“Through it,” Kamaal confirmed, squeezing his thighs around Raya’s pearlescent side and sending us shooting into the sky. Her wingbeats were louder than my heart, louder than the screaming terror of my thoughts. Would I never get over this fear of heights?
I grasped for the spike that thrust between Raya’s shoulder blades, much smaller than the barbs along Mak’s spine but welcome compared to the smooth expanse of Raheema’s back. Yet, my heart squeezed with longing for my wyvern. Where was she? Again, I reached through our link, but it was like reaching into an open room in the dark. She was nowhere to be found.
“What did he do with my wyvern?” I demanded, whipping my head around to glower at Kamaal, anger overriding my fear and allowing me to sit straighter on Raya’s back as she swept through the sky above the palace, then further, soaring past glittering medinas, roads cluttered with carts, busy shops, and housing districts where children played in the streets. I was leaving Morysen, but not on my own terms.
“I don’t know,” Kamaal admitted, meeting my eyes with as close to regret as I’d ever seen him muster. “I have to be careful asking questions, but I promise I’ll find her.”
“Why?” I clenched my jaw, wind whipping my hair into my eyes until they ran. “Why do you care?”
“Why did you refuse to kill on my father’s command?” Kamaal replied, his eyes flinty as he looked across the city, then at the wyverns who fell into formation around us and the dark emerald Kaazhim rode. I didn’t look at him too closely, but my stomach knotted at his proximity. The ghost of pain tore through me.
“I—” I frowned. “I don’t understand the question.”
“You refused because you’re not a senseless killer, and you have a moral compass. So do I.” I thought that was all the prince would say until he added, “I allowed fear to hold me back when our bastard father tried to use Varidian’s magic, manipulated him into using that control against innocents. I won’t sit back and let it happen another time.”
I blinked against the wind, a shiver chilling me when Raya arced over the edge of Morysen, her wings angled to bring us to an industrial area full of squat, sprawling buildings with silver tiled roofs, others with towers and chimneys that thrust up to the sky, close enough to brush Raya’s underbelly if she dipped a few metres.
Bakshi had manipulated Varidian? Had used his control magic against their people, likely to his own political gain. I knew my husband kept secrets, knew there were monsters in his mind that had claws and teeth and sank both into him, but I hadn’t guessed this. My shoulders shifted with a deep sigh.
“Alright,” I said finally, giving Kamaal an extra scrap of trust. I could understand failing the ones you loved and wanting to do better in the future. “How do we get rid of these fuckers?”
“For now,” Kamaal replied, “we don’t. See the smoke over there?”
It was hard to miss; a black column of smoke rose from a house on the other side of a tree-lined park, staining the air.
“The imam of the Mosque of Morysen lived there, before the king’s guards kicked down his door and tried to arrest him for treachery against the crown and regis. When they realised the family had fled the city days ago, they incinerated his home out of spite.”
“Shit,” I breathed. With the sheer amount of smoke coming from a single house… there had to be nothing left. Again, that question prickled at me: why?Whywas the king and his vile retinue determined to smear the name of true clergy? “They’re a threat, aren’t they? To your father.”
“It seems that way,” Kamaal agreed, then: “There’s the window.”
“The window we’re going tofly through.”
“Those were our orders. And something feels…offout here. It always has. There’s something in the air that sets my instincts on edge, a warning we should heed to stay far away.”
Dramatic, but… I felt it. A shiver down my arms, a whisper in my ear to turn back, that only death waited ahead. I gritted my teeth and fought it, if only because the king wanted the journal that lay on the other side, and if I could find it and keep it from him, it might mess with his plans long enough that I could escape.
Or I could use it to barter for my freedom.
“Call me crazy,” I shouted over the wind, “but maybe that means we should stay away.”
“Hold on,” he yelled back as Raya tilted, her angle bringing us in line with a building far taller and older than even the factories. It looked like it had been hewn from the sandy hills that rolled away from Morysen as far as I could see, an angulartower with rows of small, arched windows running up and down every solid face of it. And at the top was our window. There was no doubt about it—it was arched like the others but big enough that even Makrukh would fit through with his wings extended. Coloured glass caught the ethereal glow of the midday sun, setting aglow the warped shapes that made my breath catch.
“Is that…?” I didn’t speak loud enough to be heard, but I didn’t need an answer. A sapphire blue wyvern was depicted in that coloured glass, curved in flight over a sleeping tiger. And if that wasn’t symbolic enough, two figures stood along the left and right sides of the window. One bore a shield and a mighty sword that had been lost for eons—one of three legendary swords that had belonged to the fae in the old stories.
“Dusk-Breaker,” Kamaal said incredulously.
Dawnfury was broken at the start of the world. Wildfyre had shattered to defeat the mythical Ghazi, who sailed to Wyvara from a far-off land and sought to invade us. The third sword, and the one depicted in the stained-glass window, was Dusk-Breaker. It had been lost for centuries, long before Ithanys and Kalder split. I knew, deep down, this tower was ancient even before I recognised the other figure—one who bore aether in one hand and void in the other. Araethawn.
“Kamaal,” I said, my whole body taut.
“I see it,” he replied tightly.
“We need to turn back.”
“No.” I wanted to shove his shoulder at that cold, commanding tone, but it seemed unwise with us both on a wyvern over a perilous drop. “We’re meant to find this place. Whatever is here, it’s too valuable to lose.”
But the king sent us. What if we fly to our deaths?I wanted to yell the words, but Raya snapped her wings in powerful beats, sending us flying towards the window, and I only had enough air in my lungs to scream as we crashed into the ancient glass.
