Rowan recognized it, too. Roared the order to hold their fire.
It was not Abraxos who landed at the crossroads. And there was no sign of Manon Blackbeak.
Light flashed again. And then Dorian Havilliard stood there, his jacket and cape stained and worn.
Aelin galloped down the road toward him, Rowan and Elide beside her, the others at their backs.
Dorian lifted a hand, his face grave as death, even as his eyes widened at the sight of her.
But Aelin sensed it then.
What Dorian carried.
The Wyrdkeys.
All three of them.
CHAPTER 88
Aedion’s arm and ribs were on fire.
Worse than the searing heat of the firelances, worse than any level of Hellas’s burning realm.
He’d regained consciousness as the healer began her first stitches. Had clamped down on the leather bit she’d offered and roared around the pain while she sewed him up.
By the time she’d finished, he’d fainted again. He woke minutes later, according to the soldiers assigned to make sure he didn’t die, and found the pain somewhat eased, but still sharp enough that using his sword arm would be nearly impossible. At least until his Fae heritage healed him—faster than mortal men.
That he hadn’t died of blood loss and could attempt to move his arm as he ordered his armor strapped back on him and stumbled into the city streets, aiming for the wall, was thanks to that Fae heritage. His mother’s, yes, but mostly from his father.
Had Gavriel heard, across the sea or wherever their hunt for Aelin had taken him, that Terrasen was about to fall? Would he care?
It didn’t matter. Even if part of him wished the Lion were there. Rowan and the others certainly, but the steady presence of Gavriel would have been a balm to these men. Perhaps to him.
Aedion gritted his teeth, swaying as he scaled the blood-slick stairs to the city walls, dodging bodies both human and Valg. An hour—he’d been down for an hour.
Nothing had changed. Valg still swarmed the walls and both the southern and western gates; but Terrasen’s forces held them off. In the skies, the number of Crochans and Ironteeth had thinned, but barely. The Thirteen were a distant, vicious cluster, ripping apart whoever flew in their path.
And down at the river … red blood stained the snowy banks. Too much red blood.
He stumbled a step, losing sight of the river for a moment while soldiers dispatched the Valg grunts before him. When they passed, Aedion could scarcely breathe while he scanned the bloodied banks. Soldiers lay dead all around, but—there. Closer to the city walls than he’d realized.
White against the snow and ice, she still fought. Blood leaking down her sides. Red blood.
But she didn’t retreat into the water. Held her ground.
It was foolish—unnecessary. Ambushing them had been far more effective.
Yet Lysandra fought, tail snapping spines and giant maw ripping off heads, right where the river curved past the city. He knew something was wrong then. Beyond the blood on her.
Knew Lysandra had learned something that they had not. And in holding her ground, tried to signal them on the walls.
His head spinning, arm and ribs throbbing, Aedion scanned the battlefield. A group of soldiers charged at her. A whack of her tail had the spears snapped, their bearers along with them.
But another group of soldiers tried to charge past her, on the riverside.
Aedion saw what they bore, what they tried to carry, and swore. Lysandra smashed apart one longboat with her tail, but couldn’t reach the second cluster of soldiers—bearing another.
They reached the icy waters, boat splashing, and Lysandra lunged. Right as she was swarmed by another group of soldiers, so many spears and lances that she had no choice but to face them. Allowing the boat, and the soldiers carrying it, to slip past.
Aedion noted where those soldiers were headed, and began shouting his orders. His head swam with each command.
In Lysandra sneaking to the river through the tunnels, she’d had the element of surprise. But it had also revealed to Morath that another path existed into the city. One right below their feet.
And if they got through the grate, if they could get inside the walls …
Fighting against the fuzziness growing in his head, Aedion began signaling. First to the shifter holding the line, trying so valiantly to keep those forces at bay. Then to the Thirteen, perilously high in the skies, to get back to the walls—to stop Morath’s creeping before it was too late.
