“You didn’t notice the lightning storm when those wyverns attacked Daurith?” Aliah questioned, the look she aimed his way somehow more judgemental than the look she graced me with.
“Well, obviously. Clearly, the lightning soul hates those Zalaam wyverns, too, if it came to help—” He cut off and stared at me. Just stared.
My stomach churned, and missing nothing, Aliah nudged one of the tangerines towards me and gave me an expectant look. I sighed and began peeling it, forcing myself to eat. “The fruit will help settle your stomach,” she said, leaning back against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest to watch Zaarib and I. “Ameirah knows, I assume.”
“I told her when she woke up after the battle here. Right before—I had to send her away. Ihadto. I couldn’t let her stay with me, knowing what she knew. She’d be a target, forever at risk—”
“Raise your hand if you think that was a dumb decision,” Zaarib drawled, and three hands shot into the air.
“Thanks,” I muttered, finishing the fruit. “Very supportive.”
“What’s done is done,” Shula cut in before Zaarib could reply. “What matters is getting her away from Morysen and back here where she’s safe. And where she can give our dear commander the lecture of the century.”
“Thanks for being on my side, guys,” I quipped. “It’s nice to know you have my back.”
Shula snorted. “With your foolish ass? I’m always on Ameirah’s side.”
Nabil clapped my shoulder on his way out the door to spirit the letter to the Torn Isle.
“Aliah, go with him,” I said, jerking my chin at the door.
“We’ll secure help,” she replied, like all my fear and insecurity was plain to read on my face. She hastily threw bread and fruit into a bag. “You stay here, plan, and get some rest if you can.” She pushed a bowl of steaming harira towards me in a final order. “We’ll bring Ameirah home.”
For a moment we stared at the door they’d disappeared through, and then I forced my fingers to curl around the spoon, to bring the food to my mouth. And for my friends, for my wife who would undoubtedly be furious, I ate everything in the bowl as Shula, Zaarib, and I laid out a blunt, brutal assault on Morysen. Our own fucking capital.
My father did this, treacherous bastard that he was. He’d forced us into this corner, where the only way to get Ameirah out quickly enough to evade capture was to assess Morysen as an enemy city.
I rose from the table halfway through an intense discussion about the Morysen house guard.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Zaarib demanded.
“To write a letter. No, several letters.”
I didn’t know if they’d help, but I had to try. Attacking Morysen was already high treason; I may as well become a full traitor.
The Torn Isleleaders sent their reply four hours after Nabil and Aliah departed, both wyverns panting, sides heaving, when they landed on the lawn outside the Diamond. Habiba snappedat me as I neared, her foul mood reflected on her rider’s scowling face as Aliah dismounted in a graceful slide. Nabil was close behind, giving Aliah’s mount a wide berth as he strode towards us.
“They’ll help,” he told me, but his voice was anything but relieved. “Kanuri agreed to send four legions to back us up in our attack on Morysen—they’re already readying to fly.”
My shoulders sank, relief striking me like a fist to the chest, knocking all the air out of my lungs. The tautness of Aliah’s expression made me stiffen all over again. “For what price?” I asked.
“They want a favour in return,” she said, her mouth pursed with clear distaste. “They want us to kill someone.”
CHAPTER 23
AMEIRAH
“It has to be Kalder,” I whispered, barely even conscious of the other wyverns flanking Raya as the crown prince of Ithanys urged his mount to walk through the mighty doorway it had taken all of us and several wyverns to pull open. The wood was a perfect, natural white I’d never seen before, the hinges formed of swirling, decorative silver.
Ithadto be Kalder. There was nowhere like this in any corner of Ithanys I’d seen drawings of or read stories about. I’d never once heard anyone speak of a city of purple trees and pearl bridges, let alone those strange, twisted spires, made of solid white stone from base to roof, not a dome in sight.
“Welcome,” Kaazhim said, sending a shiver of awareness down my spine, “to the city of Riverren.”
“I’ve never heard of a city called Riverren.” Kamaal was the one to reply, his tone an accusation.
I heard the smile in Kaazhim’s voice. “Few have. It’s the capital city of Cirestia, the fabled home of the fae.”
A ripple of cold went through me at his voice, at the smugness oozing from him. Cirestia. I’d never heard that name, not in any of the books that spoke of other continents. I knew the frozen plains that stretched across most of a continent, the sun-baked cities in the west, the hardened people who lived in the mountains of the east, and the forests that lay even further that way, but never this. Never a pale city with a lilac sky. The home of the fae.
