“What is that?” Shula yelled, grabbing Ameirah’s arm and tugging her back.
“A whistle,” I said with a frown, giving a silent command to fall back. Kamaal, on the other hand, gestured his legionforward. I spiralled down into my magic as silver light erupted from Kamaal, frost dropping the temperature as Amr skidded across the stone towards my old training officer. Trying to stop him blowing the whistle he lifted to his mouth, because no good could come of it—
Ameirah shrieked and threw her hands over her head. I spun to catch her just as her legs gave way.
“Get that thing off him,” I snarled, drawing Ameirah away, my heart racing as pain cleaved through her soul into mind. “Ameirah, look at me, dearling.”
Her cry of pain faded, but only because she clamped her lips together, fingers digging into my leathers as I pulled her further from Burhan, behind the line of our wyverns. Raheema’s head thrust towards us, silver eyes round with worry.
“It feels like,” Ameirah said through gritted teeth, “my head is being ripped apart. I can’t shut it out. I can’t—” The stiffness left her body at once and she sucked in a breath, leaning against me. The sharp lance of pain left our bond, but it echoed, like scars left behind. “It’s gone.”
Cold made me shudder as I glanced back towards Burhan, finding Amr with his scarred hands around the man’s throat, ice crawling up his face. It was a brutal way to die, and I looked away before I could see the killing blow, even if I knew how it would form: spikes of ice driven through each eye into his brain.
Ameirah stroked my back, as if I was the one who’d experienced such blinding pain.
Habiba launched for Burhan’s wyvern, driving it into the ground. Dahab jumped forward and helped her pin it to the ground as Aliah’s magic wrapped the creature like a shroud of mist. In seconds, it was dead.
“This fucking thing,” Shula snarled, her boots smacking the stone underfoot like she was punishing the mountain itself.“There’s a dark thread of magic attached to it. Feels the same way those wyverns do.”
Ameirah held out her hand, but I snapped my hand up to claim it first, unable to stand the thought of her touching it. Yet it was only metal in my hand, silver and cold. I felt what Shula mentioned, the curl of magic wound around it, but it was no legendary weapon, no deadly artifact.
“He must have thought it would save him,” Ameirah murmured, frowning at the whistle in my hand.
“Varidian,” Aliah panted, running towards us, aether still streaming from her fingertips. “The guardians of the Fallow Gate were all killed. Their bodies have long cooled.”
I straightened, biting back a curse.
“And there are others across the wall, on the other side. Wyvern, most without riders, but there were twenty I counted with.”
“How many riderless?” I asked, slipping into a cool, distant place within myself. A place where there was no panic, no emotion.
“Thousands,” Aliah breathed. “There are thousands of enemy wyverns just on the other side of the wall, and the gate lays wide open.”
And as if to punctuate it, a thunderous beat sounded, synchronised and loud enough to drown out Shula’s hissed curse.
Wings. Thousands of them.
CHAPTER 38
AMEIRAH
“That’s what the whistle did,” I breathed, grasping Varidian’s arm. “It summoned the wyverns. How can we evade them?”
“This close?” His eyes were like chips of blue ice, cold and clever.
Something told me we wouldn’t make it to Shyra, and I had to wonder if that was the point.
“We need to call for backup,” Shula said, watching shadows lift into the skies. So many. There were so many wyverns, just beyond the wall. They’d be upon us in minutes.
“We don’t have time,” Zaarib argued, stalking towards us with an expression even harsher than that one time I tried to kill him. “Burhan is dead, and his wyvern is down,” he told Varidian. “We await your orders, commander.”
“We’re outnumbered,” Varidian said. “We’re—”
A horrible, rending groan filled the air, filled the mountains, filled the world. I exchanged a wide-eyed stare with my husbandand our legion. It began at the top of the continent, far out of sight, but the breaking, groaning filled the aching space in my head where the whistle had just tortured me. Me, not the others. Because I had deathfyre? Or because I was Cirestian?
The dust reached us before anything else. A plume of ash-grey swallowed everything on the horizon, roaring closer in a destructive wave that made my heart stop. It came not from Kalder, but from above—from the coast, from the edge of Ithanys. We were already scaling our wyverns, already leaping from the ground back into the skies to assess the threat. That was when I saw what followed the plume of ashes—magic. Black, glittering magic.
“Shield,”Kamaal yelled, as he and his legion raced for their wyverns.“Shield!”
