Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  Open, fresh air. The stars just visible through the narrow window.

  No Wyrdstone coffin. No gate poised to devour her whole.

  But she knew they were watching, somehow. Those wretched gods. Even here, they were watching. Waiting.

  A sacrifice. That’s all she was to them.

  Nausea churned in her gut, but Aelin ignored it, ignored the tremors rippling through her. The heat under her skin.

  Aelin turned onto her side, nestling closer into Rowan’s solid warmth, Elena’s muffled screams still ringing in her ears.

  No, she would not be helpless again.

  CHAPTER 55

  Being in a female form wasn’t entirely what Dorian had expected.

  The way he walked, the way he moved his hips and legs—strange. So disconcertingly strange. If any of the Crochans had noticed a young witch amongst them pacing in circles, crouching and stretching her legs, they didn’t halt their work as they readied the camp to depart.

  Then there was the matter of his breasts, which he’d never imagined to be so … cumbersome. Not unpleasant, but the shock of bumping his arms into them, the need to adjust his posture to accommodate their slight weight, was still fresh after a few hours.

  He’d kept the transformation as simple as he could: he’d picked a young Crochan the night before, one of the novices who might not be needed at all hours or noticed very often, and studied her until she likely deemed him a letch.

  This morning, the image of her face and form still planted in his mind, he’d come to the edge of the camp, and simply willed it.

  Well, perhaps not simply. The shift remained not an entirely enjoyable sensation while bones adjusted, his scalp tingling with the long brown hair that grew out in shining waves, nose tickling as it was reshaped into a delicate curve.

  For long minutes, he’d only stared down at himself. At the delicate hands, the smaller wrists. Amazing, how much strength the tiny bones contained. A few subtle pats between his legs had told him enough about the changes there.

  And so he’d been here for the past two hours, learning how the female body moved and operated. Wholly different from learning how a raven flew—how it wrangled the wind.

  He’d thought he’d known everything about the female body. How to make a woman purr with pleasure. He was half-tempted to find a tent and learn firsthand what certain things felt like.

  Not an effective use of his time. Not with the camp readying for travel.

  The Thirteen were on edge. They hadn’t yet decided where to go. And hadn’t been invited to travel with the Crochans to any of their home-hearths. Even Glennis’s.

  None of them, however, had looked his way when they’d prowled past. None had recognized him.

  Dorian had just completed another walking circuit in his little training area when Manon stalked by, silver hair flowing. He paused, no more than a wary Crochan sentinel, and watched her storm through snow and mud as if she were a blade through the world.

  Manon had nearly passed his training area when she went rigid.

  Slowly, she turned, nostrils flaring.

  Those golden eyes swept over him, swift and cutting.

  Her brows twitched toward each other. Dorian only gave her a lazy grin in return.

  Then she prowled toward him. “I’m surprised you’re not groping yourself.”

  “Who says I haven’t already?”

  Another assessing stare. “I would have thought you’d pick a prettier form.”

  He frowned down at himself. “I think she’s pretty enough.”

  Manon’s mouth tightened. “I suppose this means you’re about to go to Morath.”

  “Did I say anything of the sort?” He didn’t bother sounding pleasant.

  Manon took a step toward him, her teeth flashing. In this body, he stood shorter than her. He hated the thrill that shot through his blood as she leaned down to growl at him. “We have enough to deal with today, princeling.”

  “Do I look as if I’m standing in your way?”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it.

  Dorian let out a low laugh and made to turn away. An iron-tipped hand gripped his arm.

  Strange, for that hand to feel large on his body. Large, and not the slender, deadly thing he’d become accustomed to.

  Her golden eyes blazed. “If you want a softhearted woman who will weep over hard choices and ultimately balk from them, then you’re in the wrong bed.”

  “I’m not in anyone’s bed right now.”

  He hadn’t gone to her tent any of these nights. Not since that conversation in Eyllwe.

  She took the retort without so much as a flinch. “Your opinion doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Then why are you standing here?”

