Yet where they struck, she was already gone. Already parrying.
She did not land many blows, but rather kept them at bay.
Yet they did not land many, either.
Dorian’s magic writhed, seeking a way out, to stop this. But she had ordered him to stand down. And he’d obey.
Around him, the Crochans thrummed with fear and dread. Either for the fight unfolding or the three Matrons who had found them.
But Glennis did not tremble. At her side Bronwen hummed with the energy of one eager to leap into the fight.
Manon and the High Witches sprang apart, breathing heavily. Blue blood leaked down Manon’s shoulder, and small slices peppered the three Matrons.
Manon still remained on the far side of the line she’d drawn. Still held it.
The dark-haired witch in voluminous black robes spat blue blood onto the snow. Manon’s grandmother. “Pathetic. As pathetic as your mother.” A sneer toward Glennis. “And your father.”
The snarl that ripped from Manon’s throat rang across the mountains themselves.
Her grandmother let out a crow’s caw of a laugh. “Is that all you can do, then? Snarl like a dog and swing your sword like some human filth? We will wear you down eventually. Better to kneel now and die with some honor intact.”
Manon only flung out an iron-tipped hand behind her, fingers splaying in demand as her eyes remained fixed on the Matrons.
Dorian reached for Damaris, but Bronwen moved first.
The Crochan tossed her sword, steel flashing over snow and sun.
Manon’s fingers closed on the hilt, the blade singing as she whipped it around to face the High Witches again. “Rhiannon Crochan held the gates for three days and three nights, and she did not kneel before you, even at the end.” A slash of a smile. “I think I shall do the same.”
Dorian could have sworn the sacred flame burning to their left flared brighter. Could have sworn Glennis sucked in a breath. That every Crochan watching did the same.
Manon’s knees bent, swords rising. “Let us finish what was started then, too.”
She attacked, blades flashing. Her grandmother conceded step after step, the other two Matrons failing to break past her defenses.
Gone was the witch who had slept and wished for death. Gone was the witch who had raged at the truth that had torn her to shreds.
And in her place, fighting as if she were the very wind, unfaltering against the Matrons, stood someone Dorian had not yet met.
Stood a queen of two peoples.
The Yellowlegs Matron launched an offensive that had Manon yielding a step, then another, swords rising against each slashing blow.
Yielding only those few steps, and nothing more.
Because Manon with conviction in her heart, with utter fearlessness in her eyes, was wholly unstoppable.
The Yellowlegs Matron pushed Manon close enough to the line that her heels nearly touched it. The other two witches had fallen back, as if waiting to see what might happen.
For a hunched crone, the Yellowlegs witch was the portrait of nightmares. Worse than Baba Yellowlegs had ever been. Her feet barely seemed to touch the ground, and her curved iron nails drew blood wherever they slashed.
Manon’s swords blocked blow after blow, but she made no move to advance. To push back, though Dorian saw several chances to do so.
Manon took the slashings that left her arm and side bleeding. But she yielded no further ground. A wall against which the Yellowlegs Matron could not advance. The crone let out a snarl, attacking again and again, senseless and raging.
Dorian saw the trap the moment it happened.
Saw the side that Manon left open, the bait laid on a silver platter.
Worked into a fury, the Yellowlegs Matron didn’t think twice before she lunged, claws out.
Manon was waiting.
Lost in her bloodlust, the Yellowlegs Matron’s horrible face lit with triumph as she went for the easy killing blow that would rip out Manon’s heart.
The Blackbeak Matron barked in warning, but Manon was already moving.
Just as those curved claws tore through leather and skin, Manon twisted to the side and brought down Wind-Cleaver upon the Yellowlegs Matron’s outstretched neck.
Blue blood sprayed upon the snow.
Dorian did not look away this time at the head that tumbled to the ground. At the brown-robed body that fell with it.
The two remaining Matrons halted. None of the Crochans behind Dorian so much as spoke as Manon stared down pitilessly at the bleeding torso of the Yellowlegs Matron.
