Kingdom of Ash

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.