High up, the cries of the wind bleeding into those of the dying and injured, Manon saw the general’s signal, the careful pattern of light that he’d shown her the night before.
A command to hurry to the walls—immediately. Just her and the Thirteen.
The Crochans held the tide of the Ironteeth at bay, but to fall back, to leave—
Prince Aedion signaled again. Now. Now. Now.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
River, he signaled. Enemy.
Manon cast her gaze to the earth far below. And saw what Morath was covertly trying to do.
“To the walls!” she called to the Thirteen, still a hammer behind her, and made to steer Abraxos toward the city, tugging on the reins to have him fly high above the fray.
Asterin’s warning cry reached her a heartbeat too late.
Shooting from below, a predator ambushing prey, the massive bull aimed right for Abraxos.
Manon knew the rider as the bull slammed into Abraxos, claws and teeth digging deep.
Iskra Yellowlegs was already smiling.
The world tilted and spun, but Abraxos, roaring in pain, kept in the air, kept flapping.
Even as Iskra’s bull pulled back his head—only to close his jaws around Abraxos’s throat.
CHAPTER 89
Iskra’s bull gripped him by the neck, but Abraxos kept them in the air.
At the sight of those powerful jaws around Abraxos’s throat, the fear and pain in his eyes—
Manon couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think around the terror rushing through her, so blinding and sickening that for a few heartbeats, she was frozen. Wholly frozen.
Abraxos, Abraxos—
Hers. He was hers, and she was his, and the Darkness had chosen them to be together.
She had no sense of time, no sense of how long had passed between that bite and when she again moved. It could have been a second, it could have been a minute.
But then she was drawing an arrow from her nearly depleted quiver. The wind threatened to rip it from her fingers, but she nocked it to her bow, the world spinning-spinning-spinning, the wind roaring, and aimed.
Iskra’s bull bucked as her arrow landed—just a hairsbreadth from his eye.
But he did not let go.
He didn’t have the deep grip to rip out Abraxos’s throat, but if he crunched down long enough, if he cut off her mount’s air supply—
Manon unleashed another arrow. The wind shifted it enough that she struck the beast’s jaw, barely embedding in the thick hide.
Iskra was laughing. Laughing as Abraxos fought and could not get free—
Manon looked for any of the Thirteen, for anyone to save them. Save him.
He who mattered more than any other, whom she would trade places with if the Three-Faced Goddess allowed it, to have her own throat gripped in those terrible jaws—
But the Thirteen had been scattered, Iskra’s coven plowing their ranks apart. Asterin and Iskra’s Second were claw-to-claw as their wyverns locked talons and plunged toward the battlefield.
Manon gauged the distance to Iskra’s bull, to the jaws around the neck. Weighed the strength of the straps on the reins. If she could swing down, if she was lucky, she might be able to slash at the bull’s throat, just enough to pry him off—
But Abraxos’s wings faltered. His tail, trying so valiantly to strike the bull, began to slow.
No.
No.
Not like this. Anyt
hing but this.
Manon slung her bow over her back, half-frozen fingers fumbling with the straps and buckles of the saddle.
She couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t bear it, this death, his pain and fear before it.
She might have been sobbing. Might have been screaming as his wingbeats faltered again.
She’d leap across the gods-damned wind, rip that bitch from the saddle, and slit her mount’s throat—
Abraxos began to fall.
Not fall. But dive—trying to get lower. To reach the ground, hauling that bull with him.
So Manon might survive.
“PLEASE.” Her scream to Iskra carried across the battlefield, across the world. “PLEASE.”
She would beg, she would crawl, if it bought him the chance to live.
Her warrior-hearted mount. Who had saved her far more than she had ever saved him.
Who had saved her in the ways that counted most.
“PLEASE.” She screamed it—screamed it with every scrap of her shredded soul.
Iskra only laughed. And the bull did not let go, even as Abraxos tried and tried to get them closer to the ground.
Her tears ripped away in the wind, and Manon freed the last of the buckles on her saddle. The gap between the wyverns was impossible, but she had been lucky before.