No one seemed to breathe at all as Manon plunged Bronwen’s sword into the icy earth beneath and bent to take the crown of stars from the Yellowlegs witch’s fallen head.
He had never seen a crown like it.
A living, glowing thing that glittered in her hand. As if nine stars had been plucked from the heavens and set to shine along the simple silver band.
The crown’s light danced over Manon’s face as she lifted it above her head and set it upon her unbound white hair.
Even the mountain wind stopped.
Yet a phantom breeze shifted the strands of Manon’s hair as the crown glowed bright, the white stars shining with cores of cobalt and ruby and amethyst.
As if it had been asleep for a long, long time. And now awoke.
That phantom wind pulled Manon’s hair to the side, silver strands brushing across her face.
And beside him, around him, the Thirteen touched two fingers to their brow in deference.
In allegiance to the queen who stared down the two remaining High Witches.
The Crochan Queen, crowned anew.
The sacred fire leaped and danced, as if in joyous welcome.
Manon scooped up Bronwen’s sword, lifting it and Wind-Cleaver, and said to the Blueblood Matron, the witch appearing barely a few years older than Manon herself, “Go.”
The Blueblood witch blinked, eyes wide with what could only be fear and dread.
Manon jerked her chin toward the wyvern waiting behind the witch. “Tell your daughter all debts between us are paid. And she may decide what to do with you. Take that other wyvern out of here.”
Manon’s grandmother bristled, iron teeth flashing as if she’d bark a counter-command to the Blueblood Matron, but the witch was already running for her wyvern.
Spared by the Crochan Queen on behalf of the daughter who had given Manon the gift of speaking to the Ironteeth.
Within seconds, the Blueblood Matron was in the skies, the Yellowlegs witch’s wyvern soaring beside her.
Leaving Manon’s grandmother alone. Leaving Manon with swords raised and a crown of stars glowing upon her brow.
Manon was glowing, as if the stars atop her head pulsed through her body. A wondrous and mighty beauty, like no other in the world. Like no one had ever been, or would be again.
And slowly, as if savoring each step, Manon stalked toward her grandmother.
Manon’s lips curved into a small smile while she advanced on her grandmother.
Warm, dancing light flowed through her, as unfaltering as what had poured into her heart these past few bloody minutes.
She did not balk. Did not fear.
The crown’s weight was slight, like it had been crafted of moonlight. Yet its joyous strength was a song, undimming before the sole High Witch left standing.
So Manon kept walking.
She left Bronwen’s sword a few feet away. Left Wind-Cleaver several feet past that.
Iron nails out, teeth ready, Manon paused barely five steps from her grandmother.
A hateful, wasted scrap of existence. That’s what her grandmother was.
She had never realized how much shorter the Matron stood. How narrow her shoulders were, or how the years of rage and hate had withered her.
Manon’s smile grew. And she could have sworn she felt two people standing at her shoulder.
She knew no one would be there if she looked. Knew no one else could see t
hem, sense them, standing with her. Standing with their daughter against the witch who had destroyed them.
Her grandmother spat on the ground, baring her rusted teeth.
This death, though …
It was not her death to claim.
It did not belong to the parents whose spirits lingered at her side, who might have been there all along, leading her toward this. Who had not left her, even with death separating them.
No, it did not belong to them, either.
She looked behind her. Toward the Second waiting beside Dorian.
Tears slid down Asterin’s face. Of pride—pride and relief.
Manon beckoned to Asterin with an iron-tipped hand.
Snow crunched, and Manon whirled, angling to take the brunt of the attack.
But her grandmother had not charged. Not at her.
No, the Blackbeak Matron sprinted for her wyvern. Fleeing.
The Crochans tensed, fear giving way to wrath as her grandmother hauled herself into the saddle.
Manon raised a hand. “Let her go.”
A snap of the reins, and her grandmother was airborne, the great wyvern’s wings blasting them with foul wind.
Manon watched as the wyvern rose higher and higher.
Her grandmother did not look back before she vanished into the skies.
