Chapter 57
VARIDIAN
Hope was an ocean wave that built and swelled and crested.
It caught up every tired warrior and ailing rider, straightening backs, lifting heads, filling lungs with air that had been mere wisps only minutes ago.
No longer was this a doomed retreat; Mihrunnisa had brought a hundred thousand warriors—Kaldic warriors.
And fearsome tigers to cut into the back lines of the Zalaam army, to shred that endless wave of winged soldiers before they could even reach us. We could crush them between us.
“How the absolute fuck did Mihrunnisa raise a Kaldic army?” I demanded when I stormed over to where Kamaal and his legion stood on the tallest hill, overlooking the dark host that had almost slaughtered us—and the new army approaching from the south.
“Who cares how?” Kamaal replied, a tremor of disbelief in his voice as we watched the first lines of Kaldic warriors in gleaming silver armour—metal, not leather—spill onto the plain with shields locked edge to edge.
They must have crossed the mountains, must have been marching here the whole time we fought.
Had some of the wyverns we’d mistaken as the enemy been their scouts, marking our locations as we battled?
“Khalid, get the legions back in the air when they’re rested enough to fly. Zaina, Rana, I want you to fly to the leaders of the Kaldic legion, find out where the hell they got wyverns from, and coordinate their attack with ours.” His legion members peeled away, their expressions no longer bleak.
“The Zalaam army still has tigers,” I reminded Kamaal, shifting my weight on the muddy ground. “And probably more legions of wyverns in waiting.”
“And now we have wing shredders to shoot them from the sky,” Kamaal said with a feral grin more becoming of an assassin than a king.
Those catapults had done so much damage to our legions over the years that my teeth clenched at the mere name. Even with them turned on our enemy, even though our wyverns wouldn’t be left with wings little more than strips of muscle, the memories were visceral.
Not that I had a wyvern to ride into battle. It almost made this worse. Aliah, Zaarib, and Shula would launch into the sky to fight back the dark wave of our enemy, and I would stay here.
What use was a rider without a wyvern?
Less than an hour later, hydrated and with a hasty meal in their bellies, fae and wyverns launched back into the sky with renewed fierceness.
To my surprise, the riders had taken less of a hammering than the ground warriors.
Mounts had been lost, and bonded riders had died in battle, but overall only sixty aerial units had been lost. The army on the ground had lost five times that number.
But fresh fighters had arrived from the fortress camp in the hours since our retreat, and now we had a hundred thousand Kaldic allies.
Even if I hated the words Kaldic and allies being in the same damn sentence.
Those tigers they’d brought with them ripped into the back lines of the Zalaam army, painting the field with blood, their riders cutting through any survivors.
A hellish roar came as multiple armies clashed, the screeches of wyverns in battle sawing my nerves to ruins.
I heard the whistle of those wing shredders at work.
Felt the heat of fire even here. And I could do nothing.
Kamaal had ordered me to stay and oversee the scouts relaying information back and forth.
My sister, it came out, had been corresponding with the Kaldic princess via letter for months, and together they’d organised this.
Where the emissary had failed at the Torn Isle, two women no one had suspected of being allies, let alone friends, had succeeded.
I shouldn’t have been surprised; my little sister was unstoppable when she set her mind to something.
So was I, I reminded myself, getting antsy as I stood atop the tallest hill, shielded by the woods as I watched the battle unfold.
Watched, not participated, because Mak was injured and the thought of mounting an unfamiliar wyvern made my stomach churn.
Even a creature as battle-scarred and vicious as the legion of rogues Mihrunnisa had gathered, flying all across Ithanys and Kalder to summon them.
Wyvern who’d lost their riders or who’d never bonded, feral or grieving.
All brutal enough that I watched them slam into the Zalaam aerial army and watched it buckle.
The smell of burning flesh and hair filled the air again.
It had barely faded from the first battle, and now it renewed until I choked on it.
I realised it wasn’t only fae burning when a dark red wyvern crashed from the sky, flames trailing from its vulnerable underbelly.
I couldn’t see its eyes from this distance, couldn’t tell they were ally or enemy, but they were undoubtedly dead.
That could have been Mak. If things had gone worse, that could have been him falling like a shooting star, orange fire blazing from his tail, leaving streaks in the grey sky.
Clouds gathered, reflecting my mood, but instead of a sign I was losing control, it gave me hope my magic had returned.
It never left, the lightning soul said, but without her usual dry amusement. Her voice was as bleak as I felt, as harrowed and shaken. You burned through too much, too soon, but you didn’t reach the bottom of your magic. Nowhere remotely near.
There’s more? I scanned the sky, as if I’d see Habiba, Dahab, or Saif in the chaotic swarm of wings. How much more?
Enough to shake the whole world.
I blinked. She had to be exaggerating, but if there was a chance she wasn’t… My spine straightened, head lifting. Tell me how, I demanded. Tell me how to call up that much magic. Could I blast the entire army away?
Not without incinerating your own allies. But if you were to lure them away as your clever wife did, yes. It would hurt, and paint more marks on your body.
I didn’t care about that. Tell me how, I ordered again, and for once I shut up and listened.