Elide gazed across the flickering lights of the war camp, and a chill went down her spine. An army to crush whatever resistance Finnula had once whispered about during the long nights they were locked in that tower in Perranth. Perhaps the white-haired Wing Leader herself would lead that army, on the wyvern with shimmering wings.
A fierce, cool wind blew into the aerie, and Elide leaned into it, gulping it down as if it were fresh water. There had been so many nights in Perranth when only the wailing wind had kept her company. When she could have sworn it sang ancient songs to lull her into sleep. Here … here the wind was a colder, sleeker thing—serpentine, almost. Entertaining such fanciful things will only distract you, Finnula would have chided. She wished her nurse were here.
But wishing had done her no good these past ten years, and Elide, Lady of Perranth, had no one coming for her.
Soon, she reassured herself—soon the next caravan of supplies would crawl up the mountain road, and when it went back down, Elide would be stowed away in one of the wagons, free at long last. And then she would run somewhere far, far away, where they’d never heard of Terrasen or Adarlan, and leave these people to their miserable continent. A few weeks—then she might stand a chance of escaping.
If she survived until then. If Vernon didn’t decide he truly did have some wicked purpose in dragging her here. If she didn’t wind up with those poor people, caged inside the surrounding mountains, screaming for salvation every night. She’d overheard the other servants whisper about the dark, fell things that went on under those mountains: people being splayed open on black stone altars and then forged into something new, something other. For what wretched purpose, Elide had not yet learned, and mercifully, beyond the screaming, she’d never encountered whatever was being broken and pieced together beneath the earth. The witches were bad enough.
Elide shuddered as she took another step into the vast chamber. The crunching of hay under her too-small shoes and the clank of her chains were the only sounds. “W-Wing Lea—”
A roar blasted through the air, the stones, the floor, so loud that her head swam and she cried out. Tumbling back, her chains tangled as she slipped on the hay.
Hard, iron-tipped hands dug into her shoulders and kept her upright.
“If you are not a spy,” a wicked voice purred in her ear, “then why are you here, Elide Lochan?”
Elide wasn’t faking it when her hand shook as she held out the letter, not daring to move.
The Wing Leader stepped around her, circling Elide like prey, her long white braid stark against her leather flying gear.
The details hit Elide like stones: eyes like burnt gold; a face so impossibly beautiful that Elide was struck dumb by it; a lean, honed body; and a steady, fluid grace in every movement, every breath, that suggested the Wing Leader could easily use the assortment of blades on her. Human only in shape—immortal and predatory in every other sense.
Fortunately, the Wing Leader was alone. Unfortunately, those gold eyes held nothing but death.
Elide said, “Th-this came for you.” The stammer—that was faked. People usually couldn’t wait to get away when she stammered and stuttered. Though she doubted the people who ran this place would care about the stammer if they decided to have some fun with a daughter of Terrasen. If Vernon handed her over.
The Wing Leader held Elide’s gaze as she took the letter.
“I’m surprised the seal isn’t broken. Though if you were a good spy, you would know how to do it without breaking the wax.”
“If I were a good spy,” Elide breathed, “I could also read.”
A bit of truth to temper the witch’s distrust.
The witch blinked, and then sniffed, as if trying to detect a lie. “You speak well for a mortal, and your uncle is a lord. Yet you cannot read?”
Elide nodded. More than the leg, more than the drudgery, it was that miserable shortcoming that hounded her. Her nurse, Finnula, couldn’t read—but Finnula had been the one to teach her how to take note of things, to listen, and to think. During the long days when they’d had nothing to do but needlepoint, her nurse had taught her to mark the little details—each stitch—while also never losing sight of the larger image. There will come a day when I am gone, Elide, and you will need to have every weapon in your arsenal sharp and ready to strike.
Neither of them had thought that Elide might be the one who left first. But she would not look back, not even for Finnula, once she ran. And when she found that new life, that new place … she would never gaze northward, to Terrasen, and wonder, either.
She kept her eyes on the ground. “I—I know basic letters, but my lessons stopped when I was eight.”
“At your uncle’s behest, I assume.” The witch paused, rotating the envelope and showing the jumble of letters to her, tapping on them with an iron nail. “This says ‘Manon Blackbeak.’ You see anything like this again, bring it to me.”
Elide bowed her head. Meek, submissive—just the way these witches liked their humans. “Of-of course.”
“And why don’t you stop pretending to be a stammering, cowering wretch while you’re at it.”
Elide kept her head bent low enough that her hair hopefully covered any glimmer of surprise. “I’ve tried to be pleasing—”
“I smelled your human fingers all over my map. It was careful, cunning work, not to put one thing out of order, not to touch anything but the map … Thinking of escaping after all?”
“Of course not, mistress.” Oh, gods. She was so, so dead.
“Look at me.”
Elide obeyed. The witch hissed, and Elide flinched as she shoved Elide’s hair out of her eyes. A few strands fell to the ground, sliced off by the iron nails. “I don’t know what game you’re playing—if you’re a spy, if you’re a thief, if you’re just looking out for yourself. But do not pretend that you are some meek, pathetic little girl when I can see that vicious mind working behind your eyes.”
Elide didn’t dare drop the mask.
“Was it your mother or father who was related to Vernon?”
Strange question—but Elide had known for a while she would do anything, say anything, to stay alive and unharmed. “My father was Vernon’s elder brother,” she said.
“And where did your mother come from?”
She didn’t give that old grief an inch of room in her heart. “She was low-born. A laundress.”
“Where did she come from?”
Why did it matter? The golden eyes were fixed on her, unyielding. “Her family was originally from Rosamel, in the northwest of Terrasen.”
“I know where it is.” Elide kept her shoulders bowed, waiting. “Get out.”
Hiding her relief, Elide opened her mouth to make her good-byes, when another roar set the stones vibrating. She couldn’t conceal her flinch.
“It’s just Abraxos,” Manon said, a hint of a smile forming on her cruel mouth, a bit of light gleaming in those golden eyes. Her mount must make her happy, then—if witches could be happy. “He’s hungry.”
Elide’s mouth went dry.
At the sound of his name, a massive triangular head, scarred badly around one eye, poked into the aerie.
Elide’s knees wobbled, but the witch went right up to the beast and placed her iron-tipped hands on his snout. “You swine,” the witch said. “You need the whole mountain to know you’re hungry?”
The wyvern huffed into her hands, his giant teeth—oh, gods, some of them were iron—so close to Manon’s arms. One bite, and the Wing Leader would be dead. One bite, and yet—