“Well, Murtaugh and Ren had similar experiences.” So then the general launched into another tale: like Aedion, Ren and Murtaugh had experienced a frenzy of local animals and twin waves of something the day magic had disappeared. But they’d been in the southern part of their continent, having just arrived in Skull’s Bay.
It wasn’t until six months ago, when they’d been lured into the city by Archer Finn’s lies about Aelin’s reemergence, that they’d started considering magic—contemplating ways to break the king’s power for their queen. After comparing notes with the other rebels in Rifthold, they realized that others had experienced similar phenomena. Wanting to get a full account, they’d found a merchant from the Deserted Peninsula who was willing to talk—a man from Xandria who was surprisingly honest, despite the business he’d built on contraband items.
I stole an Asterion mare from the Lord of Xandria.
Of course Celaena had been to the Deserted Peninsula. And sought out trouble. Despite the ache in his chest, Chaol smiled at the memory as Aedion recalled Murtaugh’s report of the merchant’s account.
Not two waves when magic vanished in the desert, but three.
The first swept down from the north. The merchant had been with the Lord of Xandria in his fortress high above the city and had seen a faint tremor that made the red sand dance. The second came from the southwest, barreling right toward them like a sandstorm. The final pulse came from the same inland source Aedion remembered. Seconds later, magic was gone, and people were screaming in the streets, and the Lord of Xandria got the order, a week later, to put down all the known or registered magic-wielders in his city. Then the screaming had become different.
Aedion gave him a sly grin as he finished. “But Murtaugh figured out more. We’re meeting in three days. He can tell you his theories then.”
Chaol started from his chair. “That’s it? That’s all you know—what you’ve been lording over me these past few weeks?”
“There’s still more for you to tell me, so why should I tell you everything?”
“I’ve told you vital, world-changing information,” Chaol said through his teeth. “You’ve just told me stories.”
Aedion’s eyes took on a lethal glint. “You’ll want to hear what Ren and Murtaugh have to say.” Chaol didn’t feel like waiting so long to hear it, but there were two state lunches and one formal dinner before then, and he was expected to attend all of them. And present the king with his defense plans for all the events as well.
After a moment, Aedion said, “How do you stand working for him? How do you pretend you don’t know what that bastard is doing, what he’s done to innocent people, to the woman you claim to love?”
“I’m doing what I have to do.” He didn’t think Aedion would understand, anyway.
“Tell me why the Captain of the Guard, a Lord of Adarlan, is helping his enemy. That’s all the information I want from you today.”
Chaol wanted to say that, given how much he’d already told him, he didn’t have to offer a damn thing. Instead he said, “I grew up being told we were bringing peace and civilization to the continent. What I’ve seen recently has made me realize how much of it is a lie.”
“You knew about the labor camps, though. About the massacres.”
“It is easy to be lied to when you do not know any of those people firsthand.” But Celaena with her scars, and Nehemia with her people butchered . . . “It’s easy to believe when your king tells you that the people in Endovier deserve to be there because they’re criminals or rebels who tried to slaughter innocent Adarlanian families.”
“And how many of your countrymen would stand against your king if they, too, learned the truth? If they stopped to consider what it would be like if it were their family, their village, being enslaved or murdered? How many would stand if they knew what power their prince possessed—if their prince rose up to fight with us?”
Chaol didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. As for Dorian . . . he could not ask that of his friend. Could not expect it. His goal was keeping Dorian safe. Even if it would cost him their friendship, he didn’t want Dorian involved. Ever.
•
The past week had been terrifying and wonderful for Dorian.
Terrifying because two more people knew his secret, and because he walked such a fine line when it came to controlling his magic, which seemed more volatile with each passing day.
Wonderful because every afternoon, he visited the forgotten workroom Sorscha had discovered tucked in a lower level of the catacombs where no one would find them. She brought books from the gods knew where, herbs and plants and salts and powders, and every day, they researched and trained and pondered.