When there was no trace of the Matrons left but blue blood and a headless corpse staining the snow, Manon turned toward the Crochans.
Their eyes were wide, but they made no move.
The Thirteen remained where they were, Dorian with them.
Manon scooped up both swords, sheathing Wind-Cleaver across her back, and stalked toward where Glennis and Bronwen stood, monitoring her every breath.
Wordlessly, Manon handed Bronwen her sword, nodding in thanks.
Then she removed the crown of stars and extended it toward Glennis. “This belongs to you,” she said, her voice low.
The Crochans murmured, shifting.
Glennis took the crown, and the stars dimmed. A small smile graced the crone’s face. “No,” she said, “it does not.”
Manon didn’t move as Glennis lifted the crown and set it again on Manon’s head.
Then the ancient witch knelt in the snow. “What was stolen has been restored; what was lost has come home again. I hail thee, Manon Crochan, Queen of Witches.”
Manon stood fast against the tremor that threatened to buckle her legs.
Stood fast as the other Crochans, Bronwen with them, dropped to a knee. Dorian, standing amongst them, smiled, brighter and freer than she’d ever seen.
And then the Thirteen knelt, two fingers going to their brows as they bowed their heads, fierce pride lighting their faces.
“Queen of Witches,” Crochan and Blackbeak declared as one voice.
As one people.
CHAPTER 57
An hour before dawn, the keep and two armies beyond it were stirring.
Rowan had barely slept, and instead lain awake beside Aelin, listening to her breathing. That the rest of them slumbered soundly was testament to their exhaustion, though Lorcan had not found them again. Rowan was willing to bet it was by choice.
It was not fear or anticipation of battle that had kept Rowan up—no, he’d slept well enough during other wars. But rather the fact that his mind would not stop looping him from thought to thought to thought.
He’d seen the numbers camped outside. Valg, human men loyal to Erawan, some fell beasts, yet nothing like the ilken or the Wyrdhounds, or even the witches.
Aelin could wipe them away before the sun had fully risen. A few blasts of her power, and that army would be gone.
Yet she had not presented it as an option in their planning last night.
He’d seen the hope shining in the eyes of the people in the keep, the awe of the children as she’d passed. The Fire-Bringer, they’d whispered. Aelin of the Wildfire.
How soon would that awe and hope crumble today when not a spark of that fire was unleashed? How soon would the men’s fear turn rank when the Queen of Terrasen did not wipe away Morath’s legions?
He hadn’t been able to ask her. Had told himself to, had roared at himself to ask these past few weeks, when even their training hadn’t summoned an ember.
But he couldn’t bring himself to demand why she wouldn’t or couldn’t use her power, why they had seen or felt nothing of it after those initial few days of freedom. Couldn’t ask what Maeve and Cairn had done to possibly make her fear or hate her magic enough that she didn’t touch it.
Worry and dread gnawing at him, Rowan slipped from the room, the din of preparations greeting him the moment he entered the hall. A heartbeat later, the door opened behind him, and steps fell into sync with his own, along with a familiar, wicked scent.
“They burned her.”
Rowan glanced sidelong at Fenrys. “What?”
But Fenrys nodded to a passing healer. “Cairn—and Maeve, through her orders.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Fenrys, blood oath or no, what he’d done for Aelin or no, was not privy to these matters. No, it was between him and his mate, and no one else.
Fenrys threw him a grin that didn’t meet his eyes. “You were staring at her half the night. I could see it on your face. You’re all thinking it—why doesn’t she just burn the enemy to hell?”
Rowan aimed for the washing station down the hall. A few soldiers and healers stood along the metal trough, scrubbing their faces to shake the sleep or nerves.
Fenrys said, “He put her in those metal gauntlets. And one time, he heated them over an open brazier. There …” He stumbled for words, and Rowan could barely breathe. “It took the healers two weeks to fix what he did to her hands and wrists. And when she woke up, there was nothing but healed skin. She couldn’t tell what had been done and what was a nightmare.”
Rowan reached for one of the ewers that some of the children refilled every few moments and dumped it over his head. Icy water bit into his skin, drowning out the roaring in his ears.
