It didn’t stop her breath from escaping when Abraxos stiffened, scanning the sky. As if he heard something they couldn’t.
And it was the joy that sparked in her mount’s eyes that told her.
Moments later, Narene sailed toward them, making a lazy path over the mountains, a dark-haired, pale-skinned rider atop her. He’d truly been able to change parts of himself. Had made his face nearly unrecognizable. And kept it that way.
Asterin rushed toward the mare, and even Manon blinked as her Second threw her arms around Narene’s neck. Holding her tight. The mare only leaned her head against Asterin’s back and huffed.
Dorian slid off the mare, leaving the reins dangling.
“Well?” Manon demanded.
His eyes—dark as a Valg’s—flashed. She didn’t try to explain that her knees had been shaking. Still buckled while she handed him his sword, then the two keys, her nails grazing his gloved hand.
Dorian’s eyes lightened to that crushing sapphire, his skin becoming golden once more. “The Matrons are not there. Only Petrah Blueblood, and about three hundred Ironteeth from all three clans.” His mouth curved in a cruel half smile, cold as the peaks around them. Damning. “The way is clear, Majesty.”
The patrols at the Ferian Gap spotted them miles away.
The Thirteen were still allowed to land in the Omega.
Manon had left Dorian in the small pass where they’d gathered the Thirteen. If they did not return within a day, he was to do what he wished. Go to Morath and Erawan’s awaiting embrace, if he was that reckless.
There had been no good-byes between them.
Manon kept her heartbeat steady as she sat atop Abraxos just inside the cavernous mouth leading into the Omega, aware of every enemy eye on them, both at their front and back. “I wish to speak to Petrah Blueblood,” she declared to the hall.
A young voice answered “I assumed so.”
The Blueblood Heir appeared through the nearest archway, an iron band on her brow, blue robes flowing.
Manon inclined her head. “Gather your host in this hall.”
Manon hadn’t dwelled long on what she’d say.
And as the three hundred Ironteeth witches filed into the hall, some coming off their patrols, Manon half wondered if she should have. They watched her, watched the Thirteen, with a wary disdain.
Their disgraced Wing Leader; their fallen Heir.
When all were gathered, Petrah, still standing in the doorway where she’d appeared, merely said, “My life debt for an audience, Blackbeak.”
Manon swallowed, her tongue as dry as paper. Seated atop Abraxos, she could see every shifting movement in the crowd, the wide eyes or hands gripping swords.
“I will not tell you the particulars of who I am,” Manon said at last. “For I think you have already heard them.”
“Crochan bitch,” someone spat.
Manon set her eyes on the Blackbeaks, stone-faced where the others bristled with hatred. It was for them she spoke, for them she had come here.
“All my life,” Manon said, her voice wavering only slightly, “I have been fed a lie.”
“We don’t have to listen to this trash,” another sentinel spat.
Asterin snarled at Manon’s side, and the others fell silent. Even disgraced, the Thirteen were deadly.
Manon went on, “A lie, about who we are, what we are. That we are monsters, and proud to be.” She ran a finger over the scrap of red fabric binding her braid. “But we were made into them. Made,” she repeated. “When we might be so much more.”
Silence fell.
Manon took that as encouragement enough. “My grandmother does not plan to only reclaim the Wastes when this war is done. She plans to rule the Wastes as High Queen. Your only queen.”
A murmur at that. At the words, at the betrayal Manon made in revealing her Matron’s private plans.
“There will be no Bluebloods, or Yellowlegs, not as you are now. She plans to take the weapons you have built here, plans to use our Blackbeak riders, and make you into our subjects. And if you do not bend to her, you will not exist at all.”
Manon took a breath. Another.
“We have known only bloodshed and violence for five hundred years. We will know it for another five hundred yet.”
“Liar,” someone shouted. “We fly to glory.”
But Asterin moved, unbuttoning her leather jacket, then hoisting up her white shirt. Rising in the stirrups to bare her scarred, brutalized abdomen. “She does not lie.”
UNCLEAN
There, the word remained stamped. Would always be stamped.