She didn’t care about any of it. The Wastes, the Crochans and Ironteeth, her crown. She didn’t care about any of it, if Abraxos was not there with her.
Abraxos’s wings strained, fighting with that mighty, loving heart to reach lower air.
Manon sized up the distance to the bull’s flank, ripping off her gloves to free her iron nails. As strong as any grappling hook.
Manon rose in the saddle, sliding a leg under her, body tensing to make the jump ahead. And she said to Abraxos, touching his spine, “I love you.”
It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.
Abraxos thrashed. As if he’d try to stop her.
Manon willed strength to her legs, to her arms, and sucked in a breath, perhaps her last—
Shooting from the heavens, faster than a star racing across the sky, a roaring form careened into Iskra’s bull.
Those jaws came free of Abraxos’s neck, and then they were falling, twisting.
Manon had enough sense to grab onto the saddle, to cling with everything she had as the wind threatened to tear her from him.
His blood streamed upward as they fell, but then his wings spread wide, and he was banking, flapping up. He steadied enough that Manon swung into the saddle, strapping herself in as she whirled to see what had occurred behind her. Who had saved them.
It was not Asterin.
It was not any of the Thirteen.
But Petrah Blueblood.
And behind the Heir to the Blueblood Witch-Clan, now slamming into Morath’s aerial legion from where they’d crept onto the battlefield from high above the clouds, were the Ironteeth.
Hundreds of them.
Hundreds of Ironteeth witches and their wyverns crashed into their own.
Petrah and Iskra pulled apart, the Blueblood Heir flapping toward Manon while Abraxos fought to stay upright.
Even with the wind, the battle, Manon still heard Petrah as the Blueblood Heir said to her, “A better world.”
Manon had no words. None, other than to look toward the city wall, to the force trying to enter through the river grates. “The walls—”
“Go.” Then Petrah pointed to where Iskra had paused in midair to gape at what unfolded. At the act of defiance and rebellion so unthinkable that many of the Morath Ironteeth were equally stunned. Petrah bared her teeth, revealing iron glinting in the watery sunlight. “She’s mine.”
Manon glanced between the city walls and Iskra, turning toward them once more. Two against one, and they would surely smash her to bits—
“Go,” Petrah snarled. And when Manon again hesitated, Petrah only said, “For Keelie.”
For the wyvern Petrah had loved—as Manon loved Abraxos. Who had fought for Petrah to her last breath, while Iskra’s bull slaughtered her.
So Manon nodded. “Darkness embrace you.”
Abraxos began soaring for the wall, his wingbeats unsteady, his breathing shallow.
He needed to rest, needed to see a healer—
Manon glanced behind her just as Petrah slammed into Iskra.
The two Heirs went tumbling toward the earth, clashing again, wyverns striking.
Manon couldn’t turn away if she wished.
Not as the wyverns peeled apart and then banked, executing perfect, razor-sharp turns that had them meeting once more, rising up into the sky, tails snapping as they locked talons.
Up and up, Iskra and Petrah flew. Wyverns slashing and biting, claws locking, jaws snapping. Up through the levels of fighting in the skies, up through Crochans and Ironteeth, up through the wisps of clouds.
A race, a mockery of the mating dance of the wyverns, to rise to the highest point of the sky and then plummet down to the earth as one.
Ironteeth halted their fighting. Crochans stilled in midair. Even on the battlefield, Morath soldiers looked up.
The two Heirs shot higher and higher and higher. And when they reached a place where even the wyverns could not draw enough air into their lungs, they tucked in their wings, locked claws, and plunged headfirst toward the earth.
Manon saw the trap before Iskra did.
Saw it the moment Petrah broke free, golden hair streaming as she drew her sword and her wyvern began to circle.
Tight, precise circles around Iskra and her bull as they plummeted.
So tight that Iskra’s bull did not have the space to open its wings. And when it tried, Petrah’s wyvern was there, tail or jaws snapping. When it tried, Petrah’s sword was there, slashing ribbons into the beast.