“Cairn did many things like that.” Fenrys took up a ewer himself, and splashed some into his hands before rubbing them over his face. Rowan’s hands shook as he watched the water funnel toward the basin set beneath the trough. “Your claiming marks, though.” Fenrys wiped his face again. “No matter what they did to her, they remained. Longer than any other scar, they stayed.”
Yet her neck had been smooth when he’d found her.
Reading that thought, Fenrys said, “The last time they healed her, right before she escaped. That’s when they vanished. When Maeve told her that you had gone to Terrasen.”
The words hit like a blow. When she had lost hope that he was coming for her. Even the greatest healers in the world hadn’t been able to take that from her until then.
Rowan wiped his face on the arm of his jacket. “Why are you telling me this?” he repeated.
Fenrys rose from the trough, drying his face with the same lack of ceremony. “So you can stop wondering what happened. Focus on something else today.” The warrior kept pace beside him as they headed for where they’d been told a meager breakfast would be laid out. “And let her come to you when she’s ready.”
“She’s my mate,” Rowan growled. “You think I don’t know that?” Fenrys could shove his snout into someone else’s business.
Fenrys held up his hands. “You can be brutal, when you want something.”
“I’d never force her to tell me anything she wasn’t ready to say.” It had been their bargain from the start. Part of why he’d fallen in love with her.
He should have known then, during those days in Mistward, when he found himself sharing parts of himself, his history, that he’d never told anyone. When he found himself needing to tell her, in fragments and pieces, yes, but he’d wanted her to know. And Aelin had wanted to hear it. All of it.
They discovered Aelin and Elide already at the buffet table, grim-faced as they plucked up pieces of bread and cheese and dried fruit. No s
ign of Gavriel or Lorcan.
Rowan came up behind his mate and pressed a kiss to her neck. Right to where his new claiming marks lay.
She hummed, and offered him a bite of the bread she’d already dug into while gathering the rest of her food. He obliged, the bread thick and hearty, then said, “You were asleep when I left a few minutes ago, yet you somehow beat me to the breakfast table.” Another kiss to her neck. “Why am I not surprised?”
Elide laughed beside Aelin, piling food onto her own plate. Aelin only elbowed him as he fell into line beside her.
The four of them ate quickly, refilled their waterskins at the fountain in an interior courtyard, and set about finding armor. There was little on the upper levels that was fit for wearing, so they descended into the keep, deeper and deeper, until they came across a locked room.
“Should we, or is it rude?” Aelin mused, peering at the wooden door.
Rowan sent a spear of his wind aiming for the lock and splintered it apart. “Looks like it was already open when we got here,” he said mildly.
Aelin gave him a wicked grin, and Fenrys pulled a torch off its bracket in the narrow stone hallway to illuminate the room beyond.
“Well, now we know why the rest of the keep is a piece of shit,” Aelin said, surveying the trove. “He’s kept all the gold and fun things down here.”
Indeed, his mate’s idea of fun things was the same as Rowan’s: armor and swords, spears and ancient maces.
“He couldn’t have distributed this?” Elide frowned at the racks of swords and daggers.
“It’s all heirlooms,” said Fenrys, approaching one such rack and studying the hilt of a sword. “Ancient, but still good. Really good,” he added, pulling a blade from its sheath. He glanced at Rowan. “This was forged by an Asterion blacksmith.”
“From a different age,” Rowan mused, marveling at the flawless blade, its impeccable condition. “When Fae were not so feared.”
“Are we just going to take it? Without even Chaol’s permission?” Elide chewed on her lip.
Aelin snickered. “Let’s consider ourselves swords-for-hire. And as such, we have fees that need to be paid.” She hefted a round, golden shield, its edges beautifully engraved with a motif of waves. Also Asterion-made, judging by the craftsmanship. Likely for the Lord of Anielle—the Lord of the Silver Lake. “So, we’ll take what we’re owed for today’s battle, and spare His Lordship the task of having to come down here himself.”
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