There weren’t many books about dampening a power like his—many had been burned, she’d told him. But she looked at the magic like a disease: if she could find the right channels to block, she could keep it contained. And if not, she always said, they could resort to drugging him, just enough to even out his moods. She didn’t like the idea of it, and neither did he, though it was a comfort to know the option was there.
An hour each day was all they could manage together. For that hour, regardless of the laws they were breaking, Dorian felt like himself again. Not twisted and reeling and stumbling through the dark, but grounded. Calm. No matter what he told Sorscha, she never judged or betrayed him. Chaol had been that person once. Yet now, when it came to his magic, he could still see fear and a hint of disgust in Chaol’s eyes.
“Did you know,” Sorscha said from her spot across the worktable, “that before magic vanished, they had to find special ways of subduing gifted prisoners?”
Dorian looked up from his book, a useless tome on garden remedies. Before magic vanished . . . at the hand of his father and his Wyrdkeys. His stomach turned. “Because they’d use their magic to break out of prison?”
Sorscha studied the book again. “That’s why a lot of the old prisons use solid iron—it’s immune to magic.”
“I know,” he said, and she raised a brow. She was slowly starting to come alive around him—though he’d also learned to read her subtle expressions better. “Back when my power first appeared, I tried using it on an iron door, and . . . it didn’t go well.”
“Hmm.” Sorscha chewed on her lip. It was surprisingly distracting. “But iron’s in your blood, so how does that work?”
“I think it was the gods’ way of keeping us from growing too powerful: if we keep contact with the magic, if it’s flowing through us for too long, we faint. Or worse.”
“I wonder what would happen if we increased the iron in your diet, perhaps adding a large amount of treacle to your food. We give it to anemic patients, but if we gave you a highly concentrated dose . . . it would taste awful, and could be dangerous, but—”
“But perhaps if it’s in my body, then when the magic rises up . . .” He grimaced. He might have balked at the memory of the agony when he’d tried to seal that iron door, but . . . He couldn’t bring himself to say no to her. “Do you have any here? Just something to add to a drink?”
She didn’t, but she got some. And within a quarter of an hour, Dorian said a prayer to Silba and swallowed it, cringing at the obscene sweetness. Nothing.
Sorscha’s eyes darted from his own to the pocket watch in her hand. Counting. Waiting to see if there was an adverse reaction. A minute passed. And then ten. Dorian had to go soon, and so did she, but after a while, Sorscha quietly said, “Try it. Try summoning it. The iron should be in your blood now.” He shut his eyes, and she added, “It reacts when you’re upset—angry or scared or sad. Think about something that makes you feel that way.”
She was risking her position, her life, everything for this. For him, the son of the man who had ordered his army to destroy her village, then slaughter her family with the other unwanted immigrants squatting in Rifthold
. He didn’t deserve it.
He breathed in. Out. She also didn’t deserve the world of trouble he was bringing down upon her—or would continue to bring to her door every time he came here. He knew when women liked him, and he’d known from the first moment he’d seen her that she found him attractive. He’d hoped that opinion hadn’t changed for the worse, but now . . . Think of what upsets you.
Everything upset him. It upset him that she was risking her life, that he had no choice but to endanger her. Even if he took that final step toward her, even if he took her into his bed like he so badly wanted to, he was still . . . the Crown Prince. You will always be my enemy, Celaena had once said.
There was no escaping his crown. Or his father, who would behead Sorscha, burn her, and scatter her ashes to the wind if he found out she’d helped him. His father, whom his friends were now working to destroy. They had lied to him and ignored him for that cause. Because he was a danger, to them, to Sorscha, and—
Roaring pain surged from his core and up his throat, and he gagged. There was another wave, and a cool breeze tried to kiss his face, but it vanished like mist under the sun as the pain trembled through him. He leaned forward, squeezing his eyes shut as the agony and then the nausea went through him again. And again.
