And beside her, huge and bristling and enraged, wasMakrukh.My bottom lip caved in, and tears slid down my cheeks in an endless wave as I saw the rider atop him.
Clothed in brutal leather armour, embellished at the shoulder with tough scales, with orange fire stitched on the chest and thigh. The emblem of the Legion of Fyrevein. His dark hair was bound in a tight knot atop his head, his face bearing nothing but rage and murder, and the sight was so beautiful, so precious, that my shoulders curled and I broke.
“Alive,Ameirah,” Kamaal said, his voice rough despite his unwavering belief. “He’s alive.”
The sight of Varidian was a gift. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. My entire body jerked when a dark violet wyvern swung towards him, fire peeking through the scales at its throat. But just as I raised my hands for more deathfyre, lightning tore down from the sky, illuminating every wyvern, every building.
He wasn’t hiding. His lightning power was on full display. Why wasn’t hehiding?
“I fucking knew it,” Kamaal hissed, and when I flung a wide-eyed look at him, a vicious grin was on his face. “Amr, freeze the air in their lungs,” he yelled across the wind to the rider beside us, a hardened man in his fifties with scars on every inch of the dark arms he lifted. Not scars from a long life of war; scars that bore stories of capture and torture.
I expected the wyverns to become motionless in the air, but it wasicethat gathered, that drove spikes through the thinnest parts of wings, that had black-eyed wyverns wheezing for air as he tore through their throats. It was ruthless, and sympathy squeezed my chest for those wyverns. Enemies, yes, and certainly a deadly threat, but weren’t all animals innocent in war?
When the first wyvern dropped from the sky, struck the towering walls of the medina below us, and shattered on impact, the Legion of Fyrevein whirled around in the skies. To face us, as if we were a greater threat. Rawiya spotted us first, and her joy crackled through the air in a bright laugh.
It hurt—the emotions compressing my chest at the sight of my family, so soon after losing the grandmother I’d only known for minutes. Seeing Rawiya’s happiness at the sight of me and Kamaal and his legion, ithurt.That pain distracted me, and the sight of us distractedthem,distracted Varidian as our eyes locked across scale and sky and wing.
When the blow came, it wasn’t from parted wyvern jaws, or even a rush of inferno. It was an arrow of darkness fired from the stout rooftop of a nearby tower, flying so fast not a single one of us saw it before it punched through Varidian’s chest.
“No!”The word tore from my very soul, from the same place Kaazhim ripped my magic out of me, and my hands shook with it—with fear and fury and power.
Not an arrow, I realised as that spike through Varidian’s chest seized him from Makrukh’s back. A string of dark, oily magic pulled taut to drag my husband through the air, close enough to an enemy wyvern’s jaws that its teeth snapped mere inches from his arm. Not an arrow, but a harpoon. It had hooked Varidian like the snare of a predator, and breath froze in my lungs as if Amr’s magic worked on me, when I sawwhohad fired that harpoon. Who even now raised a bow of dark, glittering stone and aimed into the cluster of wyverns battling in the skies to hook more of us.
“Drop!” Kamaal roared. “Get lower, get out of range!”
The words drew out, heady and distorted as Varidian was dragged onto that rooftop whereBakshireeled him in. Bearing a bow made of the same stone as the Zalaam queen’s crown. Final, irrefutable proof that they were allied. And now he drew my husband into his trap.
Time slowed, as if an hour stretched between Varidian being shot and him crashing onto the roof of that tower, when in reality it was mere seconds.
Raya was already firing across the souk square like an arrow herself, and Kamaal’s silver magic arced from him in daggers that missed their mark, dissolving into drops of ineffective magic. But I locked eyes with the monster who’d shot my husband and flexed my hands, just once.
That was all it took for a dark wave to erupt from me, pouring over the square, the covered market, the buildings between meand my husband, between me and the man who marked himself for death the moment he shot Varidian.
I didn’t check to see who fell when that wave washed over them, my stare unwavering from Varidian. Didn’t look at who began screaming, their agony pouring through the city as powerfully as my magic. I loosened my tether on the death I held, ripped off the bindings I’d kept around that part of myself since I was seven years old, and let it reign.
CHAPTER 30
AMEIRAH
Deathfyre poured from every pore in my body and rained upon the city of Morysen, spreading so fast that wyverns dropped from the sky before they could outrace the burning wave.
Screams burst from both wyverns and riders, echoing in my ears as I stared at Varidian, splayed across the tower’s roof. The king stood over him, that harpoon of dark, glittering stone discarded at his feet as he spoke. I was still too far to hear his words, but there was no mistaking the malice seething on his face. How had I ever thought he was kind?
“Ameirah!” Kamaal yelled as I leaned forward on Raya’s silver back, every part of my body quivering as magic poured out of me in wave after wave of shadow and fire, until the medina below us was full of it. This time, it didn’t hurt. This time, I wasn’t the one screaming.
“Get me close enough to jump,” I ordered Kamaal and didn’t recognise the cold voice that came out of me.
“You can’t fight him.”
“He shot my husband,” I snarled, and dared him to fight me on it, fated the universe to eventryto keep me from Varidian.
The second Raya got close enough, I swung my leg over her back, ignoring the way my thighs shook. I shut out how easily I could shatter upon the ground far below. I took one more breath—all I’d allow myself—and with deathfyre roaring from my hands, I leapt.
Wind tore at my leathers, my hair, my hands, but I barely felt the cold. The fire streaming from me kept me hot, and inside I burned. Below, people still screamed, and in the skies, wyverns roared and cried as my magic cast further and further, a dark tide that would never end.
Don’t you want to know what this power can do?Kaazhim asked me in the council chamber. Death, I found was the answer. Endless, untiring death, as far as I could see.
I tucked my legs under me as I landed on the flat rooftop, rolling to absorb the impact the way Varidian taught me during those dismounting lessons on the lawn by the Diamond what felt like eons ago. The second I’d wobbled back to my feet, I threw both hands in front of myself, the surge of power aimed unerringly at Bakshi. He was so absorbed in gloating over Varidian that he didn’t even see me.
