Chapter 51
AMEIRAH
The journal spoke of a being of lightning and one of fire, but there was no firesoul speaking to me, no living creature guiding my actions unlike the one who spoke to Varidian.
And I had to wonder, as I erupted, as black, seething fire poured into the vat of the valley, boiling a hundred winged soldiers until their screams filled the world, if I wasn’t myself a firesoul.
Nabil’s air magic joined mine, encouraging the flames, pushing them to catch on the next row of soldiers, and the next. Shrieking screams scythed through my head until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.
“Don’t let them reach the mountain pass,” Nabil barked, and my attention leapt to the group of soldiers who’d broken away from the mass. Their path would lead them right to us—and to the gate.
I flung my hand in their direction and gritted my teeth against the torrent of black fire that burned from me all at once, hollowing out my chest to make more room for itself inside me.
Again, I got the sense that I was little more than a conduit for this unearthly magic, but the last time I let it reign, it destroyed the dark heart of King Bakshi.
This time, it would need to burn ten thousand dark hearts.
Or a hundred thousand; the soldiers flowed so far into the distance, their lines snaking around the shining black mountains.
There was no telling how far back they went.
No telling if they filled up this entire world from edge to edge.
The magic rife all around us had infected the araethawn, twisted our fae into pure evil, and even poisoned our wyverns until they attacked us. Yet they were Ithanysian in origin. What would a full-blooded army from this world be capable of?
I burned hotter, panting for air as a solid wall of flame tore from me, boiling through every pore in my arms, my chest, my thighs.
A living flame. I staggered back, choking down a sound of discomfort at the sheer heat that scorched the shining rock.
The screams below us were so loud, I didn’t hear Nabil’s next shout.
The band that broke away from the main army scattered into ashes, and I flicked my wrist, stretching a wall of flesh-eating fire across the gap so no more could reach the pass.
Kill them, I commanded the dark power that flowed through me. Kill every last one of them. Leave nothing but ashes. Purify their darkness from this world so it can never reach my home.
I staggered—forward this time, as the magic swept me up and pulled me along.
Only Nabil’s arm diving around my middle saved me from a deadly plunge to the valley below.
The breath went out of me. A whole phalanx of soldiers dropped to their knees, and I stared in disbelief as they shook their heads and clutched at their faces.
“What the…” Nabil breathed, releasing me. “Ameirah, what did you do?”
I didn’t know. But the deathfyre that razed across the lines now flickered with a tiny glimmer of pure white.
A drop of moonlight among true and total midnight.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered, but what did I know about this magic?
I’d never learned how to use it, never discovered its limits and capabilities.
And as I watched winged, grey-skinned soldiers cast off what appeared to be compulsion, I wondered if I could deal more than death to our enemies.
“Whatever you did, keep doing it!” Nabil barked, fanning my flames until they spread, pushing back the front lines of the army as they swarmed closer to the gate.
I grounded my feet, ignored the mix of confusion, unease, and awe that filled my chest. Where magic caught fire, soldiers unfroze, freed from the motionless formation others stood in.
And a slow moving, insidious thought took hold—did they choose to be here?
Did they volunteer to join this army, or had they been enlisted against their will?
Another roar of fire blasted from me, and when I gasped at the flash of discomfort, the strain across my back, I tasted embers and char.
“Slow down,” Nabil yelled over the sound of crashing flames.
I wanted to tell him I didn’t know how, but when I opened my mouth, more fire poured out, pooling on the dark rock before it bled onto the army below, increasing the screams. So much—there was so much fire I had no hope of containing it.
The magic might come from me, but it was wild and beyond command.
Kill them, I tried commanding it. Kill them, or cast off their commands—I don’t care which as long as they’re removed as a threat.
A thought trickled through my mind, a suspicion that came from the magic as much as from my own thoughts. I couldn’t do enough damage from up here. I needed to be down there, in the middle of the army.
“Nabil,” I rasped, spitting sparks and fire. “Can you get me down there with your magic?”
“What the fuck?” he snapped. “No. Are you crazy?”
I was barely clinging to my sanity, but this wasn’t working. Even as more soldiers cast off their control, even as they fled the rows of winged, slack-faced warriors, it wasn’t working. It wasn’t enough.
But I had more.
In the yawning pit of magic that lived in my core—there was more. So much more.
“Get me down there, Nabil.” I let another wave blast into the valley, then turned to face him, letting him see the command in my expression.
He hesitated, panic clearing the grief from his stare. “We’ll die.”
“Not today.” I didn’t know where the words came from, whether they were mine or if they echoed from that dark pit of magic. “Not today.”
Varidian was on the other side of this gate.
My family. Our legion. I wouldn’t let a single winged soldier step foot beyond this world, and I knew, now the wildfire incinerated its way across the black mountains, I could protect them.
This world was full of throbbing, poisonous magic, severe enough that a headache throbbed within my skull.
That miasma of power was tinder to an inferno.
Instinct told me as much, and instinct had got me this far. I would trust it again.
Nabil rolled his eyes skyward, sighed heavily, and grabbed my shoulder. A squall of air rushed in around us, carrying us like a tornado through the sky.
