Had the king’s dark wyverns attacked their own people? Had he unleashed them upon his own city, the shining capital of an empire he would allow to succumb to darkness? It was a very short leap to assume he was working with the queen whoincinerated the journal, and that he sent her after me to destroy it once he’d used my blood, my family connection, to find the manor.
“What else can you do with your power?” Kamaal shouted, snapping me out of it. He cut his arm through the air in a powerful arc and a wave of silver power hit the two wyverns at the head of the formation. “Can you summon deathfyre yet?”
“Can I summonwhat?”I demanded, the furore and heat of the fire hitting my face, making my skin prickle. He sank low over Raya, pushing me flat to her neck as she flew over the industrial district’s sprawling warehouses and tall factories. Even the mighty forges of those factories had died, no smoke pouring from their tall chimneys, as if the workers had fled. But fled who? Who was in charge of this assault—and why Morysen?
“Deathfyre,” Kamaal shouted, his words almost stolen by the wind. A storm was gathering; I felt it in the crackle of energy and danger over my skin. The fire and wyverns were bad enough, but to be caught in a storm too? Outrunning them would be impossible. “Summon it, Ameirah.”
I threw a glance over my shoulder as Raya wheeled, avoiding a blaze, spewing orange flames into the sky, grazing her silver underbelly. The heat of it made my eyes water, my nose prickle. Those dark wyverns raced after us, their riders single-minded as they hunted us. I counted seven wyverns, led by two riders on a gunmetal wyvern with a barbed tail and a sleek ruby that reminded me unsettlingly of the wyvern that snuck into the Red Star and knocked out our shields. Not the same wyvern, but maybe a relative.
“Faster, Raya,” I yelled, my heart shooting panic-laced blood through me when I locked eyes with the pockmarked-faced rider of the gunmetal wyvern. I’d never seen him before, but the black eyes, the intense, predatory expression, and the way he tilted his head as he stared at me were familiar. He was of the same ilk asthose clergy Kaazhim forced me to kill in the council chamber. Something more than fae, something inhuman. “Faster!”
Kamaal twisted atop Raya’s back and drew his arm back as if he wielded a spear to deliver a killing blow. Bright silver magic fired across the smoky sky, more dagger than spear as sharp arcs of it sailed unerringly for the two riders at the head of the formation.
There was no space in my head for what had just happened in Riverren, no room in my chest for more than icy panic as those riders batted away Kamaal’s magic like the silver blades were no more than annoying gnats.
“Shit,” he swore. “Ameirah, anytime you want to try something would be great.”
“I could kill us as easily as them!” I snapped. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Fucking Jaouhari,” he snarled, and it took me a heartbeat, as hurt lanced through my chest, realising he was talking about my father. “Sometimes I think this is exactlywhyhe didn’t allow you training or a wyvern. You would be less of a threat.”
Mihrunnisa had said something similar, but I didn’t have time to contemplate it right now.
“In the Red Star, I sent out a wave that killed all the wyverns, but—”
“Fuck the buts—do it!”
Barked commands from a man used to issuing orders. And being obeyed. But I wasn’t his soldier, and I wasn’t trained in warfare and combat.
“Raya!”Kamaal roared as she banked hard, twisting right—to avoid the whip of that spiked tail I realised a moment too late. My heart shot into my throat, restricting my breathing until I grew lightheaded.
It went against every instinct, but I closed my eyes, my heartbeat a ragged, stuttering thing as I reached deep insidemyself, feeling for the core of cold, dark magic that killed all those wyverns. All I remembered from that frantic battle waswantingmy magic to rise,wantingto kill the wyverns.
I felt Kamaal twist again, firing more of that silver magic at the wyverns. Judging by his muttered curse, they pushed it away again.
I want these riders to fall from the sky. I want their wyverns wiped free of this world. Iwantto kill them. All of them.
My breathing came harder, each wisp of air into my lungs a battle as I lifted my bare hand from my thigh and peeled my eyes open, pinpointing the gunmetal grey and ruby and their riders. There was somethingwrongwith them, something that made my skin crawl and my magic hiss at me. Not as visceral as my reaction to the Zalaam queen but—the same.
It was the same source, the same corruption of power. Were these riders hers, then? Were they the araethawn she speared dark magic into and twisted into something poisonous and hungry? Or were these fae, subjected to the same dark ritual that poured venom and magic into people, twisting their very nature until their magic was somethingother,something wrong. Dark, writhing death, like mine.
When the rider on the ruby wyvern smiled slowly—younger than the other man but with the same shining black eyes, same bottomless hunger—I tilted my head, an answering predator rising in my blood.
These riders were born of darkness, but I wielded death itself, and Iwelcomedit. I didn’t shy from the rush of hot and cold magic that soared up my body and down my arms.
“Get down,” I barked at Kamaal, whipping both hands around as the power gathered, built, andraged.
It blasted from me in a wave of dark, shuddering light. Not quite smoke, not quite shadow. It incinerated the riders where they sat,burning. A fire to turn sand to glass, to transmute, tocleanse.The screams made me flinch, threw me into memories of Shahzia screaming, but Raya’s booming wingbeats dragged me out of the past.
The wyverns didn’t drop from the sky, didn’t turn to ashes on the smoke-laced wind, but they did pause, and that was all we needed.
“Their eyes,” Kamaal breathed.”
“I know,” I said, staring. “They’re pure black.”
“No, they’re—”
A wyvern’s roar cut through his voice, through the sky, through the foundations of the city itself, and I lifted my hand again, something deep within me going still, quiet as it readied for a worse fight, for true battle.
