“She’s a fraud,” I taunted. “If she’s so powerful, why is she not out there fighting our legions?” I stabbed a finger at the wall, at the forest beyond, at the brave people of Ithanys who answered our call. “Why is she hiding behind wyverns and soldiers? Why did she sendyouto face me, instead of facing me herself?”
I bared my teeth in a grin. Kanuri was close enough now that my heart hammered in my throat, and my entire plan balanced on a knife edge. Literally. Four steps separated us, then three.
“Your queen is acoward,”I sneered, and watched the sheer rage flare in her black eyes as she lunged.
I was ready for her, and so was Nabil. I drove my dagger up under her ribs at the same time I punched deathfyre into that wicked amulet and Nabil swung his sword.
She moved faster than any fae, as fast and sharp as the wind itself. Before I could stop her, she tore her chest from my dagger, and twisted aside before Nabil’s sword could make contact.
“Myqueen,”she raged, “will wipe any trace of you from this world. Fromeveryworld. She’s done it before.”
I whipped my dagger up to intercept a glint of metal, only light from the vast windows behind us giving me a warning in time to stop the knife she aimed at my throat. The breath went out of me, my rage faltering for a second as fear cut through it.
Nabil drove the hilt of his sword into her shoulder, forcing her down a step to give him the space to use the full length of the blade. But Kanuri was light on her feet, even on the stairs. She sidestepped his attempt to spear her at the same moment she slashed a broken-edged short sword at both of us.
Sound was drowned out by the pump of blood in my ears. The world narrowed to Kanuri’s movements as she feinted and struck, dancing away from any attempt to stab her again. Butblood leaked down her middle; my dagger had struck true. Even though she didn’t show signs of weakness, shewasweaker.
I swiped for her ribs, forcing her into Nabil’s next slash, and I didn’t breathe at all when she snapped her teeth at him. I raised my fiery hand and jammed my thumb into the latch on the bracelet I hadn’t taken off since Mihrunnisa gifted it to me. And before Kanuri even stopped snarling at Nabil, I dragged my wrist, and the bracelet’s spikes, across her throat.
Hot blood poured over my hand as I lurched out of range of that short sword, my knees weak. I watched blood ooze down her chest, breathing hard, hope a knot in my chest. And I saw it—the moment she realised the spikes had cut deep, that she was bleeding out, her death guaranteed.
“Move!”I shouted, lunging forward just as she struck, like a snake sinking in its fangs without warning.
But she didn’t stab Nabil; she shoved her hands into his chest to force him off balance. Relief filled my chest with air; he wouldn't be gutted, only bruised, and I could defend him for the time it took to regain his feet. He’d be fine.
But in all the time we’d been luring her closer, I didn’t realise how close we’d come to the top of the staircase. Didn’t realise the gate loomed behind us until Kanuri shoved Nabil through its shattered surface, and he disappeared into the glass.
CHAPTER 48
VARIDIAN
The fall happened so fast, the world streaking past us in a blur of vertical rain and tangled wings. In seconds, we dropped out of that bloody battle, plummeting towards the bloodstained grass like so many riders before us. I clung to Mak, buried my face in his neck, and refused to let go even as I speared my soul across land and woods and sky, reaching for Ameirah. To feel her one last time before impact with the ground broke my body, broke my neck.
Dusk-Breaker slipped from my grasp. I began to slide from Mak’s back despite every effort to cling to him. My leg lost its grip first, rain driving into us, the storm itself bellowing at us tofight.ButMak had nothing left and—
Magic pummelled us, smacking into Mak’s belly like a solid wall, and his wings splayed as our fall jerked to a stop. We hovered in the air, only fifty metres above the ground warriors, and it was so impossible that I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t feel my fingers even as I watched them tremble.
Mak whined an apology that I dismissed before it had fully formed, leaning forward to rest my forehead against his neck. Whoever had halted our fall, be it allies or god or the Zalaam queen herself, I didn’t give a shit. We’d been spared.
Wyvern roars cut through the drumming of the rain in my ears. Stronger, louder—cries from wyverns that weren’t injured and beaten down after hours of combat. I lifted my head, scoured the ground and what I could see of the sky. Above us was all-out chaos as wyverns clashed with wyverns.
But there, flying in from the west, were ten legions. Morysen legions? I thought all the riders who wanted to fight had already answered the call, but this was undeniably a new wave of legions, and they wereours.Not marked by a white band, but by the flame they unleashed on the outer edges of the Zalaam wyverns. And where magic had failed to drop the bigger creatures, fire succeeded.
“Hit them with fire,” I yelled, hating how weak, how ragged my voice was. But someone heard, what felt like miles above where we hung like easy prey, or else they noticed the new legions too, because they bellowed the order and it spread from rider to rider.
Hope swelled like a lump in my throat.
That wyvern,the lightning soul said.We know that rider.
I located her just as the wall of magic that stopped our fatal fall wrapped around us like a bubble. It carried us off the battlefield and into the copse of trees just off the road where we’d set up a medical tent. Emmahin—that wasEmmahin,leading a legion to hammer the right flank of the Zalaam wyverns.
I wanted to see how many of the enemy scattered, how many fell to the new flame, but the magic carried us under the treeline. It didn’t feel suffocating or harsh. Rather, the magic felt like thecaring hand of a mother when it deposited us at the end of a line of injured wyverns.
“Will he live?” I demanded the moment I slid off Mak’s back. I landed on my ass on the hard-packed ground with enough of a jolt to send pain up my spine. “Tell me he’ll live.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” a steel-eyed healer in her fifties said as she stalked up to us, her sleeves rolled up and expression impossible to read. “Go see one of the medics in the end tent, get out of our way.”
“I’m not leaving him,” I growled, trying to take a calming breath and failing. We were alive, bones whole instead of shattered, but that wound in Mak’s side had bled so much it coated his scales and darkened the woods floor even now.
