driven by a desire to protect that roared louder than his own self-preservation, I realised when I saw who flew towards us.
There were three of them. A scarred older man on a black wyvern almost as big as Mak.
A woman no older than me wearing leathers covered in brutal scales, riding an angular-faced emerald.
And ahead of them: a small wyvern with scales of opalescent ivory, her sharp teeth on display and fierceness in her eyes.
Layla. And there, equally sharp-eyed as she sat between the horns curving back from Layla’s head, was Mihrunnisa in a silver headscarf and leathers, metal armour gleaming at her shoulders and wrists.
I dropped my hands to my lap, careful not to touch Raya. I didn’t think my good luck at being able to touch Mak and Raheema would transfer to another.
“My legion,” Kamaal told me. “Two of them, at least.” He raised his voice to shout, “What the fuck is happening?”
“Four legions flew across the city limits,” Mihrunnisa yelled, Layla coming alongside us and the others falling into formation at Raya’s tail.
“Black-eyed wyverns?” I asked.
“No.” Mihrunnisa’s eyes were bright, wild.
“Our legions. Ithanysian. Someone rallied them to sack the dungeons beneath the palace. I could have sworn I saw Khalid among them. They blasted apart much of the square beside the palace and some of the market. Even now, wyverns and their riders search the rubble.” Her eyes met mine and held. “Searching for someone.”
A shiver went down the back of my neck.
“The black-eyed wyverns came from the edge of the city,” she told us as we soared beyond the industrial district and across a park that remained remarkably green and intact. For now. “They attacked the other legions, as if they’d been stationed there, waiting.”
“Fuck!” Kamaal growled.
“What?” I twisted to look at him and where I expected anger, I found blind panic on his face. It made my heart skip.
“Arresting you, locking you up, it was a trap. You were bait, and the king gathered his legions of those dark wyverns to meet the rescue attempt he knew would be mounted for you.”
He scanned the sky, and I followed suit, my pulse hammering at the base of my throat, my hands shaking as I caught his implications. A rescue attempt. But the Legion of Fyrevein perished at Daurith.