Chapter 44
VARIDIAN
Iheld onto Ameirah for another moment, reluctant to let go even though we’d all agreed the gate posed enough of a threat to leave it open.
We could fight a war at our front, while the queen snuck more forces through the gate at our backs.
If the gate in the Fortress attic connected to the window in Morysen, she could crush us between two armies.
We took out thirty wyverns in the capital, but how many more waited in the hills around the city?
Our parting happened far too quickly. I wasn’t ready to let go of her, wasn’t ready to watch her walk away, then disappear into the old stone corridors of the Fortress. Nabil had her back, but every one of my instincts yelled at me to go with her.
“Varidian.” Kamaal strode across the rain-slick grass with the cool composure of a commander. Or a king. Like me, he was outfitted in heavy leather armour, his hair tied back and face hard. “Take this.”
I accepted the sword he held out to me with a frown.
A faded brown scabbard protected it from the elements, worn in enough places that told me it was old.
Firing a questioning look at my brother—his expression gave nothing away—I grasped the metal hilt, admiring the fine gold it had been made of, and slid it a few inches from its sheath.
The blade was a luminescent copper I’d never seen a sword forged of, its tip sharpened to a deadly point, and the fuller etched with flames.
I turned it over in my hands, the heft of it appealing, telling me it was practical as much as decorative.
Instead of the plain cross-guard of my usual sword, wyvern wings curved around the blade in a darker metal that gleamed like a sunset.
The details of each wing told me it had been forged by a master craftsman, with the kind of quality reserved for kings.
“Do I want to know where this came from?” I asked dryly, giving my brother an amused glance.
“A cave,” he replied, clasping my shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “A stubborn, angry cave.”
My brows raised. “I wasn’t aware caves had emotions. You learn something new every day.” My attempt to coax a laugh from him fell flat, as did his attempt at smiling. “This is one of those legendary relics that everyone thinks never existed, isn’t it? No doubt Ameirah would know it on sight.”
His mouth twitched and he glanced over at the fortress, as if he could see through the tower walls to that attic room that had always been too large for the building, too magical and regal for the austere keep.
“She already recognised it. The gate in Morysen was a stained-glass window that depicted this sword in the hand of a fae warrior at the dawn of civilisation. Its name is Dusk-Breaker, and it was a pain in the ass to retrieve so you better treat it well.”
I looked down at the sword and made sure I had a good grip so as not to drop the damn thing. “You’re telling me this sword is as old as Ithanys?”
“As old as Wyvara,” he corrected, trailing a stare over the fiery sword. “I felt compelled to find it, but it never felt right in my hand.”
Threads of fate? I asked the lightning soul dryly.
I’m not the only one to feel them. Your family line has held remarkable power for generations. I’m not surprised he senses them.
“I think it was meant for you,” Kamaal added, glancing up when wyverns began to leap into the air, forming tight lines in the sky over Willow Green.
Shar—gate. The name had been in plain sight this whole time, lost simply because the common name for this place had changed.
Or had it been lost on purpose, like the river was lost?
I slid Dusk-Breaker back in its scabbard and strapped it to my back, crossed with my usual sword. That blade had seen me in and out of so many battles I’d lost count, but next to a legendary sword from the origin of our world, I wouldn’t be surprised if it developed a complex.
“He never had any magic,” I said, not sure why I blurted it out now. “Our father. He was powerless.”
Kamaal’s expression darkened at the mention of him. “Oh, I don’t know. The man was so talented at lying, I wonder if that was his magic.”
Another line of wyverns took to the sky, our legions spread out instead of arrowhead formations. My stomach knotted. I’d never flown into a battle like this, never flown into a war as part of an aerial army.
“I should have killed him after what he did to you,” Kamaal said in a cold voice.
“I recovered. I’m fine.” Except for the memories that had me shooting awake at night sometimes.
Except for the feeling of being locked in that dungeon for months, so acute and clear I could be there right now.
He tried to rip my magic out of me and steal it for himself, and when that failed, he locked me up and threw away the key.
“You got me out,” I said. “I’ll never forget it. ”
Kamaal clasped my forearm. “Safe skies. Don’t fucking die.”
A laugh burst from my chest. “Don’t you die either. Safe skies.”
