When she’d chucked the last guard’s body onto the ground, when she was covered in black and blue blood, Manon looked at the girl on the floor.
Elide tugged her green robe shut, shaking so badly Manon thought she’d puke. She could smell vomit already in the cell. They had kept her here, in this rotting place.
“We need to run,” Manon said.
Elide tried to rise, but couldn’t so much as get to her knees.
Manon stalked to her, helping the girl to her feet, leaving a smear of blood on her forearm. Elide swayed, but Manon was looking at the old chain around her ankles.
With a swipe of her iron nails, she snapped through it.
She’d unlock the shackles later. “Now,” Manon said, tugging Elide into the hall.
There were more soldiers shouting from the way she’d come, and Asterin and Sorrel’s battle cries rang out down the stairs. But behind them, from the catacombs below …
More men—Valg—curious about the clamor leaking in from above.
Bringing Elide into the melee might very well kill her, but if the soldiers from the catacombs attacked from behind … Worse, if they brought one of their princes …
Regret. It had been regret she’d felt that night she’d killed the Crochan. Regret and guilt and shame, for acting on blind obedience, for being a coward when the Crochan had held her head high and spoken truth.
They have made you into monsters. Made, Manon. And we feel sorry for you.
It was regret that she’d felt when she heard Asterin’s tale. For not being worthy of trust.
And for what she had allowed to happen to those Yellowlegs.
She did not want to imagine what she might feel should she bring Elide to her death. Or worse.
Brutality. Discipline. Obedience.
It did not seem like a weakness to fight for those who could not defend themselves. Even if they weren’t true witches. Even if they meant nothing to her.
“We’re going to have to battle our way out,” Manon said to Elide.
But the girl was wide-eyed, gaping at the cell doorway.
Standing there, her dress flowing around her like liquid night, was Kaltain.
82 
Elide stared at the dark-haired young woman.
And Kaltain stared back.
Manon let out a warning snarl. “Unless you want to die, get the rutting hell out of the way.”
Kaltain, her hair unbound, her face pale and gaunt, said, “They are coming now. To find out why she has not yet arrived.”
Manon’s bloodied hand was sticky and damp as it clamped around Elide’s arm and tugged her toward the door. The single step, the freedom of movement without that chain … Elide almost sobbed.
Until she heard the fighting ahead. Behind them, from the dark stairwell at the other end of the hall, the rushing feet of more men approached from far below.
Kaltain stepped aside as Manon pushed past.
“Wait,” Kaltain said. “They will turn this Keep upside down looking for you. Even if you get airborne, they will send out riders after you and use your own people against you, Blackbeak.”
Manon dropped Elide’s arm. Elide hardly dared to breathe as the witch said, “How long has it been since you destroyed the demon inside that collar, Kaltain?”
A low, broken laugh. “A while.”
“Does the duke know?”
“My dark liege sees what he wants to see.” She shifted her eyes to Elide. Exhaustion, emptiness, sorrow, and rage danced there together. “Remove your robe and give it to me.”
Elide backed up a step. “What?”
Manon looked between them. “You can’t trick them.”
“They see what they want to see,” Kaltain said again.
The men closing in on either side grew nearer with every uneven heartbeat. “This is insane,” Elide breathed. “It’ll never work.”
“Take off your robe and give it to the lady,” Manon ordered. “Do it now.”
No room for disobedience. So Elide listened, blushing at her own nakedness, trying to cover herself.
Kaltain merely let her black dress slip from her shoulders. It rippled on the ground.
Her body—what they had done to her body, the bruises on her, the thinness …
Kaltain wrapped herself in the robe, her face empty again.
Elide slid on the gown, its fabric horribly cold when it should have been warm.
Kaltain knelt before one of the dead guards—oh, gods, those were corpses lying there—and ran her hand over the hole in the guard’s neck. She smeared and flicked blood over her face, her neck, her arms, the robe. She ran it through her hair, tugging it forward, hiding her face until bits of blood were all that could be seen, folding her shoulders inward, until—
Until Kaltain looked like Elide.
You could be sisters, Vernon had said. Now they could be twins.
“Please—come with us,” Elide whispered.
Kaltain laughed quietly. “Dagger, Blackbeak.”
Manon pulled out a dagger.
Kaltain sliced it deep into the hideous scarred lump in her arm. “In your pocket, girl,” Kaltain said to her. Elide reached into the dress and pulled out a scrap of dark fabric, frayed and ripped at the edges, as if it had been torn from something.
Elide held it toward the lady as Kaltain reached into her arm, no expression of pain on that beautiful, bloodied face, and pulled out a glimmering sliver of dark stone.
Kaltain’s red blood dripped off it. Carefully, the lady set it onto the scrap of fabric Elide held out, and folded Elide’s fingers around it.
A dull, strange thudding pounded through Elide as she grasped the shard.
“What is that?” Manon asked, sniffing subtly.
Kaltain just squeezed Elide’s fingers. “You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me—to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon.”
Kaltain stepped away.
“We can take you with us,” Elide tried again.
A small, hateful smile. “I have no interest in living. Not after what they did. I don’t think my body could survive without their power.” Kaltain huffed a laugh. “I shall enjoy this, I think.”
Manon tugged Elide to her side. “They’ll notice you without the chains—”
“They’ll be dead before they do,” Kaltain said. “I suggest you run.”
Manon didn’t ask questions, and Elide didn’t have time to say thank you before the witch grabbed her and they ran.
She was a wolf.
She was death, devourer of worlds.
The guards found her curled up in the cell, shuddering at the carnage. They didn’t ask questions, didn’t look twice at her face before they hauled her down the hall and into the catacombs.
Such screaming here. Such terror and despair. But the horrors under the other mountains were worse. So much worse. Too bad she would not have the opportunity to also spare them, slaughter them.
She was a void, empty without that sliver of power that built and ate and tore apart worlds inside of her.
His precious gift, his key, he had called her. A living gate, he promised. Soon, he had said he would add the other. And then find the third.
So that the king inside him might rule again.
They led her into a chamber with a table in the center. A white sheet covered it, and men watched as they shoved her onto the table—the altar. They chained her down.