Chapter 40
AMEIRAH
The Wahasha Lake was named after the beast that, according to legend, had existed in its waters since the dawn of time. Its grey waters stretched from the dense trees of northern Woodsurn to the jagged mountains that now stood alone between Ithanys and Kalder.
The river, no longer hidden by the Wall of Hydaran, was visible between the mountains, winking its dark, glittering waters like an invitation or a threat. Flowing right to this lake. It seemed foolish to not wonder why the beast was called the River Eater, in hindsight.
An electric charge hung in the air, the taste of lightning and rainstorms coating my tongue as we flew hard from the destroyed site of Fallow Gate, winding through the mountain range to evade the swarm on our tail.
My plan had worked a little too well. Varidian struck in the middle of their horde, lightning fracturing apart to hit multiple wyverns, and every creature roared at the sight of it.
But it was the riders whose harrowing shrieks haunted me, throbbing in my ears.
There was nothing mortal in that sound, nothing remotely familiar.
The original Zalaam warriors were araethawn, but these had been fae, and nothing fae remained in their black eyes, cruel faces, or those shrieks.
It took half an hour for the lake to come into view, and we only slowed our frantic progress at the last minute to assess the area.
The Elani brothers peeled away from Silverstorm’s formation to fly over the forest and mountains, scouring for threats lying in wait, while Varidian sent another bolt of white-hot power into the wyvern swarm pursuing us.
Again, those screams made my ears throb, made my heart clatter in an uneven rhythm, as if my very being warned against going near those riders.
Unwinged, I couldn’t help but notice. Commanders, Xiaoyu’s journal had called them. But where were the others? Where were their winged soldiers? And worse, where was the queen?
“Hit the water,” I shouted to Varidian, daring a glance back to see how close the aerial army was. My stomach knotted when I could pick out the veins in wyvern wings, the light catching on their sharp talons. I faced forward again and pulled up more magic, ignoring the twinge in my muscles.
When we flew over the grey lake, Varidian tore light and power from the dark clouds above, and lightning split the sky, turning the mountains, the trees, and Raheema to pure white.
I’ve never fought a river monster, she said casually.
And you’re not going to now. This is a trap for the wyverns, not for you.
She huffed, but allowed me to lead her in a circle, until we faced the enemy wyverns with the mountains to our backs, the Elani brothers rejoining us and giving the all-clear. No threats waited in the shadows, only the army before us.
My breath turned light when I saw the scale of it, like an enormous shadow cast over Woodsurn and disappearing into the distance, so vast I had to wonder if thousands had been an underestimation of their numbers.
It seemed so foolish to have left the other legions behind in the Red Star. We’d have still been vastly outnumbered, but thirty wyverns were better than fourteen.
Varidian struck the water again, light fracturing over the surface before it speared into the depths. Strokes lashed out across the lake and snared eleven wyverns from the front of the formation. Before the light had even faded, Varidian drew down another spike of light.
Hairs rose on my arms as pressure built around us, a tremor in the air that screamed at me to flee. But I gritted my teeth and kept Raheema in place, allowing the thump of old, old magic to flow over me, through me.
Varidian sent another spear of lightning into the lake, that ancient magic reborn, so powerful that people lost their minds with fear.
Evil, the lightning soul had been called.
Corruption that would send the user mad.
But Varidian had shown no signs of madness, and I was beginning to think all those fearmongering tales had been spread by the queen and her warriors.
How much of what we’d been told was true? Because as I watched Varidian call magic from the heavens and pour it into a lake from myth itself, all I felt was pride. No revulsion, no fear, no unease.
At least not until that old, old magic thumped another pulse through the air, and Raheema’s head darted forward, her jaws parted to bare her teeth.
I expected a snake, she said, tracking something through the water. But it looks like…
I saw it then, saw the shadow rise from the depths of the lake, enormous and far bigger than I dared to expect.
