Kingdom of Ash

The Crochans stood down—under the orders of Manon’s so-called great-grandmother. Glennis.

She had demanded how, what the lineage was, but Glennis had only beckoned Manon to follow her into the camp.

At least two dozen other witches tended to the several fire pits scattered amongst the white tents, all of them halting their various work as Manon passed. She’d never seen Crochans going about their domestic tasks, but here they were: some tending to fires, some hauling buckets of water, some monitoring heavy cauldrons of what smelled like mountain-goat stew seasoned with dried herbs.

No words sounded in her head while she strode through the ranks of bristling Crochans. The Thirteen didn’t try to speak, either. But Dorian did.

The king fell into step beside her, his body a wall of solid warmth, and asked quietly, “Did you know you had kin still living amongst the Crochans?”

“No.” Her grandmother hadn’t mentioned it in her final taunts.

Manon doubted the camp was a permanent place for the Crochans. They’d be foolish to ever reveal that. Yet Cyrene had discovered it, somehow.

Perhaps by tracking Manon’s scent—the parts of it that claimed kinship with the Crochans.

The spider now walked between Asterin and Sorrel, Dorian still showing no sign of strain in keeping her partially bound, though he kept a hand on the hilt of his sword.

A sharp glance from Manon and he dropped it.

“How do you want to play this?” Dorian murmured. “Do you want me to keep quiet, or be at your side?”

“Asterin is my Second.”

“And what am I, then?” The smooth question ran a hand down her spine, as if he’d caressed her with those invisible hands of his.

“You are the King of Adarlan.”

“Shall I be a part of the discussions, then?”

“If you feel like it.”

She felt his rising annoyance and hid her smirk.

Dorian’s voice dropped into a low purr. “Do you know what I feel like doing?”

She twisted her head to glare at him incredulously. And found the king smirking.

“You look like you’re about to bolt,” he said, that smile lingering. “It will set the wrong tone.”

He was trying to rile her, to distract her into loosening her iron-hard grip on her control.

“They know who you are,” Dorian went on. “Proving that part of it is over. Whether they accept you will be the true matter.” Her great-grandmother must have come from the nonroyal part of her bloodline, then. “These do not seem like witches who will be won by brutality.”

He didn’t know the half of it. “Are you presuming to give me advice?”

“Consider it a tip, from one monarch to another.”

Despite who walked ahead of them, behind them, Manon smiled slightly.

He surprised her further by saying, “I’ve been tunneling into my power since they appeared. One wrong move from them, and I’ll blast them into nothing.”

A shiver rippled down her back at the cold violence in his voice. “We need them as allies.” Everything she was to do today, tonight, was to seal such a thing.

“Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, witchling.”

Manon opened her mouth to answer.

But a horn, shrill and warning, blasted through the descending night.

Then the beating of mighty leathery wings boomed across the stars.

The camp was instantly in action, shouts ringing out from the scouts who’d sounded the alarm. The Thirteen closed ranks around Manon, weapons drawn.

The Ironteeth had found them.

Far sooner than Manon had planned.

How the Ironteeth patrol had found them, Dorian didn’t know. He supposed the fires would be a giveaway.

Dorian rallied his magic as twenty-six massive shapes swept over the camp.

Yellowlegs. Two covens.

The crone who’d introduced herself as Manon’s great-grandmother began shouting commands, and Crochans obeyed, leaping into the newly dark skies on their brooms, bows drawn or swords out.

No time to question how they’d been found, whether the spider had indeed laid a trap—certainly not as Manon’s voice rang out, ordering the Thirteen into defensive positions.

Swift as shadows, they raced for where they’d left their wyverns, iron teeth glinting.

Dorian waited until the Crochans were clear of him before unleashing his power. Spears of ice, to pierce the enemy’s exposed chests or rip through their wings.

Half a thought had him loosening Cyrene’s bonds, though not unleashing her from the power that kept her from attacking. Just giving her enough space to shift, to defend herself. A flash on the other side of the camp told him she had.

The interrogation would come later.

Manon and the Thirteen reached the wyverns, and were airborne within heartbeats, flapping into the chaos above.

The Crochans were so small—so terribly small—against the bulk of the wyverns. Even on their brooms.

And as they swarmed around the two Ironteeth covens, firing arrows and swinging swords, Dorian couldn’t get a clear shot. Not with the Crochans darting around the beasts, too fast for him to track. Some of the wyverns bellowed and tumbled from the sky, but many stayed aloft.

Glennis barked orders from the ground, a great bow in her wrinkled hands, aimed upward.

A wyvern soared overhead, so low its spiked, poisonous tail snapped through tent after tent.

Glennis let her arrow fly, and Dorian echoed her blow with one of his own.

A lance of solid ice, careening for the exposed, mottled chest.

Both arrow and ice spear drove home, and black blood spewed downward—before the wyvern and rider went crashing into a peak, and flipped over the cliff face.

Glennis grinned, that aged face lighting. “I struck first.” She drew another arrow. Such lightness, even in the face of an ambush.

“I wish you were my great-grandmother,” Dorian muttered, and readied his next blow. He’d have to be careful, with the Thirteen looking so much like the Yellowlegs from below.

