“How did we get here?” I demanded, using my confusion as a shield in lieu of bravery as I glared over at Kaazhim on his dark green wyvern. “Whatwasthat window?”
“An entrance of sorts,” he replied with gentry smoothness that made my lip curl. I didn’t bother hiding my revulsion; the king already locked me up for treason. What else could he do?
“How are we supposed to find what the king wants?” I asked, watching the bastard throw his leg over the wyvern’s back and slide down to the ground.
“We’ll go on foot from here,” he yelled up at us, barely sparing a glance when the other gentry dismounted—his guards, I presumed, to keep him safe from the oh-so-dangerous lightning soul. “The wyverns can stay in this building.”
“Like hell,” I snarled.
“Ameirah,” Kamaal chided softly. “Don’t provoke him.”
But the hatred had a hold of me now, and it felt a lot like bravery, so I let it coat my skin like armour.
“If I have to walk alongside him, I’ll kill him,” I said loudly enough for the gentry to hear me on the ground. He laughed, as if I wasn’t a threat.
Kamaal grabbed my hand when I reached for my glove, squeezing my wrist hard enough to hurt. “What is wrong withyou? You’ve always been angry, but this reckless? You’re acting like you want to die.”
“I don’t,” I snapped, though my whole body shook with the restraint of holding myself back.
“You could fool me,” Kamaal muttered, shaking his head. Gentler, he said, “I’ll make sure you don’t return to the dungeon. You can trust my word and my legion, Ameirah.”
My throat was full of glass; it hurt to swallow, to speak. “Varidian’s dead.”
He jolted; the impact was so severe it rattled me where I sat atop Raya. “How—did you sense it?”
Sense it? I shook my head, the armour of my hatred harder to hold onto. “He told me. The king.I knowhe may be lying, but—he was so angry after Raheema won the duel. Angry enough to send those dark wyverns to Daurith to burn the remains to ashes. And if he’s telling the truth, Varidian and the legion were burned with them.”
“What’s taking so long?” Kaazhim yelled from the ground. “We need to hurry.”
“He lied, Ameirah,” Kamaal said firmly, ignoring the impatient gentry. “If you didn’t feel Varidian die, he lied.”
But the aching mess in my chest disagreed. I threw my leg over Raya’s back, allowed a single breath to flood my lungs with crisp, strangely light air, then slid down her muscled side to the ground. I wanted to believe Kamaal, and Ihadtried to deny what Bakshi said—all morning, I’d told myself he was a liar and a bastard. But with every hour since, numbness and grief began to hollow my chest.
“Finally,” Kaazhim remarked when I landed unsteadily beside Raya’s scaled foot. I gave his angular face and his slicked back hair a single, hateful sneer then tore my attention away, focusing on the ethereal city spread out around us, dragging that delicate air into my lungs. It took me a moment to realise therewas no grit of sand. No oppressive heat. Instead, goosebumps prickled my arms and found places to bite into me—my face, my neck, my chest where my leathers had become unfastened at the top.
“There’s so much power in you, and yet you shun it,” Kaazhim remarked, watching me with too-sharp eyes. “You could doanything,Ameirah.”
“Donotsay my name,” I hissed, glaring up at the monster who tortured me until I killed twenty clergy.
“Why shouldn’t I?” A smile played across his face. “I gave you that name.”
A dismissive laugh stung the tip of my tongue, but Raya got there first, inserting her large, horned head between me and the cruel gentry to blast him with a breath of hot, iron-laced air through her nostrils.
I gave Kamaal a wide-eyed look when he landed and came up beside me, his expression distant and bored, the mask of the prince heir firmly in place. I couldn’t tell if he heard what the gentry said, but the words rattled around inside my head.
I gave you that name.How? I saw him a few times with my father in Strava, but not enough to view them as anything remotely friendly. It had always seemed like a business relationship, and one Kaazhim only tolerated out of necessity. But now he was saying they were close enough for him to have named me?
I shook my head, forcing his words out. This was simply a new way of torturing me, twisting my head until I didn’t know truth from lies.
“Where do we start looking?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at the three gentry whose faces I knew only vaguely. There was something about the way they stood, the posture and the stillness, that made cold trickle through me the same way itdid when I was in the same room as those dark clergy. What had the kingdoneto these people?
Maybe I didn’t want to know the answer to that.
“Down there,” Kaazhim replied, sweeping his arm out at the bridges, the river, the city arranged in perfect straight lines. “The king’s quarry is somewhere in the city proper, and you are going to lead us to it.”
I backed up another step. For a split second I wished Iwasthe lightning soul, so I could bring a bolt of burning heat from the heavens and strike the heart of the smiling gentry.
“Like calls to like, Ameirah.”
