Elide had needed to rest twice on her way to the aerie, and her limp was deep by the time she reached the top of the tower, bracing herself for the beasts and the monsters who rode them.
An urgent message had come for the Wing Leader while Elide was cleaning her room—and when Elide explained that the Wing Leader was not there, the man heaved a sigh of relief, shoved the letter in Elide’s hand, and said to find her.
And then the man had run.
She should have suspected it. It had taken two heartbeats to note and catalog the man’s details, his tells and ticks. Sweaty, his face pale, pupils diluted—he’d sagged at the sight of Elide when she opened the door. Bastard. Most men, she’d decided, were bastards of varying degrees. Most of them were monsters. None worse than Vernon.
Elide scanned the aerie. Empty. Not even a handler to be seen.
The hay floor was fresh, the feeding troughs full of meat and grain. But the food was untouched by the wyverns whose massive, leathery bodies loomed beyond the archways, perched on wooden beams jutting over the plunge as they surveyed the Keep and the army below like thirteen mighty lords. Limping as close as she dared to one of the massive openings, Elide peered out at the view.
It was exactly as the Wing Leader’s map had depicted it in the spare moments when she could sneak a look.
They were surrounded by ashy mountains, and though she’d been in a prison wagon for the long journey here, she had taken note of the forest she spied in the distance and the rushing of the massive river they had passed days before they ascended the broad, rocky mountain road. In the middle of nowhere—that’s where Morath was, and the view before her confirmed it: no cities, no towns, and an entire army surrounding her. She shoved back the despair that crept into her veins.
She had never seen an army before coming here. Soldiers, yes, but she’d been eight when her father passed her up onto Vernon’s horse and kissed her good-bye, promising to see her soon. She hadn’t been in Orynth to witness the army that seized its riches, its people. And she’d been locked in a tower at Perranth Castle by the time the army reached her family’s lands and her uncle became the king’s ever-faithful servant and stole her father’s title.
Her title. Lady of Perranth—that’s what she should have been. Not that it mattered now. There wasn’t much of Terrasen’s court left to belong to. None of them had come for her in those initial months of slaughter. And in the years since, none had remembered that she existed. Perhaps they assumed she was dead—like Aelin, that wild queen-who-might-have-been. Perhaps they were all dead themselves. And maybe, given the dark army now spread before her, that was a mercy.
Elide gazed across the flickering lights of the war camp, and a chill went down her spine. An army to crush whatever resistance Finnula had once whispered about during the long nights they were locked in that tower in Perranth. Perhaps the white-haired Wing Leader herself would lead that army, on the wyvern with shimmering wings.
A fierce, cool wind blew into the aerie, and Elide leaned into it, gulping it down as if it were fresh water. There had been so many nights in Perranth when only the wailing wind had kept her company. When she could have sworn it sang ancient songs to lull her into sleep. Here … here the wind was a colder, sleeker thing—serpentine, almost. Entertaining such fanciful things will only distract you, Finnula would have chided. She wished her nurse were here.
But wishing had done her no good these past ten years, and Elide, Lady of Perranth, had no one coming for her.
Soon, she reassured herself—soon the next caravan of supplies would crawl up the mountain road, and when it went back down, Elide would be stowed away in one of the wagons, free at long last. And then she would run somewhere far, far away, where they’d never heard of Terrasen or Adarlan, and leave these people to their miserable continent. A few weeks—then she might stand a chance of escaping.
If she survived until then. If Vernon didn’t decide he truly did have some wicked purpose in dragging her here. If she didn’t wind up with those poor people, caged inside the surrounding mountains, screaming for salvation every night. She’d overheard the other servants whisper about the dark, fell things that went on under those mountains: people being splayed open on black stone altars and then forged into something new, something other. For what wretched purpose, Elide had not yet learned, and mercifully, beyond the screaming, she’d never encountered whatever was being broken and pieced together beneath the earth. The witches were bad enough.