But the Thirteen did not need his caution, or his help.

They plowed into the lines of the Yellowlegs, breaking them apart, scattering them.

The Yellowlegs might have had the advantage of surprise, but the Thirteen were masters of war.

Crochans tumbled from the skies as they were struck by brutal, spiked tails. Some not even tumbling at all as they came face-to-face with enormous maws and did not emerge again.

“Clear out!” Manon’s barked order carried over the fray. “Form lines low to the ground!”

Not an order for the Thirteen, but the Crochans.

Glennis shouted, some magic no doubt amplifying her voice, “Follow her command!”

Just like that, the Crochans fell back, forming a solid unit in the air above the tents.

They watched as Abraxos ripped the throat from a bull twice his size, and Manon fired an arrow through the rider’s face. Watched as the green-eyed demon twins rounded up three wyverns between them and sent them crashing onto the mountainsides. Watched as Asterin’s blue mare ripped a rider from the saddle, then ripped part of the spine from the wyvern beneath her.

Each of the Thirteen marked a target with every swipe through the gathered attackers.

The Yellowlegs had no such organization.

The Yellowlegs sentinels who tried to break from the Thirteen’s path to attack the Crochans below found a wall of arrows meeting them.

The wyverns might have survived, but the riders did not.

And with a few careful maneuvers, the riderless beasts found themselves with throats cut, blood streaming as they crashed onto the nearby peaks.

Pity mingled with the fear and rage in his heart.

How many of those beasts might have been like Abraxos, had they good riders who loved them?

It was surprisingly hard to blast his magic at the wyvern who managed to sail overhead, aiming right for Glennis, another wyvern on its tail.

He made it an easy death, snapping the beast’s neck with a burst of his power that left him panting.

He whipped his magic toward the second attacking wyvern, offering it the same quick end, but didn’t see the third and fourth that now crashed into the camp, wrecking tents and snapping their jaws at anything in their path. Crochans fell, screaming.

But then Manon was there, Abraxos sailing hard and fast, and she lopped off the head of the nearest rider. The Yellowlegs sentinel still wore an expression of shock as her head flew.

Dorian’s magic balked.

The severed head hit the ground near him and rolled.

A room flashed, the red marble stained with blood, the thud of a head on stone the only sound beyond his screaming.

I was not supposed to love you.

The Yellowlegs’s head halted near his boots, the blue blood gushing onto the snow and dirt.

He didn’t hear, didn’t care, that the fourth wyvern soared toward him.

Manon bellowed his name, and Crochan arrows fired.

The Yellowlegs sentinel’s eyes stared at no one, nothing.

A gaping maw opened before him, jaws stretching wide.

Manon screamed his name again, but he couldn’t move.

The wyvern swept down, and darkness yawned wide as those jaws closed around him.

As Dorian let his magic rip free of its tethers.

One heartbeat, the wyvern was swallowing him whole, its rancid breath staining the air.

The next, the beast was on the ground, corpse steaming.

Steaming, from what he’d done to it.

Not to it, but to himself.

The body he’d turned into solid flame, so hot it had melted through the wyvern’s jaws, its throat, and he had passed through the beast’s mouth as if it were nothing but a cobweb.

The Yellowlegs rider who’d survived the crash drew her sword, but too late. Glennis put an arrow through her throat.

Silence fell. Even the battle above died out.

The Thirteen landed, splattered in blue and black blood. So different from Sorscha’s red blood—his own red blood.

Then there were iron-tipped hands gripping his shoulders, and gold eyes glaring into his own. “Are you daft?”

He only glanced to the Yellowlegs witch’s head, still feet away. Manon’s own gaze turned toward it. Her mouth tightened, then she let go of him and whirled to Glennis. “I’m sending out my Shadows to scout for others.”

“Any enemy survivors?” Glennis scanned the empty skies. Whether his magic surprised them, shocked them, neither Glennis nor the Crochans rushing to tend to their wounded let on.

“All dead,” Manon said.

But the dark-haired Crochan who’d first intercepted them stormed at Manon, her sword out. “You did this.”

Dorian gripped Damaris, but made no move to draw it. Not while Manon didn’t back down. “Saved your asses? Yes, I’d say we did.”

The witch seethed. “You led them here.”

“Bronwen,” Glennis warned, wiping blue blood from her face.

The young witch—Bronwen—bristled. “You think it mere coincidence that they arrive, and then we’re attacked?”

“They fought with us, not against us,” Glennis said. She turned to Manon. “Do you swear it?”

Manon’s golden eyes glowed in the firelight. “I swear it. I did not lead them here.”

Glennis nodded, but Dorian stared at Manon.

Damaris had gone cold as ice. So cold the golden hilt bit into his skin.

Glennis, somehow satisfied, nodded again. “Then we shall talk—later.”

Bronwen spat on the bloody ground and prowled off.

A lie. Manon had lied.

She arched a brow at him, but Dorian turned away. Let the knowledge settle into him. What she’d done.

Thus began a series of orders and movements, gathering the injured and dead. Dorian helped as best he could, healing those who needed it most. Open, gaping wounds that leaked blue blood onto his hands.

The warmth of that blood didn’t reach him.