The stories had called it a wyrm, and like Raheema I’d expected something sleek and long.
I’d foolishly imagined a worm with a thousand teeth, but details of those old stories came back to me now.
Fanged and many-toothed, it was called. And with skin impossibly thick, unable to penetrate. An unholy light was said to issue from its jaws, vast enough to obliterate a whole town.
Ice ripped down my spine, shuddered down my arms. A wyvern—it was a wyvern.
“Get into the mountains!” I screamed, dragging deathfyre from the depths of my core, panting through the cramp in my back.
Fury had allowed me to blast the wyverns from Red Manniston’s sky and kill King Bakshi.
It was a risk to pour those dark flames into myself, but I held onto my rage and ordered the magic to amplify my voice.
I needed my warning to be heard, or we would all be dead. “Get into the mountains! Retreat!”
It wasn’t as impressive as Kamaal’s, but my legion heard and yelled the warning to the others. My throat tingled, burned, but I couldn’t do anything to ease it now as the air shook, pressure built, and that shadow grew larger—enough to see the mouth it had parted, the rows of teeth.
“Do as she commands,” Varidian boomed as Mak whipped around, his eyes connecting with Raheema’s, then mine. Even though fear had a hold of me, the ice inside me warmed a little at his quick check in.
The retreat was a scramble, and wings collided, warnings barked at our allies, embers spat into the air. But when Raheema wheeled around to face the mountains and the desperate shelter they might provide, the legions were right behind us.
Saif barked a reproachful noise when her wing glanced his; her low reply could be simply translated to, oh, shut up.
“We don’t have time for arguing,” I shouted.
There’s always time for arguments, she argued, beating her wings frantically to catch air. The deep thump in the air grew as the wyrm swam closer to the surface.
“Strike the legion,” I yelled at Varidian as the first raindrops fell. “Make sure they’re following.”
“Oh, they’re following,” Shula shouted, her body flat to Saif’s bulky frame as her wyvern hauled wing and muscle towards the mountains.
We weren’t going to make it.
Lightning crackled, and I knew Varidian hadn’t even questioned why I wanted the enemy wyverns worked to a frenzy. He simply trusted me. My chest swelled, ached.
My chest flush with Raheema’s neck, I threw a hasty glance behind us and my mouth went dry at the huge shadow spreading over the surface of the lake.
So much larger than I’d imagined, and now carving through the water with dark shapes that were irrefutably wings.
Smaller than they ought to be, thinner, frilly on the edges almost like fins.
A water wyvern? I’d never heard of anything like it.
Had never felt anything like the pressure and power thumping through the air.
Like the Zalaam queen’s magic but without the oily weight, without the pure evil that made my nose and ears bleed.
As if this wyrm had magic at its most basic, crude form—raw and unrestrained.
How long had it been here? How old was this creature?
Old enough to eat us if you don’t focus, Raheema huffed.
Heat began to shiver through the air, and terror made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Another lightning bolt cracked through the sky and into the wyvern horde, but it wasn’t lightning that made the air tremor, that made heat kiss my skin even through the leathers.
We were going to be incinerated. The mountains were close, their peaks rising over us, but unless we got behind them, we’d be blasted from the sky. Turned to ash the way my magic had turned so many of our enemies to ash. Maybe this was karma at work, or maybe god had an ironic sense of humour.
My breath caught when Amr lifted his hands and a spear of ice formed.
He heaved it towards the lake, and it sank mere inches from the wyrm, pushing it back only a few feet.
I couldn’t unleash deathfyre on the creature; we needed it alive.
But Varidian caught on to Amr’s plan and sent another bolt of crackling light into the water, buying us precious seconds.
Kamaal followed, and silver-bright magic flashed across the lake’s surface, buying us more time.
But the heat grew stifling, that magic shivering over my skin. I jumped when a pocket of air slammed into Raheema’s back, pushing her forward. I whipped around to see where the attack had come from as she snarled.