Iskra realized it then.
Realized it as they fell and fell and fell, and Petrah circled them, so fast that Manon wondered if the Blueblood Heir had been practicing these months, training for this very moment.
For the vengeance owed to her and Keelie.
The very world seemed to pause.
Petrah and her wyvern circled and circled, blood from Iskra’s wyvern raining upward, the beast more frantic with every foot closer to the earth.
But Petrah had not opened her wyvern’s wings, either. Had not pulled on the reins to bank her mount.
“Pull out,” Manon breathed. “Bank now.”
Petrah did not. Two wyverns dropped toward the earth, dark stars falling from the sky.
“Stop,” Iskra barked.
Petrah didn’t deign to respond.
They couldn’t bank at that speed. And soon Petrah wouldn’t be able to bank at all. Would break herself on the ground, right alongside Iskra.
“Stop!” Fear turned Iskra’s order into a sharp cry.
No pity for her kindled in Manon. None at all.
The ground neared, brutal and unyielding.
“You mad bitch, I said stop!”
Two hundred feet to the earth. Then a hundred. Manon couldn’t get down a breath.
Fifty feet.
And as the ground seemed to rise to meet them, Manon heard Petrah’s only words to Iskra like they had been carried on the wind.
“For Keelie.”
Petrah’s wyvern flung out its wings, banking sharper than any wyvern Manon had ever witnessed. Rising up, wing tip grazing the icy ground before it shot back into the skies.
Leaving Iskra and her bull to splatter on the earth.
The boom rumbled past Manon, thundering through the world.
Iskra and her bull did not rise again.
Abraxos gave a groan of pain, and Manon twisted in the saddle, her heart raging.
Iskra was dead. The Yellowlegs Heir was dead.
It didn’t fill her with the joy it should have. Not with that vulnerable grate on the city wall under attack.
So she snapped the reins, and Abraxos soared for the cit
y walls, and then Sorrel and Vesta were beside her, Asterin coming in fast from behind. They flew low, beneath the Ironteeth now fighting Ironteeth, the Ironteeth still fighting Crochans. Aiming for the spots where the river flowed right up to their sides.
Already, a longboat had reached them. Already, arrows were flying from the small grate—guards frantic to keep the enemy at bay.
The Morath soldiers were so preoccupied with their target ahead that they did not look behind until Abraxos was upon them.
His blood streamed past her as he landed, snapping with talons and teeth and tail. Sorrel and Vesta took care of the others, the longboat soon in splinters.
But it was not enough. Not even close.
“The rocks,” Manon breathed, steering Abraxos toward the other side of the river.
He understood. Her heart strained to the point of agony at pushing him, but he soared to the other side of the river and hauled one of the smaller boulders back across. The Thirteen saw her plan and followed, swift and unfaltering.
Every one of his wingbeats was slower than the last. He lost height with each foot they crossed the river.
But then he made it, just as another group of Morath soldiers were trying to enter the small, vulnerable passage. Manon slammed the stone into the water before it. The Thirteen dropped their stones as well, the splashes carrying over the city walls.
More and more, each trip across the river slower than the last.
But then there were rocks piled up, breaking the surface. Then rising above it, blocking out all access to the river tunnel. Just high enough to seal it over—but not give a leg up to the Morath soldiers swarming on the other bank.
Abraxos’s breathing was labored, his head sagging.
Manon twisted in the saddle to order her Second to halt piling the rocks, but Asterin had already done so. Her Second pointed to the city walls above them. “Get inside!”
Manon didn’t waste time arguing. Snapping Abraxos’s reins, Manon sent him flying over the city walls, his blood raining on the soldiers fighting there.
He made it to the castle battlements before his strength gave out.
Before he hit the stones and slid, the boom of impact ringing across Orynth.
He slammed into the side of the castle itself, wings limp, and Manon was instantly freeing herself from the saddle as she screamed for a healer.
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