Chapter 62
AMEIRAH
Before I could strike first as Varidian said, the wyverns who’d been draped across the riverbank like a threat launched into the air. There was no leathery boom of wingbeats, only a whistle as air dove through bones, not a single scrap of skin or scale on their entire body.
“I’ll hold them back,” Nabil offered, dragging himself onto the muddy bank beside me, a muscle fluttering through his clenched jaw as we exchanged a look. “Their fire… it was what killed Buchra,” he said in a tight voice. “If it hits you, there’s no hope of survival. There’s nothing left.”
A chill went down my spine but I nodded to say I understood.
I lifted the amulet from under my crimson leather jacket and watched the skies, waiting for the first eruption of fire.
I knew it would be black-hearted, had heard enough stories about it that all my fine hairs stood on end.
And that was before the helmeted queen began to shout, her arms held to the sky, beseeching whatever dark god she worshipped to return her ancestor.
Like hell, I snarled, and snapped my hands out in front of me, releasing the leash on the deathfyre that had hissed and raged inside me since the moment I saw the true horror of the battle.
My magic splintered on impact, but I didn’t expect it to kill the queen without a brutal fight.
I just wanted her attention, wanted to break her concentration.
Still, air choked in my chest when her rapid flow of words cut off and her head dropped slowly, eyes finding me across the tiny island she stood on, across the river. I swore we made direct eye contact.
I held Varidian’s words close to my chest and struck again, bracing my feet in the muck, wrapping one hand around the amulet full of healing magic.
I let the power rage through me, let its force meet mine and coalesce into something as old as day and night, as old as fear and hope.
And when my next spike of deathfyre struck, I saw the drop of life at its heart.
“Ameirah,” Nabil screamed, slamming into me and sending us both sliding through the mud.
Scalding heat hit my face, made my skin tingle and tighten. I slammed my eyes shut on instinct to protect my vision. I took a breath, and another, but even as my ears buzzed, I realised the fire had missed us.
“Holy shit,” I panted, shaking there in the mud with Nabil splayed half across me. “Are you burned? Are you hurt?”
“If I was hit by that fire, I’d be dead,” Nabil replied, breathless. He scrambled out of the dirt and helped me up too, his panic turning to the hardness I saw in the faces of experienced legions, the battle calm I was still learning. “Are you—”
Nabil stumbled back so abruptly that I searched him for injuries. He clutched his chest, but there was no blood, no gaping wounds caused by spikes of glittering black magic. But if she’d used that dark magic to grip his heart, to control him as she controlled the soldiers…
My next wave of deathfyre was hotter, the core burning white like the heart of an explosion. The helmed pretender queen wore no medallion, but I swore my power was absorbed into that dark crown and I bared my teeth.
“Buchra,” Nabil rasped, making me jump in surprise.
“Buchra?”
“She’s back,” he said in a strangled, gutted voice. “But she’s—”
I threw a quick glance his way, following his stare to the sky as a shadow wheeled overhead. It wasn’t Buchra; it was a wyvern made entirely of blackened bones.
“Nabil…”
“I can sense her,” he said through gritted teeth. “That’s my wyvern.”
“But she’s…” I couldn’t think of a kind way to say it. “Nabil, she’s dead.”
“I know,” he snapped, “but—” He grabbed my shoulder and threw us across the riverbank as the skeletal wyvern’s jaws parted, a stream of crimson fire painting flames across the mud. The heart of that fire was black, as Varidian described. Nabil was right; if it hit us, we’d be dead in an instant.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed to my friend as we skidded through the muck. I threw my hands overhead, aiming a pulse of deathfyre at the wyvern.
I should have known it would do nothing, should have realised the creature was already dead.
“She’s coming towards us,” Nabil said urgently, drawing his sword and flicking the water droplets off the tip. “I’ll keep us from being burned alive. You make sure we don’t get murdered by that psychopath.”
“Deal.” I sank deep into my rage, letting it fuel me as I remembered every hateful thing this woman had done to me, everything her ancestor did to Ithanys, and everything she had done to our people.
The little boy killed at Last Guard, Masuma fleeing with her mother at Wyfell, scarred for life if she even managed to survive, Buchra murdered while trying to protect Daurith.
The war with Kalder that had raged for hundreds of years because it served her to divide us.
