A piercing whistle made me ground to a halt in the middle of the hall, so loud and sudden that it hurt.
I threw my hands over my ears, teeth grinding as the shrill noise burrowed like a screw into my brain. An alarmed look around the hallway showed the only other person here was a woman with a basket full of clean clothing, her demure gazepinned to the floor as she passed. None of the staff looked me in the eyes, I’d noticed, but not because they feared my mismatched eyes or my touch; they didn’t meet Mihrunnisa’s eyes either.
“Can you hear that noise?” I called to the woman, startling her enough that she nearly dropped her basket. “Whatisit?”
She flicked a glance at me and then away. Her fear made my stomach tighten, the feeling familiar, but I told myself it wasn’t a personal insult. As far as I could tell, no one in the capital knew what my dark power was capable of.
“All I can hear are the birds, a-lalla,” she breathed, bowed, and hurried away.
But the ringing in my ears didn’t stop for another three minutes, and when it was gone, the impression of it remained in my head all the way across the palace and up three floors to my new room.
Had the woman lied, or could I hear something she didn’t? And if the latter… whatwasthe damned thing?
CHAPTER 2
VARIDIAN
Lightning crackled in my veins as Makrukh’s ivory wings caught a rush of wind and sailed out of the shadow of the Undaur Mountains. I commanded the crackling flare of magic to cool, to calm, but it was harder to keep in check with Ameirah gone. I had no one to blame for that but myself, though sending Ameirah to Morysen was the safest choice. If my bastard father, the King of Ithanys, was behind the gathering darkness, the dark-robed zealots, and the wyverns who attacked my home, the capital was theonlyplace Ameirah would be safe. He wouldn’t loose those fiends upon his own home, his shining, glorious city. It was the right thing to do.
I just wished it hurt less. I’d expected Ameirah’s absence to gnaw at me like a broken tooth, but instead it was a deep stab wound to a vital area, steadily leaking blood and vital fluid. She’d call me dramatic if I ever said the words to her, but it truly felt like I’d die without her.
Mak whipped his head around, a low sound in the back of his huge, scaled throat. I couldn’t understand him word for word, but our link meant his meaning came across.If you don’t focus, we’re both riding to our deaths.
Even if he was right, I rolled my eyes. “I miss my wife. Sue me.”
I waited for him to roll his eyes right back, or give me a sassy growl, but instead it was a low keen of sympathy. He missed Ameirah, too. I reached forward to pat the warm scales of his neck, but I had no reassuring words. I didn’t know when it would be safe for her to come home.
When the darkness was gone, when the dark robed bastards were eradicated from our cities, was the obvious answer, but how long would that take? I couldn’t weather that kind of separation from Ameirah. I’d be lucky to last another week. It had been seven days since Mak and I flew her to the rolling hills several miles west of Morysen, sheltering in the dense desert trees that covered them as I handed my unconscious (but still recognisably furious) wife to Kamaal with a promise of slow, unbearable death if anything happened to her.
My brother would keep her safe. Mihrunnisa would keep an eye on her, too. Even so, I didn’t like how close she’d be to my father. He wouldn’t kill her, wouldn’t hurt her, unless he tried to use her magic like he did to me. Unless, like me, she resisted.
It was too fucking late for those worries. Kamaal would keep her safe. He was lethal in a fight, and his heart was forged in fae steel—hard and unbending but good, right to his core.
I snapped out of the gnawing worry when Aliah’s sleek burgundy wyvern came close alongside Mak, bloodlust shining in her jade green eyes and the spikes at the tip of her tail a clear threat to her enemies.
Too close,Mak rumbled at her.
She snapped her teeth.I’ll show you too close.
“Habiba,” Aliah yelled over the wind, and I physically saw the wyvern’s body move with a sigh as she put her teeth away. “There’s nothing out of place around the city, but I’m worried about the hills on the other side,” Aliah shouted to me, pointing beyond the grassy hills that protected the nests of Daurith, where deeper shadows hid among taller hills.
This close to the coast, rough winds battered the grasses, whistling through gaps between the aviary towers that stood above the short stone houses where the fae of Daurith lived. Those famous towers were known for their solid turmeric-yellow stone, with arched landings where wyverns would launch their flight, and flat, perilous bridges that soared from tower to tower, cutting through the sky, just barely wide enough for a wyvern to walk.
“There could be a legion hiding in the hills,” Aliah shouted. “Or a force of ground warriors.”
“How close can you get?” I asked over the wind, assessing the hunched curves of the hills for a glimmer of movement. I tried to ignore the wind that kicked up, the skies that darkened overhead.
Control yourself.
Barked, steely words. The first words the lightning soul had spoken to me all day. I didn’t know her name, didn’t have anything to call her except lightning soul.
I’m in control.
You’re emotional and volatile. Get a hold of yourself unless you want lightning to strike those wyvernlings’ towers.
I hissed a breath through my teeth, but she was right. Any one of those yellow towers could act as a lightning rod, and the result would be disastrous. We’d come to protect the young, not kill them ourselves.
Breathe,she ordered me.And think of that wicked mate of yours.