“Stop fighting it,” Nabil barked at Dahab as the golden wyvern’s head began to snake. “It’s me, you fucking idiot.”
Another burst of warm air hit, and this time Raheema was ready for it; she filled her wings and allowed it to quicken her speed towards the mountains. I pressed my face to her warm scales, tears flying from my eyes as she soared through the air like a mighty catapult had flung her.
Light flashed behind us, but I didn’t lift my head to see if it was my husband or his brother, or maybe the wyvern horde had finally summoned their own fire.
The idea of them breathing that dark-hearted flame that killed Buchra made me urge Raheema faster, my plea utterly useless.
She flew with everything she had, her wings working like the bellows of a great forge, her lungs straining, body pushed to its limit.
Around us, the others flew with the same desperation.
My idea—to come here, to set this trap. It was my idea, and if we all perished here, their blood would be on my hands. Two legions of wyverns and riders killed. Some of the finest warriors Ithanys had seen in a generation, wiped out when they were most needed.
Someone yelled from the panicked cluster of Kamaal’s legion, but I couldn’t make out the words as a boom went through the air. The ensuing splash made me acutely aware of my mortality, and how quickly I would be snuffed out.
Warm air hammered Raheema’s back, her tail, propelling her across the lake.
And finally, we flew into the cluster of mountains.
I didn’t breathe as she angled her wings and sailed through the valley between peaks.
Any minute now, the wyrm would unleash that incinerating fire.
Flame, it was said, that had razed an entire swath of land near the wall to no more than a blackened scorch mark on stone.
Heat spiked until it abraded my skin and made loose strands of my hair dance in the sudden wind. The wyrm gathered its fire. I didn’t look back to confirm it; I didn’t need to.
“Fly!” Kamaal bellowed, his voice cast across the mountains we all but slammed into in our attempt to flee the wyrm.
The wyvern. Why had none of the stories mentioned the wings, or the scales that no doubt covered the creature?
Did it have talons, to gut its prey if they miraculously survived the fire?
“Faster,” Shula yelled behind us.
I lost sight of who flew on either side of us. I kept myself flat against Raheema’s back as she soared over the valley, wings knocking into wings as she swooped over the rocky ground, aiming for the shelter behind the biggest mountain.
There was no guarantee it would save us; stories said the River Eater’s magic had melted stone and turned beaches to glass. But relief hit me like a strike to the chest when Raheema veered into the shadow behind the mountain, flapping in place, sheltered from the lake.
I lifted my head only long enough to see Mak tear across the sky and into the space behind the mountain, Dahab and Habiba joining him as they shot towards us.
“Thank fuck,” Shula said loudly enough that I heard her even over the hiss that built in the air. Like hot steam formed when fire met cold air. Hot enough to melt stone?
We’d made it behind the mountains, but would it be enough to spare us from that incinerating fire?
“Ameirah,” Varidian said as Mak pressed as close as he could without knocking Raheema’s wings. I didn’t miss the look he raked along her scaled body, searching for injuries the way Varidian searched me.
“I’m okay,” I said instead of the truth, that I was afraid these were our last moments.
I told myself it was enough, to lead a legion of wyverns that large to their sure death, to blast a hole in the Zalaam queen’s forces, to give everyone else a chance to fight back.
But few knew she’d returned, and no one would know we’d perished here.
As the heat crested, tearing at my hair, making my eyes stream, I knew this was it. This breath would be my last. My heart drummed against my ribs, but those beats were numbered, finite.
I gazed across silver-blue and pearl-white wings until our eyes met, and as a wave of sweltering fire erupted, I refused to look away from him, my husband, my mate.
Light cracked the sky, split the world, and screams followed. Screams of the dark wyverns who’d hunted us. Screams of the Zalaam commanders. Then a white glow blotted out the sky, the mountains, and burned the impression of Varidian from my eyes.
Then darkness.
True, complete darkness.