The release she found that night—twice—couldn’t entirely dull the edge when morning broke, gray and bleak, and Manon approached Glennis’s larger tent.
She’d left the king sleeping, bundled in the blankets they’d shared, though she hadn’t allowed him to hold her. She’d simply turned onto her side, putting her back to him, and closed her eyes. He hadn’t seemed to care, sated and drowsy after she’d ridden him until they’d both found their pleasure, and had been quickly asleep. Had stayed asleep, while Manon had contemplated how, exactly, she was to have this meeting.
Perhaps she should have brought Dorian. He certainly knew how to play these games. To think like a king.
He’d killed that spider like a blue-blooded witch, though. Not an ounce of mercy.
It shouldn’t have thrilled her the way it did.
But Manon knew her pride would never recover, and she’d never again be able to call herself a witch, if she let him do this task for her.
So Manon shouldered through Glennis’s tent flaps without announcing herself. “I need to speak to you.”
She found Glennis buckling on her glamoured cloak before a tiny bronze mirror. “Prior to breakfast? I suppose you got that urgency from your father. Tristan was always rushing into my tent with his various pressing matters. I could barely convince him to sit still long enough to eat.”
Manon discarded the kernel of information. Ironteeth didn’t have fathers. Only their mothers and mothers’ mothers. It had always been that way. Even if it was an effort to keep her questions about him at bay. How he’d met Lothian Blackbeak, what had prompted them to set aside their ancient hatred.
“What would it take—to win the Crochans over? To join us in war?”
Glennis adjusted her cape in the mirror. “Only a Crochan Queen may ignite the Flame of War, to summon every witch from her hearth.”
Manon blinked at the frank answer. “The Flame of War?”
Glennis jerked her chin toward the tent flaps, to the fire pit beyond. “Every Crochan family has a hearth that moves with them to each camp or home we make; the fires never extinguish. The flame in my hearth dates back to the Crochan city itself, when Brannon Galathynius gave Rhiannon a spark of eternally burning fire. My mother carried it with her in a glass globe, hidden in her cloak, when she smuggled out your ancestor, and it has continued to burn at every royal Crochan hearth since then.”
“What about when magic disappeared for ten years?”
“Our seers had a vision that it would vanish, and the flame would die. So we ignited several ordinary fires from that magic flame, and kept them burning. When magic disappeared, the flame indeed winked out. And when magic returned this spring, the flame again kindled, right in the hearth where we had last seen it.” Her great-grandmother turned toward her. “When a Crochan Queen summons her people to war, a flame is taken from the royal hearth, and passed to each hearth, one camp and village to the other. The arrival of the flame is a summons that only a true Crochan Queen may make.”
“So I only need to use the flame in that pit out there and the army will come to me?”
A caw of laughter. “No. You must first be accepted as queen to do that.”
Manon ground her teeth. “And how might I achieve that?”
“That’s not for me to figure out, is it?”
It took all her self-restraint to keep from unsheathing her iron nails and prowling through the tent. “Why are you here—why this camp?”
Glennis’s brows rose. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday?”
Manon tapped a foot on the ground.
The witch noted the impatience and chuckled. “We were on our way to Eyllwe.”
Manon started. “Eyllwe? If you think to run from this war, I can tell you that it’s found that kingdom as well.” Long had Eyllwe borne the brunt of Adarlan’s wrath. In her endless meetings with Erawan, he’d been particularly focused on ensuring the kingdom stayed fractured.
Glennis nodded. “We know. But we received word from our southern hearths that a threat had arisen. We journey to meet with some of the Eyllwe war bands who have managed to survive this long—to take on whatever horror Morath might have sent.”
To go south, not north to Terrasen.
“Erawan might be unleashing his horrors in Eyllwe just to divide you,” Manon said. “To keep you from aiding Terrasen. He’ll have guessed I’m trying to gather the Crochans. Eyllwe is already lost—come with us to the North.”
The crone merely shook her head. “That may be. But we have given our word. So to Eyllwe we will go.”
CHAPTER 16
Darrow was waiting on horseback atop a hill when the army finally arrived at nightfall. A full day’s march, the snow and wind whipping them for every damned mile.
Aedion, atop his own horse, broke from the column of soldiers aiming for the small camp and galloped across the ice-crusted snow to the ancient lord. He gestured with a gloved hand to the warriors behind him. “As requested: we’ve arrived.”
Darrow barely glanced at Aedion as he surveyed the soldiers making camp. Exhausting, brutal work after a long day, and a battle before that, but they’d sleep well tonight. And Aedion would refuse to move them tomorrow. Perhaps the day after that, too. “How many lost?”
“Less than five hundred.”
“Good.”
Aedion bristled at the approval. It wasn’t Darrow’s own army, wasn’t even Aedion’s.
“What did you want that warranted us to haul ass up here so quickly?”
“I wanted to discuss the battle with you. Hear what you learned.”
Aedion gritted his teeth. “I’ll write a report for you, then.” He gathered the reins, readying to steer his horse back to the camp. “My men need shelter.”
Darrow nodded firmly, as if unaware of the exhausting march he’d demanded. “At dawn, we meet. Send word to the other lords.”
“Send your own messenger.”
Darrow cut him a steely look. “Tell the other lords.” He surveyed Aedion from his mud-splattered boots to his unwashed hair. “And get some rest.”
Aedion didn’t bother responding as he urged his horse into a gallop, the stallion charging through the snow without hesitation. A fine, proud beast that had served him well.
Aedion squinted at the wailing snow as it whipped his face. They needed to build shelter—and fast.
At dawn, he’d go to Darrow’s meeting. With the other lords.
And Aelin in tow.
A foot of snow fell overnight, blanketing the tents, smothering fires, and setting the soldiers sleeping shoulder to shoulder to conserve warmth.
Lysandra had shivered in her tent, despite being curled into ghost-leopard form by the brazier, and had awoken before dawn simply because sleeping had become futile.
And because of the meeting that was moments away from taking place.
She strode toward Darrow’s large war tent, Ansel of Briarcliff at her side, the two of them bundled against the cold. Mercifully, the frigid morning kept any conversation between them to a minimum. No point in talking when the very air chilled your teeth to the point of aching.
The silver-haired Fae royals entered just before them, Prince Endymion giving her—giving Aelin—a bow of the head.
His cousin’s wife. That’s what he believed her to be. In addition to being queen. Endymion had never scented Aelin, wouldn’t know that the strange shifter’s scent was all wrong.
Thank the gods for that.
The war tent was nearly full, lords and princes and commanders gathered around the center of the space, all studying the map of the continent hanging from one of the wall flaps. Pins jutted from its thick canvas to mark various armies.