His lips stemmed the flow of my panic with a kiss, gentle and slow presses forcing me to take a breath, to still, to breathe him in. Reassurance poured into me, warming my chest as if he’d bathed me in sunlight. I could sense the worry he tried toconceal, the panic he crushed with icy resolve during the battle but that expanded now with every minute.
“It will be okay,” he repeated, and I realised then. It didn’t matter if it was true; the words were a balm for bruised souls. Even if the bruises didn’t fade, we could pretend that future wouldn’t happen.
I reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair from his face, my fingers lingering, warming his wind-chilled skin. “What do we do next?”
I already regretted the words I’d just said, even if everything was true. We had no idea what to expect from the Zalaam warriors, no idea why they brought the wall down, or why the river beneath was full of the queen’s magic. But Varidian already knew those things and was every bit as afraid as I was. So, instead of panicking, we would take action.
A sigh moved his chest, and his forehead came to rest against mine. “Tonight? We’ll send out warnings and pleas to all our allies, to anyone who might support us, and call on anyone who wishes to fight to defend Ithanys. And we’ll get some rest.” He sighed, tucking me closer to him. “We’re going to need it.”
The queen’sforces remained by the wall for a week, and the reports coming from our scouts made my stomach turn. Rows of people had been marched by Zalaam commanders into the river—the missing people from Kalder, they had to be. But instead of drowning in the black waters, they emerged on the other side, near the old Fallow Gate, withwings.Soldiers, as Xiaoyu’s journal said.
Now they lined up where the gates had stood, awaiting orders. Or waiting to drive us mad with fear, with a thousandwhat ifs.Every gate had collapsed when the wall fell, leaving us open to Kalder’s attacks, but so far, no tigers had been sighted—Kaldic or otherwise.
But that was the problem. Unless we got close enough to see black eyes, how would we know who they fought for? And did they know that the wyverns who’d flown over the river weren’t ours? How would we tell ally from enemy? Varidian had sent word to the emissary he met in the Torn Isle but heard nothing for days. All messages to the leaders of the isle had been similarly delayed. Or absent entirely.
But others had responded, and in droves. Warriors from Wenton and Basilienn. Legions stationed to guard the Caves of Whitbar and the Reaper’s Pass. Riders from the training camps and barracks scattered up and down the river. Civilians who’d fled Wyfell and Morysen, who survived attacks at Tourlestyn, and our own people from the Red Star, all burning with rage at what they’d lost. From all over Ithanys, the message spread, delivered by the Legion of Silverstorm:we are at war, and if you wish to fight, be ready to fly.
We spent the week coordinating with them and flying in everyone who wished to take up arms, who responded either to the call to defend our home or the generous payment Varidian provided. We didn’t dare say where we’d sheltered in our call to arms, but it would be clear to anyone scouting the skies over Willow Green that the lands around the Fortress were rapidly filling up with people and wyverns. And as succinctly as we could, we explained who we were at war with. Who had assumed control of the capital, murdered the king (Kamaal’s clever explanation to exonerate me,) and dismantled the wall keeping us safe from Kalder.
It was mostly the wall’s destruction that convinced people to fight. By the end of the week, there were a few hundred people camped around the Fortress. Nowhere near enough to fight someone as powerful as the queen, let alone the people who’d walked out of River Daw’ with wings and only god knew what kind of strength. But it was better than the fourteen riders we flew into Lake Wahasha with.
We’d spent most of the morning hauling up heavy canvas tents from the depths of the Fortress’s basement, and the afternoon erecting them under the cover of the high trees. Now, as rain began to fall from the grey clouds that had hung over Willow Green all day, I sheltered in the largest tent where our legion had set up a map covered in a depressing number of dark markers. Some white markers—our allies—had been placed closer to the wall to warn us if the winged soldiers who walked out of the river began to move. There were thousands of those soldiers now, and soon I knew we’d have to fly under cover of darkness to take out a swath of them.