  Again, she opened and closed her mouth. Then snarled, “Change out of that form.”

  Dorian smiled again. “Don’t you have better things to do right now, Your Majesty?”

  He honestly thought she might unsheathe those iron teeth and rip out his throat. Half of him wanted her to try. He even went so far as to run one of those phantom hands along her jaw. “You think I don’t know why you don’t want me to go to Morath?”

  He could have sworn she trembled. Could have sworn she arched her neck, just a little bit, leaning into that phantom touch.

  Dorian ran those invisible fingers down her neck, trailing them along her collarbones.

  “Tell me to stay,” he said, and the words had no warmth, no kindness. “Tell me to stay with you, if that’s what you want.” His invisible fingers grew talons and scraped over her skin. Manon’s throat bobbed. “But you won’t say that, will you, Manon?” Her breathing turned jagged. He continued to stroke her neck, her jaw, her throat, caressing skin he’d tasted over and over. “Do you know why?”

  When she didn’t answer, Dorian let one of those phantom talons dig in, just slightly.

  She swallowed, and it was not from fear.

  Dorian leaned in close, tipping his head back to stare into her eyes as he purred, “Because while you might be older, might be deadly in a thousand different ways, deep down, you’re afraid. You don’t know how to ask me to stay, because you’re afraid of admitting to yourself that you want it. You’re afraid. Of yourself more than anyone else in the world. You’re afraid.”

  For several heartbeats, she just stared at him.

  Then she snarled, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and stalked away.

  His low laugh ripped after her. Her spine stiffened.

  But Manon did not turn back.

  Afraid. Of admitting that she felt any sort of attachment.

  It was preposterous.

  And it was, perhaps, true.

  But it was not her problem. Not right now.

  Manon stormed through the readying camp where tents were being taken down and folded, hearths being packed. The Thirteen were with the wyverns, supplies stowed in saddlebags.

  Some of the Crochans had frowned her way. Not with anger, but something like disappointment. Discontent. As if they thought parting ways was a poor idea.

  Manon refrained from saying she agreed. Even if the Thirteen followed, the Crochans would find a way to lose them. Use their power to bind the wyverns long enough to disappear.

  And she would not lower herself, lower the Thirteen, to become dogs chasing after their masters. They might be desperate for aid, might have promised it to their allies, but she would not debase herself any further.

  Manon halted at Glennis’s camp, the only hearth with a fire still burning. A fire that would always remain kindled.

  A reminder of the promise she’d made to honor the Queen of Terrasen. A single, solitary flame against the cold.

  Manon rubbed at her face as she slumped onto one of the rocks lining the hearth.

  A hand rested on her shoulder, warm and slight. She didn’t bother to slap it away.

  Glennis said, “We’re departing in a few minutes. I thought I’d say good-bye.”

  Manon peere
d up at the ancient witch. “Fly well.”

  It was really all there was left to say. Manon’s failure was not due to Glennis, not due to anyone but herself, she supposed.

  You’re afraid.

  It was true. She had tried, but not really tried to win the Crochans. To let them see any part of her that meant something. To let them see what it had done to her, to learn she had a sister and that she had killed her. She didn’t know how, and had never bothered to learn.

  You’re afraid.

  Yes, she was. Of everything.

  Glennis lowered her hand from Manon’s shoulder. “May your path carry you safely through war and back home at last.”

  She didn’t feel like telling the crone there was no home for her, or the Thirteen.

  Glennis turned her face toward the sky, sighing once.

  Then her white brows narrowed. Her nostrils flared.

  Manon leapt to her feet.

  “Run,” Glennis breathed. “Run now.”

  Manon drew Wind-Cleaver and did no such thing. “What is it.”

  “They’re here.” How Glennis had scented them on the wind, Manon didn’t care.

  Not as three wyverns broke from the clouds, spearing for their camp.

  She knew those wyverns, almost as well as she knew the three riders who sent the Crochans into a frenzy of motion.