Elide shuddered as she took another step into the vast chamber. The crunching of hay under her too-small shoes and the clank of her chains were the only sounds. “W-Wing Lea—”
A roar blasted through the air, the stones, the floor, so loud that her head swam and she cried out. Tumbling back, her chains tangled as she slipped on the hay.
Hard, iron-tipped hands dug into her shoulders and kept her upright.
“If you are not a spy,” a wicked voice purred in her ear, “then why are you here, Elide Lochan?”
Elide wasn’t faking it when her hand shook as she held out the letter, not daring to move.
The Wing Leader stepped around her, circling Elide like prey, her long white braid stark against her leather flying gear.
The details hit Elide like stones: eyes like burnt gold; a face so impossibly beautiful that Elide was struck dumb by it; a lean, honed body; and a steady, fluid grace in every movement, every breath, that suggested the Wing Leader could easily use the assortment of blades on her. Human only in shape—immortal and predatory in every other sense.
Fortunately, the Wing Leader was alone. Unfortunately, those gold eyes held nothing but death.
Elide said, “Th-this came for you.” The stammer—that was faked. People usually couldn’t wait to get away when she stammered and stuttered. Though she doubted the people who ran this place would care about the stammer if they decided to have some fun with a daughter of Terrasen. If Vernon handed her over.
The Wing Leader held Elide’s gaze as she took the letter.
“I’m surprised the seal isn’t broken. Though if you were a good spy, you would know how to do it without breaking the wax.”
“If I were a good spy,” Elide breathed, “I could also read.”
A bit of truth to temper the witch’s distrust.
The witch blinked, and then sniffed, as if trying to detect a lie. “You speak well for a mortal, and your uncle is a lord. Yet you cannot read?”
Elide nodded. More than the leg, more than the drudgery, it was that miserable shortcoming that hounded her. Her nurse, Finnula, couldn’t read—but Finnula had been the one to teach her how to take note of things, to listen, and to think. During the long days when they’d had nothing to do but needlepoint, her nurse had taught her to mark the little details—each stitch—while also never losing sight of the larger image. There will come a day when I am gone, Elide, and you will need to have every weapon in your arsenal sharp and ready to strike.
Neither of them had thought that Elide might be the one who left first. But she would not look back, not even for Finnula, once she ran. And when she found that new life, that new place … she would never gaze northward, to Terrasen, and wonder, either.
She kept her eyes on the ground. “I—I know basic letters, but my lessons stopped when I was eight.”
“At your uncle’s behest, I assume.” The witch paused, rotating the envelope and showing the jumble of letters to her, tapping on them with an iron nail. “This says ‘Manon Blackbeak.’ You see anything like this again, bring it to me.”
Elide bowed her head. Meek, submissive—just the way these witches liked their humans. “Of-of course.”
“And why don’t you stop pretending to be a stammering, cowering wretch while you’re at it.”
Elide kept her head bent low enough that her hair hopefully covered any glimmer of surprise. “I’ve tried to be pleasing—”
“I smelled your human fingers all over my map. It was careful, cunning work, not to put one thing out of order, not to touch anything but the map … Thinking of escaping after all?”
“Of course not, mistress.” Oh, gods. She was so, so dead.
“Look at me.”
Elide obeyed. The witch hissed, and Elide flinched as she shoved Elide’s hair out of her eyes. A few strands fell to the ground, sliced off by the iron nails. “I don’t know what game you’re playing—if you’re a spy, if you’re a thief, if you’re just looking out for yourself. But do not pretend that you are some meek, pathetic little girl when I can see that vicious mind working behind your eyes.”
Elide didn’t dare drop the mask.
“Was it your mother or father who was related to Vernon?”
Strange question—but Elide had known for a while she would do anything, say anything, to stay alive and unharmed. “My father was Vernon’s elder brother,” she said.
“And where did your mother come from?”
She didn’t give that old grief an inch of room in her heart. “She was low-born. A laundress.”
“Where did she come from?”
Why did it matter? The golden eyes were fixed on her, unyielding. “Her family was originally from Rosamel, in the northwest of Terrasen.”
