Empire of Storms

Of course, Aedion and Fenrys instantly noted it, pausing where they now washed blood off the deck, and the latter snorted. Both had healed enough to walk, but neither moved to interfere as Manon prowled toward him. If she hadn’t fled or attacked yet, they must have decided she wasn’t going to bother doing so now.

Manon took up a space at the rail, gazing out at the endless water, the wisps of pink clouds smeared along the horizon. Dark blood stained her shirt, her palms. “Do I have you to thank for this freedom?”

He braced his forearms on the wooden rail. “Maybe.”

Gold eyes slid to him. “The magic—what is it?”

“I don’t know,” Dorian said, studying his hands. “It felt like an extension of me. Like real hands I could command.”

For a heartbeat, he thought of how they’d felt pinning her wrists—how her body had reacted, loose and tense where he usually liked it to be, while his mouth had barely caressed hers. Her golden eyes flared as if recalling it as well, and Dorian found himself saying, “I wouldn’t harm you.”

“You liked killing the Bloodhound, though.”

He didn’t bother keeping the ice from his eyes. “Yes.”

Manon stepped close enough to brush a finger over the pale band around his throat, and he forgot that there was a ship full of people watching. “You could have made her suffer—you went for a clean blow instead. Why?”

“Because even with our enemies, there’s a line.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“I didn’t ask a question.”

Manon snorted. “You’ve had that look in your eyes all night—if you’re becoming a monster like the rest of us. The next time you kill, remind yourself of that line.”

“Where do you stand on that line, witchling?”

She met his gaze, as if willing him to see a century of all that she’d done. “I am not mortal. I do not play by your rules. I have killed and hunted men for sport. Do not mistake me for a human woman, princeling.”

“I have no interest in human women,” he purred. “Too breakable.”

Even as he said it, the words struck some deep, aching wound in him.

“The ilken,” he said, pushing past that pain. “Did you know about them?”

“I assume they are a part of whatever is in those mountains.”

A hoarse female voice snapped, “What do you mean, whatever is in those mountains?”

Dorian nearly leaped out of his skin. Aelin, it seemed, had been taking some notes from her ghost leopard friend. Even Manon blinked at the blood-drenched queen now behind them.

Manon eyed Aedion and Fenrys as they heard Aelin’s demand and came over, followed by Gavriel. Fenrys’s shirt was still hanging in strips. At least Rowan was now keeping watch from the rigging, and Lysandra was off flying overhead, scouting for danger.

The witch said, “I never saw the ilken. Only heard of them—heard their screaming as they died, then their roaring as they were remade. I didn’t know that’s what they were. Or that Erawan would send them so far from their aerie. My Shadows caught a glimpse of them, just once. Their description matches what attacked last night.”

“Are the ilken mostly scouts or warriors?” Aelin said.

The fresh air seemed to have made Manon amenable to divulging information, because she leaned her back against the railing, facing the cabal of killers around them. “We don’t know. They used the cloud cover to their advantage. My Shadows can find anything that doesn’t want to be found, and yet they could not hunt or track these things.”

Aelin tensed a bit, scowling at the water flowing past them. And then she said nothing, as if the words had vanished and exhaustion—something heavier than that—had set in.

“Snap out of it,” Manon said.

Aedion loosed a warning growl.

Aelin slowly lifted her eyes to the witch, and Dorian braced himself.

“So you miscalculated,” Manon said. “So they tracked you. Don’t get distracted with the minor defeats. This is war. Cities will be lost, people slaughtered. And if I were you, I would be more concerned about why they sent so few of the ilken.”

“If you were me,” Aelin murmured in a tone that had Dorian’s magic rising, ice cooling his fingertips. Aedion’s hand slid to his sword. “If you were me.” A low, bitter laugh. Dorian had not heard that sound since … since a blood-soaked bedroom in a glass castle that no longer existed. “Well, you are not me, Blackbeak, so I’ll trust you to keep your musings on the matter to yourself.”

“I am not a Blackbeak,” Manon said.

They all stared at her. But the witch merely watched the queen.

Aelin said with a wave of her scar-flecked hand, “Right. That matter of business. Let’s hear the story, then.”

Dorian wondered if they would come to blows, but Manon simply waited a few heartbeats, looked toward the horizon again, and said, “When my grandmother stripped me of my title as heir and Wing Leader, she also stripped my heritage. She told me that my father was a Crochan Prince, and she had killed my mother and him for conspiring to end the feud between our peoples and break the curse on our lands.”

Dorian glanced to Aedion. The Wolf of the North’s face was taut, his Ashryver eyes shining bright, churning at the possibilities of all that Manon implied.

Manon said a bit numbly, as if it was the first time she’d even spoken it to herself, “I am the last Crochan Queen—the last direct descendant of Rhiannon Crochan herself.”

Aelin only sucked on a tooth, brows lifting.

“And,” Manon continued, “whether my grandmother acknowledges it or not, I am heir to the Blackbeak Clan. My witches, who have fought at my side for a hundred years, have spent most of it killing Crochans. Dreaming of a homeland that I promised to return them to. And now I am banished, my Thirteen scattered and lost. And now I am heir to our enemy’s crown. So you are not the only one, Majesty, who has plans that go awry. So get yourself together and figure out what to do next.”

Two queens—there were two queens among them, Dorian realized.

Aelin closed her eyes and let out a rough, breathy laugh. Aedion again tensed, as if that laugh might easily end in violence or peace, but Manon stood there. Weathering the storm.

When Aelin opened her eyes, her smile subdued but edged, she said to the Witch-Queen, “I knew I saved your sorry ass for a reason.”

Manon’s answering smile was terrifying.

The males all seemed to loosen a tight breath, Dorian himself included.

But then Fenrys pulled at his lower lip, scanning the skies. “What I don’t get is why wait so long to do any of this? If Erawan wants you lot dead”—a nod toward Dorian and Aelin—“why let you mature, grow powerful?”

Dorian tried not to shudder at the thought. How unprepared they’d been.

“Because I escaped Erawan,” Aelin said. Dorian tried not to remember that night ten years ago, but the memory of it snapped through him, and her, and Aedion. “He thought I was dead. And Dorian … his father shielded him. As best he could.”

Dorian shut out that memory, too. Especially as Manon angled her head in question.

Fenrys said, “Maeve knew you were alive. Odds are, so did Erawan.”

“Maybe she told Erawan,” Aedion said.

Fenrys whipped his head to the general. “She’s never had any contact with Erawan, or Adarlan.”

“As far as you know,” Aedion mused. “Unless she’s a talker in the bedroom.”

Fenrys’s eyes darkened. “Maeve does not share power. She saw Adarlan as an inconvenience. Still does.”

Aedion countered, “Everyone can be bought for a price.”

“Nameless is the price of Maeve’s allegiance,” Fenrys snapped. “It can’t be purchased.”

Aelin went utterly still at the warrior’s words.

She blinked at him, her brows narrowing as her lips silently mouthed the words he’d said.

“What is it?” Aedion demanded.

Aelin murmured, “Nameless is my price.” Aedion opened his mouth, no doubt to ask what had snagged her interest, but Aelin frowned at Manon. “Can your kind see the future? See it as an oracle can?”