“What kind of movement?” I demanded, the storm covering my voice as panic clashed with the icy killing calm battle sent me into.
I didn’t hear her reply because Buchra screamed, spinning out of the path of dark-hearted crimson fire. Only Nabil’s years of riding saved him. The navy wyvern was lethal, but younger, less experienced and lacking a rider. Whoever controlled it didn’t know skies and scale and storm as well as the Legion of Fyrevein.
A gold streak beside me carried Zaarib close enough to throw out a scarred hand and snare his magic around the navy blue, forcing its jaws shut, and—why was Buchra wheeling? Why was she falling?Why was Nabil falling?
“Mak!” I screamed, throwing myself right on his back, digging my heels into his sides in urgency. He dove, wings tucked tight, the two of us falling like a meteor through the sky, soaring past swollen grey storm clouds, tumbling low enough that the ground soldiers came into horrific clarity. At least fifty men marched towards the wooden gates into Daurith that had once seemed sturdy but now seemed frighteningly fragile.
Wyvern screeches rose from within the walled city, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off my friend and his wyvern as they plummeted, blood streaking the clouds from a wound I couldn’t see, Buchra’s entire right wing burned to skeletal ruin along with her leg and a swath along her emerald ribs.
“Get close enough to grab Nabil,” I yelled to Makrukh, my throat tight and eyes stabbing at his piercing cry of denial. But there was no saving Buchra now, no way to stop her hitting the ground when we were this close, no way to fly beneath her and slow her descent. But we could stop Nabil splattering on the ground. We could do that. We had to.
More enemy wyverns circled through the sky, answering the defiant cries of wyvernlings and their guardians within Daurith, and I couldn’t forget that the lightning soul had sensed more coming from the coast. Just how many of these damned things were there? And where had they come from—these strange wyverns whose fire was a core of pure black that burned flesh and fireproof scale alike.
Buchra,Mak argued, snapping out his wings when we were within reach.We can save her—
“Wecan’t!”I roared, hating the crack in my voice, hating that we were going to lose one of our legion. The grey wyvern was splayed in the long grass at the base of a hill, body broken, wings snapped, the rider dead alongside her. But not Nabil. It wouldn’t be Nabil.
I couldn’t lose anyone else.
Another storm, another screaming wyvern, another friend crashing to his death flashed through my mind.Not again.
Mak heard the words, heard my fear, my resolution, and he slowed directly above Buchra, enclosing his talons around Nabil.
“No!”Nabil screamed, thrashing, struggling to return to his mount, but I was a selfish bastard. I wouldn’t lose another friend. “Don’t you dare!”
“Pull up,” I told Mak, my stomach sinking at how close the ground was now. The grass could cushion Buchra’s fall, I told myself. But there was no ignoring the broken wyvern so close it was a warning and a prophecy. Buchra fell as Mak screamed his rage, his grief, and pulled up, beating his wings hard. I leanedover his neck and watched Buchra all the way down, refusing to look away, granting her this one grace, the only thing I could offer. I bore witness to the last act of her fierce life, strained my ears to hear her last defiant cry. It was over in seconds. Her neck snapped on impact.
Nabil’s scream carved talons through my heart, a lasting mark that would never be erased. I couldn’t imagine his pain. The idea of losing Mak while I survived sent a visceral flinch through my whole body. My stomach writhed, hands unsteady.
Focus,the lightning soul snapped.The impostors breached the city, and seven wyverns remain in the skies. You may just be the next to die.
And she couldn’t have that, because she’d chosen me to carry her, to fulfil whatever future she saw—a future free of darkness was all she’d tell me.
I dragged myself back into my seat with a heavy heart and my stomach in knots. Mak was furious, hurt and ignoring me, but I forced myself to sit up, to swallow the pain and fear, and assess Daurith.
The lightning soul was right; seven wyverns were left of our enemies, presumably all with the power to raze us to skeletons. Dahab and two of the city guard engaged a jade green wyvern that looked too young to be sent to battle, hardly older than the wyvernlings in the sacred city. Those ground warriors in their Ithanysian colours had barrelled through the gate, no doubt with the help of a wyvern’s powerful tail.
Now they spilled into the city like fleas, invading golden streets where the most senior wyverns and riders waited to intercept them, Shula at the front of their lines atop Saif’s hulking grey silhouette. Too few. Far too few of them to defend the revered city. With the guard in the skies with us, it was only a matter of time before they were overrun.
Would the soldiers march through the squares, past the great towers, to the hatching grounds? Would they slay the wyvernlings, shatter those precious eggs? Mak roared, following my train of thought. We needed to kill these wyverns and get to the hatching groundsnow.
I curled my hands into fists, pulling more magic from the core of icy lightning inside me, my jaw clenched as the mark branded an icy path across my ribs and stomach. The second the power gathered, I sent a bolt straight into the heart of a midnight blue wyvern, then a charcoal grey that hid among the storm clouds to sneak up on Dahab’s back.
Five left. I panted, sweat rolling down my forehead.
You pulled up too much at once,the lightning soul chided, but there was no concealing the worry in the needling tone.Use any more and you risk passing out.
So be it.
A streak of burgundy whipped across the sky over Daurith, and a lump tightened my throat at the sight of Aliah racing to protect the most vulnerable, Habiba screeching a warning to anyone who dared hurt the young. One warrior, one deadly wyvern, to defend a whole hatching ground. Was I destined to lose a friend today no matter what?
“Varidian!” Zaarib roared at the same time Dahab screeched a warning, and I shook the fear free of my thoughts and Mak whipped around. Hot iron and blood perfumed the air as he inhaled, dragging lightning-charged air and rain into his powerful lungs as the clouds finally loosed their burdens upon us. When he exhaled, it was pure orange fire that sailed true, hitting the wyvern that had used stealth to target our exposed backs.
The fire ought to make any wyvern pause, but this one flew straight through it without faltering, and I saw why an instant later: it was already burned, its entire right side no more thanbones, its ribs exposed. It had been hit with that dark core of fire and somehow lived. And Mak’s fire had no effect on it.
“Drop!” I yelled, my stomach shooting into my throat when we crashed through the air so fast that tears streamed from my eyes, cold rain driving beyond the collar of my leathers.
Mak bellowed again, fire erupting in a lethal plume that would do at leastsomedamage to an ordinary wyvern. But I didn’t know what these beasts were or how they’d been changed, but they were immune to fire. Or at least immune to the fear of it.
