My world narrowed to the next threat, the next kill, the next talon swiping for us. The legendary blade sang through the air like it had been hungry for blood for centuries, heavier than my usual sword but comfortable enough in my hand that its wicked tip easily sank into eyeballs and shredded wings. In my other hand, I called upon the sky to spit lightning on our enemy, but it was like punching a brick wall; any magical blow slid off their scales with no impact. Like those wyverns Ameirah and Kamaal faced in Morysen. These were more powerful than the first wave. What would the third wave be? Would we even live to see it?
I rose, my ass leaving Mak’s back as he roared, spitting embers in the face of a pale wyvern at the same time I drove all my weight into my next blow, propelling Dusk-Breaker’s blade through the head of the wyvern beside us.
They were immune to magic, but they died by fae steel sure enough. Protected, but not immortal.
“Save your magic for the commanders,” I shouted to anyone in earshot, swinging my body around. My ass slammed back onto Mak’s rough hide, and I wielded Dusk-Breaker with both hands, facing the black wyvern sneaking up behind us.
The ancient sword punched through the roof of its open mouth, and my hand shook as saliva dripped down my arm. My breathing turned laboured when I tried to free it, only to find Dusk-Breaker had wedged into the wyvern’s flesh and bone. And we were losing. Not just Mak and I—the army. Our forces. Our desperate attempt to save our home.
I didn’t need to see the rest of the battlefield to know we would lose this battle. And I was glad Ameirah had gone to the tower, that she wasn’t here to witness the defeat. To watch the way I weakened when I finally tore Dusk-Breaker’s mighty blade from the wyvern’s mouth and dove to strike down the next threat.
Too late. My arms were heavy, my head full of a dull beating that was too rapid to be my own heart. The bronze wyvern was bigger than Mak. Stronger and lacking the exhaustion I felt pull at my mount. The creature slammed into Mak’s side right where he was injured hours ago, and his wingbeats faltered. His pained moan would haunt my last moments.
“Mak!”
His response was quiet, a slur.I’m sorry, Varidian.
“No. We’re going to be fine.”
You hear me, you stubborn ass? Keep your wings pumping; we’re going to be fine.
But blood streamed through the clouds at an alarming rate, and I felt it—cold spreading through him. “Khalid!” I screamed, as if God would have placed the healer close to us. “Khalid!”
I’m glad it was you,Mak murmured as he tipped in the sky, his right wing giving out when the bronze wyvern slammed us and darted back. Its low rumble of laughter made me sick. The beast didn’t even go for Mak’s throat. It didn’t have to.I’m glad you’re my rider.
“Fight, Mak!” I roared, ignoring the crack in my voice. But he’d given everything, and he’d been losing blood for an hour, fighting valiantly even though pain had carved itself into his body.
And now as his wings failed, as we fell like a star to the ground, he had nothing left.
CHAPTER 46
AMEIRAH
The attic room looked exactly the same as I remembered, and hushed reverence once again fell over me as Nabil and I stepped through the ancient door, both of us armed and dressed in leather armour. Instead of a handle, the door was opened by a revolving cube in its centre like a puzzle box, and I was glad I’d made Shula explain it thrice to me, because it took even more attempts to get it open.
“You’re no help,” I told Nabil, softening the remark with a smile as he closed the carved door behind us. A relic from Wyvara, from a time when fae and araethawn lived in peace and prosperity, not corrupted into a war by a queen of dark magic.
“You handled it,” Nabil dismissed, though he echoed my smile weakly. Still grieving, still healing, but bravely facing every day. It didn’t go unnoticed even if his was a quiet inner strength instead of brash and flashy. I admired him. If I lost Raheema, I was sure I’d never leave my bed.
“I never get used to seeing this place,” he told me, his eyes roving around the high-ceilinged chamber that had no right to fit inside the fortress’s tower.
The floor was polished to a glasslike shine, even though no one had been up here to clean it in weeks, and it ought to smell of dust and neglected rooms, not fresh mint. The rich blue and jade flowers that dripped from golden columns should have been wilted, but instead they thrived, soaking up the magic that practically dripped from the air.
Of coursethis was a gate, it could be nothing else.
“I’ve touched that mirror before,” Nabil murmured, crossing the wide space, craning his neck to look at the vaulted ceiling high above our heads, the moulded wyverns crouched at the top of golden columns. “It never felt like anything except glass.”
“Kaazhim and the king needed my blood to enter the other gate in Morysen; maybe it’s a mirror to everyone except those with Cirestian blood.”
It wasn’t a pleasant thing to say, even if I was coming to terms with the fact Falael wasn’t my father but my keeper, and my real sire was the loathsome gentry who’d tortured my magic out of me. But to realise I’d only ever known half of myself, that there was a side of me that belonged to Cirestia, that I knew absolutely nothing about that part of my heritage… it would take much longer for me to accept. I found it easier to think of war and darkness and Zalaam evil than to look inside myself right now.
Nabil watched me; I felt his eyes on the side of my face, but I didn’t return the look. I crossed the floor, the room so mighty that my footsteps were a whisper absorbed by the high ceiling—or the dense magic all around us. My skin seemed to tingle the closer I got to the end of the room, my lungs light as I breathed in all that magic. Not exactly the same as the weightless air of Riverren, but close. Enough that goosebumps spilled down myarms when I finally dared look at the mirror that stood over us, crowning an imposing flight of golden stairs.
It was flanked, as I remembered, by arched windows as tall as houses, through which a waterfall could be seen.
“There wasn’t a waterfall in Riverren,” I said, frowning. “If we’re not all mad, and this really is a gate, it must show the capital.”
“We’re not mad,” Nabil said, giving me a contemplative look.