Zaarib had gone among the tents to count the number of fire wielders we had, those the journal said were lethal to any Zalaam creature. Zaarib, not Varidian, because word had spread quickly among the camp that my husband bore the lightning soul, and centuries of fear were difficult to shake.
“I still think we should fly to Shyra,” I said, spreading the journal pages over a section of mountains without either coloured markers.
“There’s no way to know it’s as important as the journal says,” Kamaal disagreed, leaning against the table we’d hauled from the depths of the Fortress’s basement with his arms crossed over his chest, silver leather armour polished, metal at his shoulders and wrists. “I don’t doubt it contains information to help us,” he added when I began to speak. “But you were onlyable to tear out four pages, Ameirah. The chances of those being the most important are slim.”
I knew that, and I wished I’d been able to keep the book in its entirety, but those hopes had turned to ash when the queen burned them.
“This points to a village near the wall and calls it a grave between worlds,” I forged on. “Doesn’t that seem like the sort of thing we want to shut down? What if the grave is full of corpses the queen can reanimate and send to fight us?”
“I know,” Kamaal agreed, glancing at Nabil as if he’d back him up, but Nabil’s eyes were fixed on the sketch of a dark ring, scanning the whorls and words etched in its band.From one we rise as many,it read in the language of Cirestia. I didn’t remember the queen wearing it in Riverren, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a secret cache of powerful objects.
Kamaalcertainly did. His legion had flown in six trunks of items they’d collected over the past year, each imbued with magic or uncanny accuracy, some unsettlingly similar to weapons I’d read about in ancient tales. Shields and sickle blades and armour and spears that seemed to pulse with a magic all their own. If this came to a full-out battle against the Zalaam army, those items would be distributed among our commanders. We were vastly outnumbered, and we hadn’t even glimpsed the stolen tigers yet. We needed all the edge we could get.
“If things get dire,” Kamaal began, glancing behind me to the flaps of the tent as a blast of rain-laced wind forced its way inside, followed by a short, curvaceous woman with curly black hair and golden skin bitten pink by the chill. Her yellow wings were battered by the wind, tucked close to her back, and threaded with pure metallic gold. I recognised her from the dungeons; she was one of the women we liberated from Morysen. The last time I saw her, she was little more thanskin and bone and wore stained rags, but now she’d dressed in simple, reinforced leathers. Even with the wings, the beauty, the leathers suited her.
“Nianjia,” Kamaal greeted warmly, motioning for her to come deeper into the tent. “Thank you for coming.”
“I wouldn’t make anyone else relive their captivity,” was her reply. Not soft-spoken as I expected from the way she moved, the way her eyes flitted around, but rough and forceful—a battering ram of a voice. The voice of a warrior who had stared down the bowels of hell itself and walked away. “You want to know how we were captured.”
“And anything you might have seen or overheard during your captivity,” the prince—king—confirmed, his voice gentler than I’d heard it. It was easy to see how he and Varidian were brothers in moments like this, when he showed not simply strength and command but compassion.
Nianjia nodded, her stare flowing over the map on the table as she neared, her back straight and chin high even though she’d come here to share details of a harrowing, traumatic experience. She looked my way when she came to a stop beside the table.
“I thought you’d still be in the Red Star,” I said, biting back a comment about her needing weeks, if not months, more to recover from the dungeon.
Her eyes narrowed, just slightly. “The call was for anyone who wished to fight. And as I understand it, your late king worked alongside the woman who brought down the wall, and the army who are poised even now to sweep over this land.” Fire lit her eyes—not true flames, but rage, burning like embers in brown eyes. “I wish to fight and destroy them.”
Nabil looked sideways at her, appraising. “You want revenge.”
She smiled, though it was more a baring of teeth. Sharp, canine teeth, like her ears were sharp. “I do.”
Nabil jerked his chin at Kamaal. “You should give her one of those fancy knives. If there’s anyone who’ll cut through a swath of those bastards, it’s her.”
Kamaal said, “I’ll consider it.”