But then it was quiet. Dorian opened his eyes to find Sorscha, clever, steady, wonderful Sorscha, standing there, biting her lip. She took one step—toward him, not away, for once. “Did it—”
Dorian was on his feet so fast the chair rocked behind him, and had her face between his hands a heartbeat after that. “Yes,” he breathed, and kissed her. It was fast—but her face was flushed, and her eyes wide as he pulled back. His own eyes were wide, gods be damned, and he was still rubbing his thumb against her soft cheek. Still contemplating going back for more, because that hadn’t been nearly enough.
But she pulled away, returning to her work. As if—as if it hadn’t been anything, other than an embarrassment. “Tomorrow?” she murmured. She wouldn’t look at him.
He could hardly muster the words to tell her yes as he staggered out. She’d looked so surprised, and if he didn’t get out, he was likely to kiss her again.
But maybe she didn’t want to be kissed.
27
Standing atop a viewing platform on the side of the Omega, Manon watched the first Yellowlegs coven of the day take the Crossing. The plunge down followed by the violent sweep up was stunning, even when it was the Yellowlegs riders astride the wind.
Leading them along the sheer face of the Northern Fang was Iskra. Her bull, a massive beast named Fendir, was a force of nature in himself. Though smaller than Titus, he was twice as nasty.
“They suit each other,” Asterin said from beside Manon. The rest of the Thirteen were in the sparring room, instructing the other covens in hand-to-hand combat. Faline and Fallon, the green-eyed demon-twins, were undoubtedly taking some pleasure from torturing the newest sentinels. They thrived on that sort of thing.
Iskra and Fendir swept over the uppermost peak of the Northern Fang and vanished into the clouds, the other twelve riders trailing in tight formation. The cold wind whipped at Manon’s face, beckoning to her. She was on her way to the caverns to see Abraxos, but she’d wanted to monitor the Yellowlegs Crossing first. Just to make sure they were truly gone for the next three hours.
She looked across the span of the bridge to the Fang and its giant entryway. Screeching and roaring echoed from it, reverberating across the mountains. “I want you to keep the Thirteen occupied for the rest of the day,” Manon said.
As Second, Asterin was the only one of the Thirteen with any sort of right to question her, and even then, it was only in very limited circumstances. “You’re going to train with him?” Manon nodded. “Your grandmother said she’d gut me if I let you out of my sight again.” Golden hair twining about her in the wind, Asterin’s face, with its now-crooked nose, was wary.
“You’re going to have to decide,” Manon said, not bothering to bare her iron teeth. “Are you her spy or my Second?”
No hint of pain or fear or betrayal. Just a slight narrowing of her eyes. “I serve you.”
“She’s your Matron.”
“I serve you.”
For a heartbeat, Manon wondered when she’d ever earned that kind of loyalty. They weren’t friends—at least, not in the way that humans seemed to be friends. Every Blackbeak already owed her their loyalty and obedience as the heir. But this . . .
Manon had never explained herself, her plans, or her intentions to anyone except her grandmother. But she found herself saying to her Second, “I’m still going to be Wing Leader.”
Asterin smiled, her iron teeth like quicksilver in the morning sun. “We know.”
Manon lifted her chin. “I want the Thirteen adding tumbling to their hand-to-hand training. And when you can handle your wyvern on your own, I want you in the skies when the Yellowlegs are aloft. I want to know where they fly, how they fly, and what they do.”
Asterin nodded. “I already have the Shadows watching the Yellowlegs in the halls,” she said, a glimmer of rage and bloodthirst in those gold-flecked black eyes. When Manon raised a brow, Asterin said, “You didn’t think I’d let Iskra off so easily, did you?”
Manon could still feel the iron-tipped fingers digging into her back, shoving her into the pit. Her ankle was sore and stiff from the fall, her ribs bruised from the beating she’d taken from Titus’s tail. “Keep them in line. Unless you want your nose broken a second time.”
Asterin flashed a grin. “We don’t move without your command, Lady.”
