“Did we trigger this?” I asked, trying in vain to soften my voice. Emmahin wasn’t the target of my rage; instead, it was aimed inward. Had we left Daurith safe, only to expose it to a new, worse threat mere hours later?
“We were just there,” Nabil snarled, the air throbbing around him. “We checked the hills, the mountains, and the surrounding areas all the way to the damned coast. How thefuckdid we miss a host this large?”
“We were meant to,” I replied grimly.
“We checked the hills, the mountains, the surrounding areas,” Emmahin repeated, her eyes focusing on Nabil. Sharp, canny eyes. “You’re right. There were no traces of a wyvern—anywyvern. No trace of Zalaam warriors, either. So where did the legion who attacked Daurith come from? You tracked ground warriors on their march, but did you spot wings in the skies?”
“No,” I said, forcing a slow breath into my lungs, barely in control of the living power—both kinds that lived within me.
“Then where did they come from?” Kanuri asked, eyes on the skies, the dark swarm now moving beyond the Torn Isle towards the mainland, towards the wall.
“Underground,” Nabil realised. “What if they werebeneaththe hills?”
I turned and raced down the stairs, my skin too tight over my bones. “We need to get into the skies. Kanuri, Emmahin, can you spare a legion to follow that swarm to their destination?”
“Consider it done,” Emmahin agreed in such a hard tone that I wondered if she’d take her own legion and attempt to knock those wingedthingsfrom the sky.
“We’re flying to Daurith?” Nabil asked, looking the most alive I’d seen him in a whole day. Anger would burn through his grief, giving him something to hold onto, a target upon which to unleash his rage.
“We fly now.” I glanced over my shoulder at Emmahin, the straight-backed, serious figure of Kanuri still in that tower chamber, watching the sky and quiet in a way that spoke of anger. “We’ll send word of what we find.”
“And we’ll send word of the darkness’s route,” Emmahin replied. “Good luck. Safe skies.”
I repeated the farewell as we exploded out of the fortress, Nabil and I taking off running through the city towards where we’d left the rest of our legion. They were gathered, already waiting when we arrived, and it took mere minutes to scale Mak’s scales and throw myself into my seat, to launch into the bright blue sky. No remnant at all of the dark cloud that had passed over it so recently.
“Daurith, Mak,” I shouted over the boom of his wingbeats, glancing down at the noisy, hectic Isle only once as we left the spires, medinas, and harbours behind.
The flight to Daurith passed in a blur of panic, with the lightning soul and I trading theories and paranoia. We sailed over the rolling hills, over dense forestland where trees bent under the weight of winds from the ocean, and finally the sacred city came into view.
Nothing remained of the walls, the external gates, the guard posts. Only one turmeric tower remained, its yellow stone bridges leading to nothing, the rest snapped clean off by god’s hand—or a wyvern’s spiked tail. Black smoke curled from the ruins, from the bare skeletons of houses, from the shattered dome of a mosque. A quarter—a merequarterof the city had survived, and that was being generous.
“The hatching grounds,” Aliah yelled over the wind, the smoke, the fire still eating away at the remains of a market. Nabil choked out as many flames as he could, riding Mak behind me.
We sped across the city, wingbeats drowning out every other sound in my ears until all I heard was my own blood roaring. So much had been burned to ashes. The stench shoved itself up my nose until I could taste it, until it sat heavy on my chest. There were so many blasted bits of ground that I lost count. Buildings and bakeries and butcher’s shops had stood proud here for centuries, and now there were only scorch marks left to show for those years. The bonding square was cracked in half, its tiles falling into the chasm created by strikes from a deliberate tail. They’d sacked the city. Left nothing to salvage.
And when we reached the hatching grounds, when we saw that only fire and ash remained, I knew it was a message. For the lightning soul. For me.
CHAPTER 15
AMEIRAH
Snap.
I didn’t know what the sound was at first. I looked around myself, the graceful, flat-roofed buildings familiar, the canvas market stalls tugging at my memory.
Snap.
Snap.
The sound came from below me. My movements sluggish with confusion, I frowned at the ground beneath my riding boots. When the shapes resolved into a clear image, I lurched back with my heart galloping in my chest. The road I walked along was lined with bones. Pearly fae bones, pickled clean by sharp teeth.
Wyvern screams came from the sky above, and I shuddered. I knew where I was. Wyfell. The market where we were first attacked by those dark wyverns, where fire razed people to ashes, the scent of burning flesh so strong that it coated the back of my throat now and made me retch.
I stumbled back, more bones crunching, breaking.
“Varidian?”
But unlike my last dream, I was here alone, and as a shadow passed overhead, the underbelly of a wyvern directly above me and fire building in the creature’s dark throat, I suspected this was no dream at all.