  The Matrons of the Ironteeth Witch-Clans had found them. And come to finish what Manon had started that day in Morath.

  CHAPTER 56

  The three High Witches had come alone.

  It didn’t stop the Crochans from rallying, brooms swiftly airborne—a few of them trembling with what could only be recognition.

  Manon’s grip on Wind-Cleaver tightened at the slight tremor in her hand as the three witches landed at the edge of Glennis’s fire, their wyverns crushing tents beneath them.

  Asterin and Sorrel were instantly beside her, her Second’s murmur swallowed by the crack of breaking tents. “The Shadows are airborne, but they signaled no sign of another unit.”

  “None of their covens?”

  “No. And no sign of Iskra or Petrah.”

  Manon swallowed. The Matrons truly had come alone. Had flown in from wherever they’d been gathered, and somehow found them.

  Or tracked them.

  Manon didn’t let the thought settle. That she may have led the three Matrons right to this camp. The soft snarls of the Crochans around her, pointed at Manon, said enough of their opinion.

  The wyverns settled, their long tails curling around them, those deadly poison-slick spikes ready to inflict death.

  Rushing steps crunched through the icy snow, halting at Manon’s side just as Dorian’s scent wrapped around her. “Is that—”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, heart thundering as the Matrons dismounted and did not raise their hands in request for parley. No, they only stalked closer to the hearth, to the precious flame still burning. “Don’t engage,” Manon warned him and the others, and strode to meet them.

  It was not the king’s battle, no matter what power dwelled in his veins.

  Glennis was already armed, an ancient sword in her withered hands. The woman was as old as the Yellowlegs Matron, yet she stood tall, facing the three High Witches.

  Cresseida Blueblood spoke first, her eyes as cold as the iron-spiked crown digging into her freckled brow. “It has been an age, Glennis.”

  But Glennis’s stare, Manon realized, was not on the Blueblood Matron. Or even on Manon’s own grandmother, her black robes billowing as she sneered at Manon.

  It was on the Yellowlegs Matron, hunched and hateful between them. On the crown of stars atop the crone’s thinned white hair.

  Glennis’s sword shook slightly. And just as Manon realized what the Matron had worn here, Bronwen appeared at Glennis’s side and breathed, “Rhiannon’s crown.”

  Worn by the Yellowlegs Matron to mock these witches. To spit on them.

  A dull roaring began in Manon’s ears.

  “What company you keep these days, granddaughter,” said Manon’s grandmother, her silver-streaked dark hair braided back from her face.

  A sign enough of their intentions, if her grandmother’s hair was in that plait.

  Battle. Annihilation.

  The weight of the three High Witches’ attention pressed upon her. The Crochans gathered behind her shifted as they waited for her response.

  Yet it was Glennis who snarled, in a voice Manon had not yet heard, “What is it that you want?”

  Manon’s grandmother smiled, revealing rust-flecked iron teeth. The true sign of her age. “You made a grave error, Manon Kin-Slayer, when you sought to turn our forces against us. When you sowed such lies amongst our sentinels regarding our plans—my plans.”

  Manon kept her chin high. “I spoke only truth. And it must have frightened you enough that you gathered these two to hunt me down and prove your innocence in scheming against them.”

  The other two Matrons didn’t so much as blink. Her grandmother’s claws had to have sunk deep, then. Or they simply did not care.

  “We came,” Cresseida seethed, the opposite in so many ways of the daughter who had given Manon the chance to speak, “to at last rid us of a thorn in our sides.”

  Had Petrah been punished for letting Manon walk out of the Omega alive? Did the Blueblood Heir still breathe? Cresseida had once screamed in a mother’s terror and pain when Petrah had nearly plunged to her death. Did that love, so foreign and strange, still hold true? Or had duty and ancient hatred won out?

  The thought was enough to steel Manon’s spine. “You came because we pose a threat.”

  Because of the threat you pose to that monster you call grandmother.