When we dropped in the middle of the valley, in the heart of that winged army, I sank as deep into my core as possible and screamed at my magic to kill, to cleanse, to rip the threat of them from existence.
Nabil’s back pressed to mine as a firestorm combusted the air.
The blaze hung around us for a split second, as black as ink, as black as the glassy mountains that loomed over us, watchful and still, waiting to see who would emerge from this blast. And again I saw it—a single drop of white light.
A secret at the nexus of my magic, hidden even from me.
I didn’t look away, even when the soldiers closest to us shook their heads and stumbled out of formation, wings fluttering.
Some shot into the air, flew away from the dark, devouring wave that poured from me.
But they didn’t drop dead. Not this time.
I’d given my power a choice, and it had chosen to free them of the clasp of command that held them here.
Even death could be merciful, it seemed.
But I wasn’t.
I cocked my head as five of the soldiers pumped their wings, flying for the mountain, for the gate. All it took was a single thought and ashes rained down on the motionless army. But those who’d been freed began to panic, and began to run.
“Ameirah,” Nabil cautioned. “Leave them.”
Varidian was on the other side of that gate.
Raheema and Mak were. Shula and Aliah and Zaarib.
Kamaal and Mihrunnisa. Rawiya and Sabira.
I would not risk a single one of them. And maybe it was the dark burn of magic, building and building, but whatever mercy I’d considered giving them earlier no longer existed.
Sweat dripped from my upper lip as I pushed the flames hotter, gathering more and more from my core until I shook with the effort.
“Shield,” I hissed through clenched teeth, all the warning I could manage before I let the tension snap.
Magic burst in all directions, a killing wave that tore through armoured skin and membranous wings and dense bones.
Weakness made me sway, but I didn’t regret it. Nabil scrambled to catch me before my face hit the jagged black stone beneath us, cursing the whole time. A shield of hard air locked around us, but it was unnecessary; the soldiers had disintegrated. All the way to the mountains, there was only dust.
And when the next phalanx reached the valley, they took one look at Nabil and I standing in the middle of a plain of ashes, and ran. As if the wave of deathfyre had killed those within range, and somehow also ripped the control magic away from the rest.
“Let them go,” Nabil said, and this time I listened. “We need to get home. Can you stand?”
I nodded, gritting my teeth against the strain of using so much magic. My head felt tender, an anvil striking with every second, and my breathing was a laboured scrape that only pulled sips into my lungs. To add insult to injury, when Nabil released me, my knees buckled.
“Sure,” he drawled. “What a great example of standing you are.”
I grumbled wordlessly, leaning into him what he caught me, helping me walk across the ash-strewn valley. The glossy stone was entirely covered. We left footprints as he walked and I hobbled.
It took seconds to get here, but over an hour must have elapsed by the time we reached the rocky outcropping and the solid mountain face that shone as clear as a mirror, reflecting us—me hunched and tired, Nabil jumpy and tense with his head on a constant swivel.
He’d used his air magic to carry us across the valley, but in short bursts as if he was drained, too.
I didn’t know how long it would take for my magic to recover after the blast that took out the army, but I felt like I’d been awake for days and could drop at any moment.
“We should talk about what happened back there,” Nabil said as we hobbled towards the gate. “You could have left that group alive.”
“They would have got through the gate,” I disagreed, clenching my jaw when a rush of dizziness made the world blur. “There would have been more people for us to fight in Ithanys. And they would have attacked Queen Adeela.”
He made a face, as if he couldn’t argue that point. “Still—”
“Will you help me walk through?” I asked, changing the subject as we came to a stop before the gate, the flat rock rising over our heads.
Nabil sighed. Heavily. “No, I’m going to drop you halfway through and just leave you there.”
I gave him a flat glare. He smirked.
“Obviously, I’ll help you,” he huffed. “You’re Varidian’s wife and you’re one of us now. You’re Fyrevein.”
I’d had the thought myself, but hearing it from one of the legion made me straighten—as much as I could—and lift my head high. It wasn’t official by any means, and I doubted any military leaders would accept me, but Nabil did. The legion did. That meant something.
“On three?” I suggested, watching our reflections. We looked both brutal and terrified. Haunted. And I knew this war was only just beginning. The battle Fyrevein fought now in Ithanys was only the first battle. More would follow.
“One,” Nabil began the count.
“Two,” I breathed.
On three, we stepped through the shining black stone.
I was ready for it to reject us, or for our noses to slam into the mountain face, but the familiar ripple of magic sucked us in, a flash of cool air and warmth sliding over my skin.
Relief loosened my chest. We hadn’t destroyed the gate, but we’d dealt a powerful wound to the Zalaam forces. We were returning victorious.
Except when we stumbled through the other side, it was onto a rickety metal platform, not the golden steps of the attic room in the fortress. I recognised the huge mill-like building instantly. Knew the pale buildings and purple sky beyond the window.
We were in Riverren.
I opened my mouth to tell Nabil as much, but figures poured onto either side of the platform before I could speak so much as one word. They wore white, not Saber purple and the details and cut of their uniform was strange and new, but I would recognise a guard anywhere.
And we were penned in by sixteen of them.