We parted, him for the middle of the formation where his legion would be protected, and me for the front rows of the army.
The absences ate at me as I checked in with Aliah, Shula, and Zaarib, then mounted Mak.
Fahad should be here. I didn’t like Nabil and Ameirah being absent, either.
I especially didn’t like how little we knew about their task; it couldn’t be as simple as shattering a mirror. Nothing was ever that easy.
I reached through the bond, brushing against the dichotomy of her soul, softness and loving care but at the same time iron-sharp and as hot as a forge. My brave, gentle-hearted warrior mate. When she reached back, I wrapped myself in the warmth of her love.
I kept the memory of it around me even as the final legions launched into the sky, our riders wing to wing in the sky.
And then the ground warriors who’d answered Kamaal’s call, loyal to him all these years, lined up on the ground, vengeful civilians among them outfitted with armour and holding whatever weapons we could spare.
We’d had to beg, borrow, steal, and use all the coins in my account, but it was worth it to glance below, to peer behind us at the sky, and see it filled with forces ready to fight for Ithanys.
Hope swelled in my chest as we flew as one unit over Willow Green and along the broad road, to a hill just on the other side of Woodsurn where we’d chosen to make our first stand.
It gave us a view all the way down the plain to where the road snaked around the mountains.
To where the Zalaam army marched, a dark sea as far as we could see.
There were far more than we’d estimated. They spread across the plain like an infection, flowing from edge to edge of the space.
And just when determination began to flare among our people, a wyvern army five times the size of the aerial legion the River Eater incinerated soared over the mountains.
They made us wait five hours. In the drowning rain, in the cold that sapped the strength of both rider and soldier.
Unease grew like a disease with every hour that passed, spreading from person to person, shored up by a yelled, Hold your nerve, it’s your fear these bastards want, but why should we make it easy for them? But not for long.
On the fifth hour, the wyverns hovering like a dark swarm over the edge of the mountains finally moved.
They showed no sign of exhaustion, fear, or cold biting through to the bone.
I marked the riders that flew among them, scattered through the ranks with enough of a pattern that I estimated each one commanded a hundred wyverns.
“The commanders first,” I shouted to my legion, to the riders around us, to whoever was listening. “Take out the riders, aim for anyone you see with a whistle or anything that shines silver.”
We’d filled the front lines with the battle-hardened riders, with the wyverns who’d flown to guard the wall for decades, the phalanx on the ground full of warriors who’d walked on and off so many battlefields it was a miracle they still lived.
I reminded myself of that as the Zalaam army marched with such precision their boots fell like a drumbeat on the ground.
It was a cliché—their ink-dark uniforms, their unnaturally synchronised movements, their expressionless faces.
I’d known evil for long enough to know it hid behind pretty faces as easily as empty or cruel ones, but something about seeing an army in black marching for us made a shiver ripple down my spine.
As if the night itself had sent its shadows to fight us.
The wyverns flew too fucking quickly. There was no room for thoughts of Ameirah, for worries about my mother and sister, for anything except the sheen of rain across scales and talons and eyes as black as a starless sky.
“Ready,” I roared, and the order echoed from commander to commander, all the way to the back of the lines. Below, with a groan of leather and metal, our soldiers began to march.
I forced my breathing to remain steady, forced air in and out of my lungs as I marked a rider in the front. The rain carried the scent of hot iron and fire as the order to draw up fire echoed from Kamaal.
Ready? I asked Mak.
His reply was a low growl. Let’s roast these fuckers.
The armies below us clashed first, the sound of scraping metal like shrieks on the air.
A thrum settled in my blood, nerves running through me like a shudder as I lifted my hands and called on the lightning.
My skin itched as the mark grew, my back cold as if the lightning’s scar burned its way around my sides, making my back its canvas.
It didn’t matter, couldn’t matter, when these wyverns would conquer my home for their queen.
It wasn’t Woodsurn I fought for, wasn’t even the Fortress or the fallen wall.
With the first bolt of lightning I drove into the rider I’d marked, light shattering off a shield around the man, I thought of the Red Star, the kasbah that had saved and sheltered me.
The fortress city where I fell in love with my wife.
I wouldn’t let a single damn wyvern through this line.
I wouldn’t surrender those memories, that home.
I called another bolt of crackling lightning, and I struck. And struck.