The ancient witch paused at the edge of her ranks, surveying Manon. There was kindness on the witch’s face, Dorian noted—and wisdom. And something, he realized, like sorrow. It didn’t halt him from sliding a hand onto Damaris’s pommel, as if he were casually resting it.
“We sought you so we might speak.” Manon’s cold, calm voice rang out over the rocks. “We mean you no harm.”
Damaris warmed at the truth in her words.
“This time,” the brown-haired witch who’d spoken earlier muttered. Her coven leader elbowed her in warning.
“Who are you, though?” Manon instead asked the crone. “You lead these covens.”
“I am Glennis. My family served the Crochan royals, long before the city fell.” The ancient witch’s eyes went to the strip of red cloth tying Manon’s braid. “Rhiannon found you, then.”
Dorian had listened when Manon had explained to the Thirteen the truth about her heritage, and who her grandmother had bade her to slaughter in the Omega.
Manon kept her chin up, even as her golden eyes flickered. “Rhiannon didn’t make it out of the Ferian Gap.”
“Bitch,” a witch snarled, others echoing it.
Manon ignored it and asked the ancient Crochan, “You knew her, then?”
The witches fell silent.
The crone inclined her head, that sorrow filling her eyes once more. Dorian didn’t need Damaris’s confirming warmth to know her next words were true. “I was her great-grandmother.” Even the whipping wind quieted. “As I am yours.”
CHAPTER 14
The Crochans stood down—under the orders of Manon’s so-called great-grandmother. Glennis.
She had demanded how, what the lineage was, but Glennis had only beckoned Manon to follow her into the camp.
At least two dozen other witches tended to the several fire pits scattered amongst the white tents, all of them halting their various work as Manon passed. She’d never seen Crochans going about their domestic tasks, but here they were: some tending to fires, some hauling buckets of water, some monitoring heavy cauldrons of what smelled like mountain-goat stew seasoned with dried herbs.
No words sounded in her head while she strode through the ranks of bristling Crochans. The Thirteen didn’t try to speak, either. But Dorian did.
The king fell into step beside her, his body a wall of solid warmth, and asked quietly, “Did you know you had kin still living amongst the Crochans?”
“No.” Her grandmother hadn’t mentioned it in her final taunts.
Manon doubted the camp was a permanent place for the Crochans.They’d be foolish to ever reveal that. Yet Cyrene had discovered it, somehow.
Perhaps by tracking Manon’s scent—the parts of it that claimed kinship with the Crochans.
The spider now walked between Asterin and Sorrel, Dorian still showing no sign of strain in keeping her partially bound, though he kept a hand on the hilt of his sword.
A sharp glance from Manon and he dropped it.
“How do you want to play this?” Dorian murmured. “Do you want me to keep quiet, or be at your side?”
“Asterin is my Second.”
“And what am I, then?” The smooth question ran a hand down her spine, as if he’d caressed her with those invisible hands of his.
“You are the King of Adarlan.”
“Shall I be a part of the discussions, then?”
“If you feel like it.”
She felt his rising annoyance and hid her smirk.
Dorian’s voice dropped into a low purr. “Do you know what I feel like doing?”
She twisted her head to glare at him incredulously. And found the king smirking.
“You look like you’re about to bolt,” he said, that smile lingering. “It will set the wrong tone.”
He was trying to rile her, to distract her into loosening her iron-hard grip on her control.
“They know who you are,” Dorian went on. “Proving that part of it is over. Whether they accept you will be the true matter.” Her great-grandmother must have come from the nonroyal part of her bloodline, then. “These do not seem like witches who will be won by brutality.”
He didn’t know the half of it. “Are you presuming to give me advice?”
“Consider it a tip, from one monarch to another.”
Despite who walked ahead of them, behind them, Manon smiled slightly.
He surprised her further by saying, “I’ve been tunneling into my power since they appeared. One wrong move from them, and I’ll blast them into nothing.”
A shiver rippled down her back at the cold violence in his voice. “We need them as allies.” Everything she was to do today, tonight, was to seal such a thing.
“Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, witchling.”
Manon opened her mouth to answer.
But a horn, shrill and warning, blasted through the descending night.
Then the beating of mighty leathery wings boomed across the stars.
The camp was instantly in action, shouts ringing out from the scouts who’d sounded the alarm. The Thirteen closed ranks around Manon, weapons drawn.
The Ironteeth had found them.
Far sooner than Manon had planned.
How the Ironteeth patrol had found them, Dorian didn’t know. He supposed the fires would be a giveaway.
Dorian rallied his magic as twenty-six massive shapes swept over the camp.
Yellowlegs. Two covens.
The crone who’d introduced herself as Manon’s great-grandmother began shouting commands, and Crochans obeyed, leaping into the newly dark skies on their brooms, bows drawn or swords out.
No time to question how they’d been found, whether the spider had indeed laid a trap—certainly not as Manon’s voice rang out, ordering the Thirteen into defensive positions.
Swift as shadows, they raced for where they’d left their wyverns, iron teeth glinting.
Dorian waited until the Crochans were clear of him before unleashing his power. Spears of ice, to pierce the enemy’s exposed chests or rip through their wings.
Half a thought had him loosening Cyrene’s bonds, though not unleashing her from the power that kept her from attacking. Just giving her enough space to shift, to defend herself. A flash on the other side of the camp told him she had.
The interrogation would come later.
Manon and the Thirteen reached the wyverns, and were airborne within heartbeats, flapping into the chaos above.
The Crochans were so small—so terribly small—against the bulk of the wyverns. Even on their brooms.
And as they swarmed around the two Ironteeth covens, firing arrows and swinging swords, Dorian couldn’t get a clear shot. Not with the Crochans darting around the beasts, too fast for him to track. Some of the wyverns bellowed and tumbled from the sky, but many stayed aloft.
Glennis barked orders from the ground, a great bow in her wrinkled hands, aimed upward.
A wyvern soared overhead, so low its spiked, poisonous tail snapped through tent after tent.
Glennis let her arrow fly, and Dorian echoed her blow with one of his own.
A lance of solid ice, careening for the exposed, mottled chest.
Both arrow and ice spear drove home, and black blood spewed downward—before the wyvern and rider went crashing into a peak, and flipped over the cliff face.
Glennis grinned, that aged face lighting. “I struck first.” She drew another arrow. Such lightness, even in the face of an ambush.
“I wish you were my great-grandmother,” Dorian muttered, and readied his next blow. He’d have to be careful, with the Thirteen looking so much like the Yellowlegs from below.
But the Thirteen did not need his caution, or his help.