Chapter 63
AMEIRAH
Xiu’s rage at the legion blotting out the watery light was so tangible that a sharp breath left me, and I remembered her chanting, her dark ritual, all at once.
I stayed only long enough to see Nabil fall into line with the legion—Buchra, and it had to be here, skeletal and twisted but so loyal she’d somehow burned through Xiu’s control—and then I raced up the muddy riverbank to face the queen.
Not a queen, I reminded myself, a hand going to the Jiang pendant that swung around my throat.
No longer a Zalaam medallion, but one of blinding, defiant light.
I promised to use it to defeat Xiu, and I refused to go back on that promise.
She was one woman. Near invincible and without a single scruple or moral, but she was one woman.
Not a goddess, not a queen—fae. The first queen had come from that world of glossy mountains and magic-choked air, but Xiu was Cirestian, as I was Cirestian. She was mortal, as I was mortal.
But I wasn’t a woman when I stood across from her, facing where she once again stood on that dark rock in the river, hands to the sky. I was a living flame, and I poured hot, bone-melting rage upon her.
“You’re dead,” she hissed, abandoning her chant. I was almost honoured, that she cared more about killing me than raising her ancestor from the grave.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I quipped, and poured more, hotter magic into the deathfyre, slamming it into her chest, seeking that drop of life at the heart of it and breathless when it realised it had grown.
She stumbled backwards, and I gave her a smile full of teeth and hatred.
All her life, she’d finally hated me and I’d never known why.
Now I knew, and that loathing was mutual.
“What is this?” she seethed, slashing her arms down, trying to force back the torrent of flame. Any shards of glittering magic she formed were melted to particles by the fire. Her attempts to throw daggers of that lethal magic crashed to failure when they met my shield.
“The Jiang family send their regards,” I told her, panting as more and more power erupted from my core.
Alone, it wouldn’t be enough, but with the medallion, with this gift from a family of healers to fight a legacy of evil, I had to believe I could do it.
Even if dizziness struck my temple, and sweat dripped faster from my face, and muscles strained and screamed across my back, my shoulders, my thighs.
At that name—Jiang—Xiu hissed. The sound raised goosebumps on my arms, and plucked at some primal fear within me, instincts pelting me with the need to turn and run, to flee or die, because she was death given form, pure malice distilled into a single person.
One person, one woman, I reminded myself. And with all the magic in the medallion, I was many.
I blinked and Xiu had crossed the water.
Blinked again and wings stretched from her shoulders, blocking out the light that reflected off the tips of the mountains.
Still Cirestian, but more, other. Her wings were the same as the soldiers that marched on Ithanys, the same as the warriors that tore apart our people.
Cold spilled through me, fear on its heels, but it met the flaring warmth of the dagger in my hand and I was able to draw a breath, to blaze with fire to counter the storm of magic she released.
The last time, she pushed me back, forced my feet to slide in the mud, but now I held my ground, driving blast after blast into her.
It was whisked away before it could harm her, but the display was enough to unsettle her; I saw it in her bared teeth, in the desperate slash of her arms through the air as she threw dagger after shard after spear at me.
“Did you feel bad, even once, for how you treated me?” I asked, panting as my magic immolated a shard of Zalaam power so big it would have split me in two.
“No.”
I bred my teeth. “Bitch.”
I took a leaf from her book and shaped my next strike into six fiery daggers, distracting her with four to the chest while two went to that helmet.
She retaliated with a tidal wave of power, enough that my boots left drag marks in the mud when she forced me back, enough that my head flared with dizziness and the world went black for half a second.
“Why won’t you die?” she demanded, a burr of true rage joining the hatred in her voice.
“Right back at you, Xiu,” I spat, grinning when the amulet around my neck began to glow.
White light, pure and untainted, radiated from the medallion, and my next blaze of deathfyre didn’t have a mere drop of light at its centre.
A sun burned in the middle of my darkness, and Xiu gasped when it made impact.
More light burst around us, but not from me. People landed around me, released from the talons of the legions that flew over the mountains, and a breath caught in my throat when I saw the fire and light they wielded. Xiu saw it too and bared her canines.
I threw both hands in front of me, ripping off whatever bindings remained to hold my magic in place, and a storm of it crashed into the world.
A distraction to keep her eye on my magic while I threw the dagger, end over end, at her helm.
It was carved all over with courage and strength, and I prayed some of that strength would lend itself to accuracy, holding my breath as the handle collided—
And knocking that horrid raw stone crown from her head.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t even take a breath.
She was defenceless, as vulnerable as Kanuri without that medallion around her neck, so I forged every bit of anger and vengeance and hatred in my body into flame and poured it upon her, as hot as any forge.
White spread through the black of my deathfyre, and my eyes widened when I realised I’d seen it before, in the giant maw of the River Eater.
If my dark flame was death forged into flame, this was the burning heart of life itself. The warriors’ light wasn’t the same, but I watched the fire unsettle Xiu, watched the force of power I slammed into her chest finally knock her off balance.
“Get the crown,” I yelled at the people fighting around me.