All those old tales of cruelty and death and monsters in this area—they never came from the wall. They came from the river, from Zalaam magic, from this so-called queen.
I didn’t want to think about what plunging so deep into the water that I’d swallowed it would do to me. But I was already twisted by Zalaam corruption, and had been since long before I could remember.
I waited until she was close enough, shutting out my fear at the way she walked across the water rather than through, traversing the river as if it was solid. Then I let my mouth curl in a smile designed to infuriate and said, “Hello, Xiu. Having fun playing queen?”
I didn’t recognise her with that helm hiding her face, but the sneer that contorted her mouth was as familiar as my own face.
And those eyes, visible through slits in the metal, belonged to the woman who’d made me feel small, insignificant, and unwanted all my life.
She wanted me broken, so I couldn’t harbour the lightning soul.
“This didn’t work out quite the way you planned, did it?” I laughed, pummelling her with a wave of dark fire so hot it made the air shudder. “All your hard work, and here I am, stronger than ever. Stronger than you.”
“You loathsome, worthless brat,” she hissed, spittle flying from her lips, and there it was—the final confirmation. It was her, without a single doubt.
“I should thank you,” I remarked, keeping my attention on her with effort when a shadow passed over us.
The back of my neck itched. I had to trust Nabil to keep me safe from that fire, but it went against every instinct.
“Without you, I’d never have all this deathfyre.
I certainly wouldn’t have enough magic to kill you. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
Xiu snarled, a deep, rattling sound not even remotely fae, and jumped across the last distance between us.
As it did in Cirestia, her magic formed in dark shards, this time extending from her hand like a fragment of a broken window.
Too damn similar to the magic that pierced Mingyue.
At the sight of it, my fear was swiftly engulfed by rage, hotter than anything.
“You tried to kill my grandmother,” I spat, slamming my hand forward in a punch. I opened my fist at the last moment to release enough magic to make the mud beneath our feet boil.
“Shame I didn’t succeed,” she replied, batting aside the flames, unaffected. I eyed the crown on her head, my heart settling into a deeper beat.
“Just like you won’t succeed in bringing back your own grandmother,” I fired back.
I was forced back two steps in the squelching mud when she swung that shard of razor-sharp magic at me like a sword, like her arm itself was a weapon. Overhead, a wyvern screamed, loosing a screech so loud it caused ripples on the surface of the water.
Nabil—where was Nabil? I spared precious seconds scanning the riverbank for him.
Only instinct had me throwing up a shield of flame, intercepting the dark, glittering magic before it could gut my stomach from edge to edge.
I watched in surprise as those dark magics connected, and the tip of her wicked weapon disintegrated.
My next grin was fierce. I shoved aside my fear for Nabil when Xiu swung at me again, her broken shard repairing itself before my eyes.
I surrendered another step in the mud, gritting my teeth at being on the defensive, but retreat was better than being skewered by that magic.
Rage kept my shield in place, sweat rolling from my upper lip as I summoned a deadly inferno at the same time, building a black, furious pyre. Xiu didn’t react.
I bared my gritted teeth in a smile, ignoring the strain, and said, “Oh, she’s not your grandmother, is she? My mistake. She’s so ancient she doesn’t even know who you are. Do you think she’ll see you as her faithful family, or a simpering fan?”
Xiu snarled wordlessly and came at me harder, pushing me back along the riverbank. Further from where Nabil vanished. Further from where Varidian dove into the river. But she was angry, not thinking clearly, exactly as I wanted her.
“What would you know of family?” Xiu said with a forced laugh.
I was getting under her skin. “You, abandoned by everyone? You, who Falael loathed so much he wished you would die, so he turned a blind eye to my treatment? You, who was so despised after your sister’s tragic death, that it was easy to make your brothers harm you.
They were so eager for vengeance, so full of disgust for you, that it only took a delicate suggestion for them to target you. ”
I swallowed, memories hitting me from so many angles, but my feet slipped in the mud and that was all it took to rip me out of that dark history.
I should have realised she’d twisted them, taken their anger and made it into hatred and violence.
I should have realised all the accidents that left bruises on my body and my bones fractured were caused by her poison.
So I forced a shrug and said, “I came out stronger because of it. I call it character building.”