Page 145 of Vicious Is My Throne

This was a trap, orchestrated by the Oracle to separate us.

Raz and I traded a look. Slow us down.

“Bexley. Hit Tavion with everything you have. Once the blight is gone, Raz will treat his wounds.” I was so full of magic I panted, sucking in mouthfuls of air like I was drowning.

But this raw power filling me…this was how we’d beat Corvus.

Ancient and consuming, serene and chaotic, this was the key to everything. My flesh knew the truth as my hand gripped the stone and another vision swept me away.

I soared over the city we’d built for Amalla, letting the warm air buoy me, my wings stretched to their limit. Magic lifted me even higher on a warm, buoyant current that sang through my veins like the sun’s rays, my power flaring as the cool mist of the clouds wrapped around me.

This was where I belonged. In the air.

But down below my queen waited. I spiraled down out of the coolness of the clouds, down through the warm updrafts, until my boots hit the white stone of our home, the quartz blindingly bright in the sun. I took a deep breath and every muscle relaxed, that sense of calm seeping into my bones.

Amber and jasmine.

I was home.

Wherever Amalla was would always be home.

I formed my grip around the keystone and flared my wings wide, feeling the tensile strength contained in every feather, every steel-hard bone. One experimental flap lifted me off the ground, another had me hovering midair, every movement as natural as if I’d been flying my entire life.

My newly tested muscles strained, but magic surged through me, making up for what I lacked in strength.

Raz’s mouth fell open before he went back to working on Tavion.

I was staring out through the black night, to the east. “Once the wolf is healed, we head to the Wynter Palace.”

62

ANARIA

Icouldn’t see a damn thing dangling from Tristan’s talons like a sack of potatoes, the freezing wind turning my bare legs and arms to ice. I had no shoes, wearing nothing but the thin shirt and breeches. My hair had whipped into a snarl, my eyes swollen shut from watering.

Not that it mattered. There was nothing around us but darkness, no way for me to get my bearings, to even tell which direction we were headed or how high we flew.

Not high enough, because even here, I smelled rot.

Even up here I swore I heard Corvus’s creeping voice calling my name.

My cheek burned like fire, my eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and the gash on my calf ached with a dull kind of pain like I’d been infected.

“Tristan.” The wind tore his name from my mouth, leaving it hanging behind us. “Tristan, we have to go back.”

He rumbled, a sound that could mean anything, but kept flying, not deviating from his course.

“Tristan, we can’t leave them.” I tried working my fingers between his talon and my stomach. “There were too many of those creatures. They can’t possibly hold them all off. We have to go back. We have to. Stop being obstinate,” I screamed into the darkness.

Another of those deep rumbles, more worried sounding this time, but the wyvern didn’t bank, didn’t change direction. I took a panting breath, wondering if my deadened fingers were frostbitten, my wounded leg on fire.

I cracked open my watering eyes, squinting to pick out a single landmark.

The blighted forest was a sea of black. If there was a moon tonight, the light failed to penetrate Corvus’s foulness. If the wind wasn’t ripping my hair from my scalp, I would have thought we were floating in place.

But there…A little sob burst out of me. Gripped in Tristan’s other paw was the rectangular wooden box holding the weapon.

No food, or water, or clothes…but we had both pieces of the blade. That had to count for something, I supposed, even though our chances of killing Corvus faded every day, as if fate herself wanted this world to just die already.

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