“I know where it is.” Elide kept her shoulders bowed, waiting. “Get out.”
Hiding her relief, Elide opened her mouth to make her good-byes, when another roar set the stones vibrating. She couldn’t conceal her flinch.
“It’s just Abraxos,” Manon said, a hint of a smile forming on her cruel mouth, a bit of light gleaming in those golden eyes. Her mount must make her happy, then—if witches could be happy. “He’s hungry.”
Elide’s mouth went dry.
At the sound of his name, a massive triangular head, scarred badly around one eye, poked into the aerie.
Elide’s knees wobbled, but the witch went right up to the beast and placed her iron-tipped hands on his snout. “You swine,” the witch said. “You need the whole mountain to know you’re hungry?”
The wyvern huffed into her hands, his giant teeth—oh, gods, some of them were iron—so close to Manon’s arms. One bite, and the Wing Leader would be dead. One bite, and yet—
The wyvern’s eyes lifted and met Elide’s. Not looked at, but met, as if …
Elide kept perfectly still, even though every instinct was roaring at her to run for the stairs. The wyvern nudged past Manon, the floor shuddering beneath him, and sniffed in Elide’s direction. Then those giant, depthless eyes moved down—to her legs. No, to the chain.
There were so many scars all over him—so many brutal lines. She did not think Manon had made them, not with the way she spoke to him. Abraxos was smaller than the others, she realized. Far smaller. And yet the Wing Leader had picked him. Elide tucked that information away, too. If Manon had a soft spot for broken things, perhaps she would spare her as well.
Abraxos lowered himself to the ground, stretching out his neck until his head rested on the hay not ten feet from Elide. Those giant black eyes stared up at her, almost doglike.
“Enough, Abraxos,” Manon hissed, grabbing a saddle from the rack by the wall.
“How do they—exist?” Elide breathed. She’d heard stories of wyverns and dragons, and she remembered glimpses of the Little Folk and the Fae, but …
Manon hauled the leather saddle over to her mount. “The king made them. I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter.”
The King of Adarlan made them, like whatever was being made inside those mountains. The man who had shattered her life, murdered her parents, doomed her to this … Don’t be angry, Finnula had said, be smart. And soon the king and his miserable empire wouldn’t be her concern, anyway.
Elide said, “Your mount doesn’t seem evil.” Abraxos’s tail thumped on the ground, the iron spikes in it glinting. A giant, lethal dog. With wings.
Manon huffed a cold laugh, strapping the saddle into place. “No. However he was made, something went wrong with that part.”
Elide didn’t think that constituted going wrong, but kept her mouth shut.
Abraxos was still staring up at her, and the Wing Leader said, “Let’s go hunt, Abraxos.”
The beast perked up, and Elide jumped back a step, wincing as she landed hard on her ankle. The wyvern’s eyes shot to her, as if aware of the pain. But the Wing Leader was already finishing with the saddle, and didn’t bother to look in her direction as Elide limped out.
“You soft-hearted worm,” Manon hissed at Abraxos once the cunning, many-faced girl was gone. The girl might be hiding secrets, but her lineage wasn’t one of them. She had no idea that witch-blood flowed strong in her mortal veins. “A crippled leg and a few chains, and you’re in love?”
Abraxos nudged her with his snout, and Manon gave him a firm but gentle slap before leaning against his warm hide and ripping open the letter addressed in her grandmother’s handwriting.
Just like the High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan, it was brutal, to the point, and unforgiving.
Do not disobey the duke’s orders. Do not question him. If there is another letter from Morath about your disobedience, I will fly down there myself and hang you by your intestines, with your Thirteen and that runt of a beast beside you.
Three Yellowlegs and two Blueblood covens are arriving tomorrow. See to it there are no fights or trouble. I do not need the other Matrons breathing down my neck about their vermin.
Manon turned the paper over, but that was it. Crunching it in a fist, she sighed.
Abraxos nudged at her again, and she idly stroked his head.
Made, made, made.
That was what the Crochan had said before Manon slit her throat. You were made into monsters.