“Can you do anything?” I shouted to Varidian as the wind kicked up, the storm worsening.
“Not without striking him, too,” he replied roughly.
“Shit,” I breathed. I was one moment away from guiding Raheema out of her path, even if it would give Xiu more time to raise the queen, when Varidian jolted again.
“That tiger,” he breathed as the wind dipped, the clouds around us releasing their burdens in a heavier shower of rain. “Look!”
I tracked where he pointed, watched the flash of orange carve a path from the back lines of the Zalaam army. Atop the giant,striped cat rode a woman in silver armour, her hair streaming behind her like a black banner. Something glimmered at her brow, catching a watery ray of light that made it through the dense clouds. A circlet? A crown?
“She’s too far away,” I said, choking on a gasp as Kamaal collided with the ground, enemies on all sides. “She’ll never reach him in time.”
“I’ve never seen a tiger move that quickly,” Varidian murmured, and Raheema slowed, swinging her head around to watch as that orange tiger cut a straight line through the army, its crowned rider cutting down any Zalaam warriors who drew close. They left a path of corpses in their wake. Kamaal had climbed to his feet, still in possession of his sword. He used both weapon and silver streaks of magic to push back the enemy, but he was too far away from our allies, and there was an endless supply of winged Zalaam soldiers around him.
She’ll make it,Raheema said, her eyes on the tiger rider.Nothing can stop that force of nature.
The way she spoke…Do you know that rider?
She rumbled a wordless reply, but I couldn’t extricate any sense from the sound, only a feeling that she had history with those snarling cats. With that rider in particular. Her past was still shrouded in mystery, but here was the first clue: she’d come from Kalder.
She’ll make it,Raheema repeated.
And she did. We slowed our pace only long enough to see the tiger and its crowned rider cut a swath through the field to Kamaal. She ripped through the soldiers around him long enough for Raya to swoop down from the sky and catch him in her mouth, swinging him onto her back as she did with me that first time in Riverren. I watched, stunned, as she closed her talons around the tiger too, and carried it, rider and all, into the safety of our own lines.
“Another thread,” Varidian murmured, and I gave him an alarmed look.
“You feel them, too?”
“The lightning soul does,” he replied. “One pulls usthatway.” He pointed to the mountains, the river. The descendant of a dark queen. “Our fate will be determined here.”
“I know,” I agreed as Raheema beat her wings, catching up to Maleeha. I twisted to face Varidian, fitting my palm to his chilled cheek. “Better make this a kiss to end all kisses then.”
Despite everything, a grin crossed his face, as forced as it was real. His hand curved around the back of my neck, his lips like fire as they pressed to mine. Hot, frantic, wild. It wasn’t a slow, loving kiss; it was devastation and hope and the knife of knowing this could be our last kiss.
We didn’t speak when we parted, only dragged in gasps of shared air. Every wish, every fear, had passed from his lips to mine and back; there were no words left.
“Look!” Nabil shouted ahead of us as we crested the last mountain between us and the river where the Wall of Hydaran had stood. “On the water!”
My heart clanged when I saw her. It was impossible to see her face from here, to get that final confirmation that this was the handmaiden who belittled and sneered at me all my life, who’d shaped me into pure death when I should have been life, blinding and healing.
She stood on a tiny stone island in the middle of the vast river, the water eerily still and utterly black. Her hands were raised to the sky, full of magic that made me recoil even this far away. The helm covered her face again, that awful crown around her head. As if she wasn’t deadly enough by herself, on either side of the river banks were wyverns, but unlike any I’d seen before. Skeletal, in theshapeof wyverns, but without a singlescrap of flesh, only blackened bones on show. Their wings were bare, eery spokes.
I drew a breath, then another, filling my lungs with air at the same time I filled my core of power with rage. I remembered everything that had been done in the name of the Zalaam queen and her foul army, both the first time and now. And I let that fury blaze, let it call up a firestorm of magic as we sailed closer to the river. Closer, closer…
She tipped her head back and my heart jolted even without eye contact. The oily thump of magic I remembered slammed into me, but this time she wasn’t using the power to kill my grandmother. Instead, she was calling her own ancestor from beyond the grave. And in everything we’d spoken about in Riverren, no one had said what to do if she succeeded. Maybe because there would be nothing left of us if she did.
“Let me—” Varidian began, but the world dropped from under us before he could finish.
Raheema screamed wordlessly as we fell, her wings forced to her sides by the hand of a giant. Or by that sick sheen of magic in the air. It no longer filled the sky in a black column, but it waseverywhere.Like it had been everywhere in the dark realm, but worse, concentrated, thick enough to choke on.
My nose dripped blood as we fell, a crimson blur beside us as Maleeha plunged towards the river, too. She fought it, like Raheema fought it. Nabil’s air magic pushed at us, trying to stop the descent, but the queen’s power was too strong. Thepretender’smagic was too strong.
And we crashed into the dark water, sucked down into its depths.
CHAPTER 61
VARIDIAN
Water shoved up my nose and down my throat until I breathed it, choked on it. Only the lightning soul screaming at me tohold control, don’t lose it nowkept my grip on the lightning storm that had built within me all day. A single slip, and I’d roast everything in this river alive. Including Ameirah and Nabil.