“How many of you,” Asterin called out, “have been similarly branded? By your Matron, by your coven leader? How many of you have had your stillborn witchlings burned before you might hold them?”
The silence that fell now was different from before. Shaking—shuddering.
Manon glanced at the Thirteen to find tears in Ghislaine’s eyes as she took in the brand on Asterin’s womb. Tears in the eyes of all of them, who had not known.
And it was for those tears, which Manon had never seen, that she faced the host again. “You will be killed in this war, or after it. And you will never see our homeland again.”
“What is it that you want, Blackbeak?” Petrah asked from the archway.
“Ride with us,” Manon breathed. “Fly with us. Against Morath. Against the people who would keep you from your homeland, your future.” Murmuring broke out again. Manon pushed ahead, “An Ironteeth-Crochan alliance. Perhaps one to break our curse at last.”
Again, that shuddering silence. Like a storm about to break.
Asterin sat back in the saddle, but kept her shirt open.
“The choice of how our people’s future shall be shaped is yours,” Manon told each of the witches assembled, all the Blackbeaks who might fly to war and never return. “But I will tell you this.” Her hands shook, and she fisted them on her thighs. “There is a better world out there. And I have seen it.”
Even the Thirteen looked toward her now.
“I have seen witch and human and Fae dwell together in peace. And it is not a weakness to do so, but a strength. I have met kings and queens whose love for their kingdoms, their peoples, is so great that the self is secondary. Whose love for their people is so strong that even in the face of unthinkable odds, they do the impossible.”
Manon lifted her chin. “You are my people. Whether my grandmother decrees it so or not, you are my people, and always will be. But I will fly against you, if need be, to ensure that there is a future for those who cannot fight for it themselves. Too long have we preyed on the weak, relished doing so. It is time that we became better than our foremothers.” The words she had given the Thirteen months ago. “There is a better world out there,” she said again. “And I will fight for it.” She turned Abraxos away, toward the plunge behind them. “Will you?”
Manon nodded to Petrah. Eyes bright, the Heir only nodded back. They would be permitted to leave as they had arrived: unharmed.
So Manon nudged Abraxos, and he leaped into the sky, the Thirteen following suit.
Not a child of war.
But of peace.
CHAPTER 44
“How shall I carve you up today, Aelin?”
Cairn’s words were a push of hot breath at her ear as his knife scraped down her bare thigh.
No. No, it couldn’t have been a dream.
The escape, Rowan, the ship to Terrasen—
Cairn dug the tip of his dagger into the flesh above her knee, and she gritted her teeth as blood swelled and spilled. As he began twisting the blade, a little deeper with each rotation.
He had done it so many times now. All over her body.
He would only stop when he hit bone. When she was screaming and screaming.
A dream. An illusion. Her escape from him, from Maeve, had been another illusion.
Had she said it? Had she said where the keys were hidden?
She couldn’t stop the sob that ripped from her.
Then a cool, cultured voice purred, “All that training, and this is what becomes of you?”
Not real. Arobynn, standing on the other side of the altar, was not real. Even if he looked it, his red hair shining, his clothes impeccable.
Her former master gave her a half smile. “Even Sam held out better than this.”
Cairn twisted the knife again, slicing through muscle. She arched, her scream ringing in her ears. From far away, Fenrys snarled.
“You could get out of these chains, if you really wanted,” Arobynn said, frowning with distaste. “If you really tried.”
No, she couldn’t, and everything had been a dream, a lie—
“You let yourself remain captive. Because the moment you are free …” Arobynn chuckled. “Then you must offer yourself up, a lamb to slaughter.”
She clawed and thrashed against the shredding in her leg, not hearing Cairn as he sneered. Only hearing the King of the Assassins, unseen and unnoted beside her.
“Deep down, you’re hoping you’ll be here long enough that the young King of Adarlan will pay the price. Deep down, you know you’re hiding here, waiting for him to clear the path.” Arobynn leaned against the side of the altar, cleaning his nails with a dagger. “Deep down, you know it’s not really fair, that those gods picked you. That Elena picked you instead of him. She bought you time to live, yes, but you were still chosen to pay the price. Her price. And the gods’.”