Their fire and light streamed around me, pelting Xiu’s stomach, sides, chest, and a ball of flame hit her throat with enough heat to make her hiss.
Someone broke away and ran for where the crown had fallen into the mud and I threw a hand in their direction, ringing them with a shield against the shards of glittering magic Xiu fired at their exposed back.
I jumped when the sky rumbled, light ripping from the clouds.
A violent strike that made me weak with relief.
Varidian. I couldn’t follow that bolt of lightning to see where it landed, to see where he was, but I felt him in the bond, as if it had been muted and now roared with full intensity.
Rage seared his soul, and murderous intent.
It distracted me enough for Xiu to jump the distance between us, a cloud of darkness and stars carrying her.
I threw both hands up, knocking the helmet off her head, baring that hate-twisted face.
“You’re uglier than I remembered,” I remarked, grabbing another dagger from my other thigh, this one ordinary fae steel, and driving it into her forearm as she grabbed my shoulders.
Sharp magic had formed claws on her fingers, but the wyvernscale armour protected me from the pain she intended, and I’d never been more grateful for Varidian’s obsessive protectiveness than when I twisted the dagger in her forearm.
“You’re—” she began to retort, but we both froze at a wave of warmth and light.
It arced over the mountains like the sun’s first rays in a morning and spilled down to the river, pleasant when the magic washed over us.
But the river—all I could do was stare at that silver light that snaked around the base of the mountains, separating Ithanys and Kalder. Silver water—not black.
Varidian did it. With his lightning, his courage, his unfailing heart, he did it. He destroyed the ring.
A laugh rasped from Xiu’s throat, no scrap of mirth in the sound. Resignation and disbelief made the sound heavy. Ashes fell on her hair, collected on her lashes as she glared at me, and drifted around us like snow.
“Destroy as many of my creations as you like,” she said through bared teeth. “Kill all my armies if you wish. But you don’t have the nerve or the power to kill me.”
I opened my mouth to laugh, to retort, but it was a grunt that left me. A sound of shock, before the pressure in my stomach bloomed into livid pain.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognise my own great-grandmother’s armour?” Xiu asked, the fear that had so briefly tightened her features softening into familiar superiority.
The wyvernscale tunic. It belonged to the first queen? I breathed raggedly, teeth gritted as I shoved at her, trying to get some space between us, trying to breathe.
“Very clever to use the healers’ magic to dismantle everything I’ve built.” She twisted whatever blade she’d buried in my stomach, and a gurgling sound forced past my lips. “But not smart when the only thing stopping me gutting you is made of that same power.”
The tunic was gone. The skeletal wyverns above the river were gone. And on the battlefield beyond the mountains, where there’d been a furore of noise, now there was silence.
Silence, and from the distance, a song. Soft and lyrical and full of beauty.
I felt it wash over me again, felt its warmth and comfort, but it didn’t ease the pain splintering through my stomach.
I shouldn’t have looked down. My vision swam with dizziness, my legs wavering when I saw the glass-sharp chunk of magic embedded in my stomach, oozing blood.
“What,” Xiu hissed, hooking a black claw in the necklace, “is this?”
It was still glowing, the medallion radiating warmth and light across my body, across Xiu’s hand as she hissed and released it.
She took a solid step back, wary eyes on my chest. She didn’t see the shadow creep up behind her from where he’d landed on the muddy banks when the wyvern carrying him had burst into ashes.
She didn’t see him until he was right behind her, driving his sword at her with both hands.
She didn’t see Nabil, but she saw me look at him, and twisted, wrapping her clawed hand around his grip on the sword.
“Go, Ameirah,” Nabil snapped.
I stumbled back, but because strength rapidly fled me in a stream of blood, not because I would leave him.
“Oh, she’ll go,” Xiu jeered, ripping the sword from his grip. “She’ll go to the afterlife screaming. But you’ll go first.”
I lunged forward, wrapping myself in fire when my knees buckled, when pain made the world flash white. But I heard the wet grunt that left Nabil, and Xiu’s derisive laugh grated against my senses.
When my vision rushed back in, I took a step, gripping the glowing amulet at my neck, healing light pouring from it, propelling me forward at the same time she ripped the sword free and Nabil staggered back.
His chest—she ran the sword through his chest and a sob clawed up my throat when his knees dropped from under him.
Xiu stepped back, cruelty in the bright brown of her eyes as she watched me crash to my knees beside Nabil, pressing the Jiang amulet against his wound, my hands shaking.
Pain left his face, but the skin didn’t knit back together, as my wound hadn’t repaired either.
This magic had been given to me for one purpose, and it seemed to know that.
“You’re going to be fine,” I told him, shoving down the vomit that rushed up my throat. “You’re going to be fine, Nabil. This is nothing. A papercut, nothing more.”
His laugh brought blood to his lips, but there was no shadow in his eyes and a smile pulled at his cheeks as the amulet’s glow covered him. “I’ll be with her again,” he breathed. “Buchra and I, raising hell again.”
“Stay and raise hell here,” I growled, feeling for that single drop of life magic within myself, but Nabil’s head fell back to the dirt, his chest motionless, eyes staring up at the clouds. Sightless and empty.