Aliah carved a path through the chaos with a gauzy fog, and black-eyed wyverns simply fell from the sky as she passed. They didn’t land below, whisked away into the mist as she and Habiba fixed their attention on the purple wyvern.
The moment she was close enough, a white stream of aether reached the wyverns. It happened instantly; its throat darkened, fire guttered, and black eyes emptied of life. In seconds, the mist had surrounded it. When it moved back, nothing remained except the rain.
They’re retreating,the lightning soul said with more urgency.Varidian, a second wave is coming.
“Scout,” I yelled, and three riders soared above our heads to observe the enemy, our visibility of those back lines blocked by the messy chaos of the battlefield. Below, nothing had changed. The dark lines of soldiers were an endless stream flowing into the distant mountains. But what had the lightning soul seen?
A dark brown wyvern snapped its jaws at Mak’s wing, and he snarled, the throaty rumble moving through my legs, making my heartbeat scatter. He angled himself to avoid those many, jagged teeth, and the breath went out of me as I tipped on his back. Gravity clasped me in unforgiving hands, but I pressed my knees into Mak’s side, tightened my thighs until the muscles screamed, and dropped lower to avoid the pull and tear of the wind.
“There’s another wave,” a voice boomed, hoarse after a day of shouting. The scouts had returned.
“Reform the front lines!” I yelled, my voice carrying across the snarling melee. “Magic users, take out any wyverns close to you. Close the gaps.”
If that second wave reached us and found a disorganised army instead of a disciplined legion, we were fucked.
The crackle of a dozen different types of magic coated the back of my tongue as riders followed my commands. I tried not to cringe as wyverns crashed onto our soldiers below, as Zaarib and others with the same power did their best to push the dead onto our enemy.
“Fall back,” a command floated up from below. “Fall back.”
Because they knew even more wyverns would fall, and if we lost many more ground warriors, we would lose this entire damned battle. Lose Ithanys itself to a queen who had ruled through control and blood and would do so again.
Sweat crawled down my back as my skin burned, the lightning’s mark spreading over my body as I called on bolt after bolt. A grey wyvern crashed from the sky, my magic piercing its heart, but there were more. There were always more. Air scraped in and out of my lungs, and it became a struggle to keep breathing when a powerful tail slammed into Mak’s side and knocked us into the wyvern behind us. Snarls and warning grumbles arose, but Mak didn’t reply and it took me too long to realise why.
To realise that he had tofightto force away the green’s tail because barbs covered every inch of it. They’d gored a deep line down Mak’s side, and my heart stumbled, my stomach dropping when I saw how much blood poured from the wound.
A shape blotted out the light, and I gritted my teeth, ripping another fistful of magic from the sky, but the lightning soul’s cool touch halted me in time to see that the shadow was Kamila. Not another enemy, not the green wyvern delivering a killing blow.
Kamila, my house guard, stood atop her vermillion wyvern, its scales dancing like firelight as lightning tore across the sky, splintering into multiple bolts to strike the hearts of four wyverns at once. But it cost me, and I panted, a wash of dizziness making me slump forward.
Kamila’s wyvern sank its teeth into the green’s flank, biting deep enough that it faltered. When it evaded Mak’s snapping bite, Kamila’s wyvern delivered the killing blow, sharp teeth deep into its throat.
The house guard met my eyes over the wild violence of her wyvern spitting out the green’s throat, gore splattering Mak’sside, and she grinned. A defiant, wild grin that reminded me so much of her grandfather. He too was a wild-hearted fighter.
I managed a small answering smile, but my head was full of so much static silence that it didn’t come naturally. Still, I shouted, “Thank you,” over the noise.
She opened her mouth to reply, brown eyes still full of that wildness when teeth the size of my arm clacked shut around her head andtore.A small, startled sound left me when the wyvern spit her head onto the ground below and lunged its blunt head at Kamila’s mount.
Mak wheeled us away, driving his legs into a wyvern’s chest to shove it back. I twisted to watch, my heart collapsing, as Kamilla’s wyvern seemed to face the green wyvern, seemed to accept their death with grace, choosing to join their rider instead of fighting. My eyes burned when they fell.
I clenched my jaw andrippedmagic from the air, driving so much lightning into the green wyvern that its body lit up, skeleton visible from within, and only bones fell upon the ground below.
Careful,the lightning soul hissed.You’ll burn yourself up, you fool.
I didn’t reply, slumping further over Mak’s shoulder, panting as my head swam and an uncomfortable heat began to pulse under my skin.
When a gap opened in the skirmish, I saw the enemy wyvernswerefalling back, retreating behind a fresh aerial force of wyverns twice the size of the initial wave. Fuck.
“Reform the lines,” I roared, dragging myself off Mak’s back and sitting straight even as my head spun. Mak bellowed a command to the wyverns around us as gaps in the line were patched, strangers lining up around us, our own legion scattered. At the edge of the lines, our riders still fought theirwyverns, my command either lost before it reached them or the fighting too immediate, too desperate to push back.
This new wave was riderless too, no matter how much larger they were. And unlike the first wave, they didn’t fight in a solid line; groups flew in arrow formations to break apart our rows of wyverns. And we were all too scattered now to find our legions to match their strategy. It had to be intentional, a tactic on their part—or their queen’s.
“Summon magic,” I yelled. Other orders went up, commanders no longer strategically dotted through our forces, but voices rising, nonetheless.
I heard Kamaal, far closer than he’d been before. “Draw your weapons. Kill anything that moves.”
I ignored the wash of dizziness through me and reached for another bolt of magic, shushing the lightning soul’s warning. What choice did she think I had? Any slip, and I’d be dead like Kamila.
I had just enough time to fill my tight chest with air, to draw Dusk-Breaker from my back, and they were upon us.
