My thighs tensed; I was one second away from leaping out of the chair, but Kamaal’s hand came down hard on my leg and shoved me into the seat. It was gone a moment later, but the command was clear.
But I didn’t take commands from Kamaal Saber.
I leapt up when the full power of Muhannad’s spiked tail drove into Raheema when she tried to sneak up on him. A stillness fell over me like a shroud when those wicked spikes gouged her side, right where the ruby ripped her open only a week ago, where the wound had barely healed.
Rage curled my upper lip, my heart livid against my breast. The crowd’s voices swelled in approval of the vicious cut in Raheema’s side, but I barely heard it over the roaring in my ears.
Sit down,she barked at me through our link.I’m handling it.
My whole body shook, and my feet burned with the need to run into the square, but I dragged my body back into the seat and sat there, trembling. I didn’t look at the king, didn’t want to see the satisfaction on his face, though there was no missing his low chuckle even with the roar in my ears.
Was this a punishment—but for what? Or was it a warning, that if I betrayed him in any way, he’d send me to my death as he’d sent my wyvern?
Dead,Raheema growled, and I wasn’t sure if she meant King Bakshi or Muhannad as she lifted herself as high as she could reach and bellowed her fury, her head snaking from side to side.
She dove for Muhannad, but he expected it and easily sidestepped, his larger size meaning she went wheeling into thin air as he leapt around, the ground shaking all the way throughJamaa Square, setting trees rustling, leaves drifting to the ground. His next strike came not from the mighty head that dove forward but the wing he swept around while Raheema avoided those many teeth. He pushed her right onto the talon at the apex of his wing, and it sank so deep into her leg, Ifeltit.
“Fight, Raheema,” I hissed under my breath, wanting to yell the words at the top of my lungs, wanting to chant them over and over. Sweat tickled my back as it beaded and fell, the restraintkillingme. I’d give her two minutes. Two, and then I would intervene. I inched my right glove down my hand, pooling the fabric at my wrist.
“Don’t,” Kamaal warned. I ignored him. “You forfeit your life, Ameirah.”
“I won’t forfeit hers,” I replied no louder than a breath. It didn’t matter if he heard the words over the crowd; I took them into my heart and held on. I would not let Raheema die for the machinations of a king my husband despised. Varidian loathed no one without just cause, and I’d always sensed the hatred ran deeper than his rage at Bakshi using and discarding Rawiya. There was more, far more I didn’t know.
Blood spilled down the pearly scales of Raheema’s leg, a whetstone against which my fury sharpened itself. My magic churned, so close I could taste the bitterness of death on the back of my tongue. Muhannad’s jaws parted, eerily like a smile, and he blew a ring of taunting smoke at Raheema as she backed up, a constant growl in her throat. And then the smug, cruel creature looked across the square directly at me. My heart jumped, stomach churning when eyes the colour of bitter limes met mine and held in a challenge and declaration.
I forced a smirk onto my face, made it settle there, my own challenge and declaration.Hers. Hers and never yours.
Raheema drove her legs into the floor while his eyes were on me and leapt into the air, snapping her wings out so closeto the spectators along the edges that they leaned back with cries of surprise and distress. I wished she’d taken their damned heads off. Their shrieks were the only warning Muhannad was granted before Raheema propelled herself onto his back, digging talons and teeth into his back. She ground her jaws to sink past toughened scales, finding a scar—a scar where his natural armour had been ripped off in some long past battle. As if all the time he’d been sizing up her weaknesses, my clever wyvern had done the same and marked each one as a target.
Muhannad roared, spinning in a circle, his tail lashing into the legs of the first rows of the crowd, sending them satisfyingly onto their asses. His head thrashed from side to side, lethal rage deepening his growl, and though his horns pierced Raheema’s smaller body, she never let go. She’d sunk her sharp teeth into him and refused to surrender her prey, gnashing to get deeper purchase until finally, when Muhannad’s body bucked off the ground, she ripped out flesh and scale and blood, and dropped down of her own volition.
She spat the chunk of gore at his feet and licked the blood from her mouth, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream at her for goading him, for working him into a blood frenzy.
“Finish it,” King Bakshi ordered, loud enough to pierce the howling wind in my ears.
I whipped my head around to stare at him, and he lazily met my eyes. I had to physically drag my gaze away, inch by inch. I walked a dangerous line, but I couldn’t afford to cross it. To show insolence at that level would be treason.
You finish it,I told Raheema, fixing my eyes on the two wyverns, the difference in their sizes making my blood cold, apprehension a frigid sweat down my back.He favours his left wing; shred the right.
I know,she spat back, her eyes aglow as Muhannad launched at her and she leapt into the air, nimble enough to evade hisblow. With his size and wingspan, he didn’t have the space to get airborne, and the hot, metallic breath that punched through his nostrils said he was well aware of that, and furious about it.
He saw her next dive coming and was ready, rearing onto his powerful legs and scything sharp wings towards her, to theoohsandaahsof the crowd. Raheema’s wingbeats hit me like physical blows as she frantically changed tack, avoiding the gutting blow he’d aimed at her vulnerable belly, but not the wicked line he tore down her leg. She remained in the air, but tilted, and I could hardly breathe as Muhannad wound up for his next attack.
And I understood how he’d never walked off a battlefield in defeat, how he’d won every fight he’d ever flown into. He was ruthless and cared about nothing but victory. Because his dark throat began to glow, fire summoned to blast Raheema out of the air. Despite the hundreds of people gathered, despite the king who’d presented him as his champion, his win all but handed to him, he would unleash fire in Jamaa Square.
Was that how he’d won so many battles? He killed everyone except his own legion—enemy and ally, threat and innocent alike.
The cheers turned to screams as people rushed to get out of the way of that lethal threat. Getting caught in its path was certain death, and worse—the most painful death. There was no worse fate.
Queen Adeela was already on her feet, the charms on her detailed headdress rattling, her mouth parted on words I couldn’t hear as Muhannad and Raheema roared at once, their screams both a promise of death. The Saber siblings leapt to their feet on either side of me, backing away as heat shimmered in the air, hot enough to blow the hair back from my face.
I stood slowly but didn’t retreat, standing there to bear witness to the death that would fall. But whose?
“Ameirah,”Mihrunnisa shouted above the wyvern screams. She grabbed my upper arm, twisting me half away from the bonding square that had become a slaughterhouse. “We need to get out of here.”
“Stop,” the king yelled, his voice carrying through a net of magic. “Muhannad,stop!”
But the black wyvern parted his jaws, far beyond commands and reason. I planted my feet, equally resistant. I didn’t budge as Raheema zipped through the sky, her injured leg trailing as her wings hammered the air, carrying her in an arching path as Muhannad’s throat glowed bright orange, fire pouring up his tongue now.
