Queen of Shadows

The rest of the Thirteen began filing in as the sun vanished. They took one glance at Manon and Asterin and wisely kept away, their eyes averted. Vesta even muttered a prayer to the Three-Faced Goddess.

“I want only for the Thirteen—for all the Blackbeaks—to win glory on the battlefield,” Asterin said, refusing to break Manon’s stare.

“We will,” Manon promised, loud enough for the others to hear. “But until then, keep yourself in check, or I’ll ground you until you’re worthy of riding with us again.”

Asterin lowered her eyes. “Your will is mine, Wing Leader.”

Coming from anyone else, even Sorrel, the honorific would have been normal, expected. Because none of them would ever have dared to cast that tone to it.

Manon lashed out, so fast that even Asterin couldn’t retreat. Manon’s hand closed around her cousin’s throat, her iron nails digging into the soft skin beneath her ears. “You step one foot out of line, Asterin, and these”—Manon dug her nails in deeper as blue blood began sliding down Asterin’s golden-tan neck—“find their mark.”

Manon didn’t care that they’d been fighting at each other’s sides for a century, that Asterin was her closest relative, or that Asterin had gone to the mat again and again to defend Manon’s position as heir. She’d put Asterin down the moment she became a useless nuisance. Manon let Asterin see all of that in her eyes.

Asterin’s gaze flicked to the bloodred cloak Manon wore—the cloak Manon’s grandmother had ordered her to take from that Crochan after Manon slit her throat, after the witch bled out on the floor of the Omega. Asterin’s beautiful, wild face went cold as she said, “Understood.”

Manon released her throat, flicking Asterin’s blood off her nails as she turned to the Thirteen, now standing by their mounts, stiff-backed and silent. “We ride. Now.”

Abraxos shifted and bobbed beneath Manon as she climbed into the saddle, well aware that one misstep off the wooden beam on which he was perched would lead to a very long, very permanent drop.

Below and to the south, countless army campfires flickered, and the smoke of the forges among them rose high in plumes that marred the starry, moonlit sky. Abraxos growled.

“I know, I know, I’m hungry, too,” Manon said, blinking the lid above her eye into place as she secured the harnesses that kept her firmly in the saddle. To her left and right, Asterin and Sorrel mounted their wyverns and turned to her. Her cousin’s wounds had already clotted.

Manon gazed at the unforgiving plunge straight down the side of the tower, past the jagged rocks of the mountain, and into the open air beyond. Perhaps that was why these mortal fools had insisted that every wyvern and rider make the Crossing at the Omega—so they could come to Morath and not balk at the sheer drop, even from the lowest levels of the Keep.

A chill, reeking wind brushed her face, clogging her nose. A pleading, hoarse scream broke from inside one of those hollowed-out mountains—then went silent. Time to go—if not to fill her belly, then to get away from the rot of this place for a few hours.

Manon dug her legs into Abraxos’s scarred, leathery side, and his Spidersilk-reinforced wings glittered like gold in the light of the fires far below. “Fly, Abraxos,” she breathed.

Abraxos sucked in a great breath, tucked his wings in tight, and fell off the side of the post.

He liked to do that—just tumble off as though he’d been struck dead.

Her wyvern, it seemed, had a wicked sense of humor.

The first time he’d done it, she’d roared at him. Now he did it just to show off, as the wyverns of the rest of the Thirteen had to jump up and out and then plunge, their bodies too big to nimbly navigate the narrow drop.

Manon kept her eyes open as they tumbled down, the wind battering them, Abraxos a warm mass beneath her. She liked to watch every stunned and terrified mortal face, liked to see how close Abraxos got to the stones of the tower, to the jagged, black mountain rock before—

Abraxos flung out his wings and banked hard, the world tilting and then shooting behind. He let out a fierce cry that reverberated over every stone of Morath, echoed by the shrieks of the Thirteen’s mounts. On a tower’s exterior stairs, a servant hauling a basket of apples cried out and dropped his burden. The apples tumbled one by one by one down the steps winding around the tower, a cascade of red and green in time to the pounding of the forges.

Then Abraxos was flapping up and away over the dark army, over the sharp peaks, the Thirteen falling smoothly into rank behind him.

It was a strange sort of thrill, to ride like this, with just her coven—a unit capable of sacking whole cities by themselves. Abraxos flew hard and fast, he and Manon both scanning the earth as they broke free from the mountains and cruised over the flat farmland before the Acanthus River.

Most humans had fled this region, or had been butchered for war or sport. But there were still a few, if you knew where to look.

On and on they flew, the sliver of a crescent moon rising higher: the Crone’s Sickle. A good night for hunting, if the unkind face of the Goddess now watched over them, even though the dark of the new moon—the Crone’s Shadow—was always preferred.

At least the Sickle gave off enough light to see by as Manon scanned the earth. Water—mortals liked to live near water, so she headed toward a lake she’d spotted weeks ago but hadn’t yet explored.

Fast and sleek as shadows, the Thirteen soared over the night-shrouded land.

At last, moonlight dimly glinted over a small body of water, and Abraxos glided for it, down and down, until Manon could see their reflection on the flat surface, see her red cape fluttering behind her like a trail of blood.

Behind, Asterin whooped, and Manon turned to watch her Second fling her arms out and lean back in her saddle until she was lying flat on her mount’s spine, her golden hair unbound and streaming. Such wild ecstasy—there was always a fierce, untamed joy when Asterin flew.

Manon occasionally wondered if her Second sometimes snuck out at night to ride in nothing but her skin, forgoing even a saddle.

Manon faced forward, frowning. Thank the Darkness that the Blackbeak Matron wasn’t here to see this, or more than Asterin would be threatened. It would be Manon’s own neck, too, for allowing such wildness to bloom. And being unwilling to stomp it out entirely.

Manon spied a small cottage with a fenced field. A light flickered in the window—perfect. Beyond the house, tufts of solid white gleamed, bright as snow. Even better.

Manon steered Abraxos toward the farm, toward the family that—if they were smart—had heard the booming wings and taken cover.

No children. It was an unspoken rule among the Thirteen, even if some of the other Clans had no qualms about it, especially the Yellowlegs. But men and women were fair game, if there was fun to be had.

And after her earlier encounters with the duke, with Asterin, Manon was truly in the mood for some amusement.

9

After Aelin wrote the damning letter to Arobynn and sent it via one of his feral street urchins, hunger dragged her from the apartment into the gray morning. Bone-tired, she hunted down breakfast, also buying enough for lunch and dinner, and returned to the warehouse an hour later to find a large, flat box waiting on the dining table.

No sign of the lock having been tampered with, none of the windows open any farther than they’d been when she cracked them to let in the river breeze that morning.

But she expected no less from Arobynn—no less than a reminder that he might be King of the Assassins, but he’d clawed and slaughtered his way onto that self-made throne.

It seemed fitting, somehow, that the skies opened up just then, the patter and clink of the downpour washing away the too-heavy silence of the room.

Aelin tugged at the emerald silk ribbon around the cream-colored box until it dropped away. Setting aside the lid, she stared at the folded cloth within for a long moment. The note placed atop it read, I took the liberty of having some improvements made since the last time. Go play.

Her throat tightened, but she pulled out the full-body suit of black cloth—tight, thick, and flexible like leather, but without the sheen and suffocation. Beneath the folded suit lay a pair of boots. They’d been cleaned since the last time she’d worn them years ago, the black leather still supple and pliable, the special grooves and hidden blades as precise as ever.