•
Manon didn’t want the overseer in the pen. Or his three handlers, all bearing spears and whips. She didn’t want any of them for three reasons.
The first was that she wanted to be alone with Abraxos, who was crouched against the back wall, waiting and watching.
The second was that the human smell of them, the beckoning warmth of the blood pulsing in their necks, was distracting. The stench of their fear was distracting. She’d debated for a good minute whether it would be worth it to gut one of them just to see what the others would do. Already, men were going missing from the Fang—men who were rumored to have crossed the bridge to the Omega and never returned. Manon hadn’t killed any of the men here yet, but every minute alone with them tempted her to play.
And the third reason she resented their presence was that Abraxos loathed them, with their whips and spears and chains and their hulking presence. The wyvern wouldn’t move from his spot against the wall no matter how viciously they cracked their whips. He hated whips—not just feared, but actually hated. The sound alone made him cringe and bare his teeth.
They’d been in the pen for ten minutes, attempting to get close enough to get him chained down and saddled. If it didn’t happen soon, she’d have to go back to the Omega before the Yellowlegs returned.
“He’s never taken a saddle,” the overseer said to her. “Probably won’t.” She heard the unspoken words. I’m not going to risk my men getting it on him. You’re just being proud. Pick another mount like a good girl.
Manon flashed her iron teeth at the overseer, her upper lip pulling back just enough to warn him. He backed up a step, whip drooping. Abraxos’s mutilated tail slashed across the ground, his eyes never leaving the three men trying to force him into submission.
One of them cracked the whip, so close to Abraxos that he flinched away. Another snapped it near his tail—twice. Then Abraxos lunged, with both neck and tail. The three handlers scrambled, barely out of reach of his snapping teeth. Enough.
“Your men have cowards’ hearts,” she said, giving the overseer a withering look as she stalked across the dirt floor.
The overseer grabbed for her, but she slashed with iron-tipped fingers and sliced his hand open. He cursed, but Mano
n kept walking, licking his blood off her nails. She almost spat it out.
Vile. The blood tasted rotten, as if it had curdled or festered inside a corpse for days. She glanced at the blood on the rest of her hand. It was too dark for human blood. If witches had indeed been killing these men, why had no one reported this? She bit down the questions. She would think about it another time. Maybe drag the overseer into a forgotten corner and open him up to see what was decaying inside him.
But right now . . . The men had gone quiet. Each step brought her closer to Abraxos. A line had been marked in the dirt where the safety of the chains ended. Manon took three steps beyond it, one for each face of their Goddess: Maiden. Mother. Crone.
Abraxos crouched, the powerful muscles of his body tense, ready to spring.
“You know who I am,” Manon said, gazing into those endless black eyes, not giving one inch to fear or doubt. “I am Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Clan, and you are mine. Do you understand?”
One of the men snorted, and Manon might have whirled to tear out his tongue right there, but Abraxos . . . Abraxos lowered his head ever so slightly. As if he understood.
“You are Abraxos,” Manon said to him, a chill slithering down her neck. “I gave you that name because he is the Great Beast, the serpent who wrapped the world in his coils, and who will devour it at the very end when the Three-Faced Goddess bids him to. You are Abraxos,” she repeated, “and you are mine.”
A blink, then another. Abraxos took a step toward her. Leather groaned as someone tightened their grip on a coiled whip. But Manon held fast, lifting one hand toward her wyvern. “Abraxos.”
The mighty head came toward her, those eyes pools of liquid night meeting her own. Her hand was still extended, tipped in iron and stained with blood. He pressed his snout into her palm and huffed.
His gray hide was warm and surprisingly soft—thick but supple, like worn leather. Up close, the variation in coloring was striking—not just gray, but dark green, brown, black. It was marred all over by thick scars, so many that they could have been the stripes of a jungle cat. Abraxos’s teeth, yellow and cracked, gleamed in the torchlight. Some were missing, but those that remained were as long as a finger and twice as thick. His hot breath reeked, either from his diet or rotting teeth.