  “You came,” Manon went on, Wind-Cleaver rising a fraction, “because you are afraid.”

  Manon took a step beyond Glennis, her sword lifting farther.

  “You came,” Manon said, “because you have no true power beyond what we give you. And you are scared to death that we’re about to take it away.” Manon flipped Wind-Cleaver in her hand, angling the sword downward, and drew a line in the snow between them. “You came alone for that fear. That others might see what we are capable of. The truth that you have always sought to hide.”

  Her grandmother tutted. “Listen to you. Sounding just like a Crochan with that preachy nonsense.”

  Manon ignored her. Ignored her and pointed Wind-Cleaver directly at the Yellowlegs Matron as she snarled, “That is not your crown.”

  Something like hesitation rippled over Cresseida Blueblood’s face. But the Yellowlegs Matron beckoned to Manon with iron nails so long they curved downward. “Then come and fetch it from me, traitor.”

  Manon stepped beyond the line she’d drawn in the snow.

  No one spoke behind her. She wondered if any of them were breathing.

  She had not won against her grandmother. Had barely survived, and only thanks to luck.

  That fight, she had been ready to meet her end. To say farewell.

  Manon angled Wind-Cleaver upward, her heart a steady, raging beat.

  She would not greet the Darkness’s embrace today.

  But they would.

  “This seems familiar,” her grandmother drawled, legs shifting into attacking position. The other two Matrons did the same. “The last Crochan Queen. Holding the line against us.”

  Manon cracked her jaw, and iron teeth descended. A flex of her fingers had her iron nails unsheathing. “Not just a Crochan Queen this time.”

  There was doubt in Cresseida’s blue eyes. As if she’d realized what the other two Matrons had not.

  There—it was there that Manon would strike first. The one who now wondered if they had somehow made a grave mistake in coming here.

  A mistake that would cost them what they had come to protect.

  A mistake that would cost them this war.

  And their lives.

  For Cresseida saw the steadiness of Manon’s breathing. Saw the clear conviction in her
eyes. Saw the lack of fear in her heart as Manon advanced another step.

  Manon smiled at the Blueblood Matron as if to say yes.

  “You did not kill me then,” Manon said to her grandmother. “I do not think you will be able to now.”

  “We’ll see about that,” her grandmother hissed, and charged.

  Manon was ready.

  An upward swing of Wind-Cleaver met her grandmother’s first two blows, and Manon ducked the third. Turning right into the onslaught of the Yellowlegs Matron, who swept up with unnatural speed, feet almost flying over the snow, and slashed for Manon’s exposed back.

  Manon deflected the crone’s assault, sending the witch darting back. Just as Cresseida launched herself at Manon.

  Cresseida was not a trained fighter. Not as the Blackbeak and Yellowlegs Matrons were. Too many years spent reading entrails and scanning the stars for the answers to the Three-Faced Goddess’s riddles.

  A duck to the left had Manon easily evading the sweep of Cresseida’s nails, and a countermove had Manon driving her elbow into the Blueblood Matron’s nose.

  Cresseida stumbled. The Yellowlegs Matron and her grandmother attacked again.

  So fast. Their three assaults had happened in the span of a few blinks.

  Manon kept her feet under her. Saw where one Matron moved and the other left a dangerous gap exposed.

  She was not a broken-spirited Wing Leader unsure of her place in the world.

  She was not ashamed of the truth before her.

  She was not afraid.

  Manon’s grandmother led the attack, her maneuvers the deadliest.

  It was from her that the first slice of pain appeared. A rip of iron nails through Manon’s shoulder.

  But Manon swung her sword, again and again, iron on steel ringing out across the icy peaks.

  No, she was not afraid at all.

  Dorian had never seen fighting like what unfolded before him. Had never seen anything that fast, that lethal.

  Had never seen anyone move like Manon, a whirlwind of steel and iron.

  Three against one—the odds weren’t in her favor. Not when standing against one of them had left Manon on death’s threshold months earlier.