“Eat it,” she said, shaking the freezing meat at Abraxos, who was now lying on his belly in the meadow, huffing at the first grasses and flowers to poke through the melting ice. “It’s your reward,” she said through her teeth. “You earned it.”
Abraxos sniffed at a cluster of purple flowers, then flicked his eyes to her. No meat, he seemed to say.
“It’s good for you,” she said, and he went right back to sniffing the violets or whatever they were. If a plant wasn’t good for poisoning or healing or keeping her alive if she were starving, she’d never bothered to learn its name—especially not wildflowers.
She tossed the leg right in front of his massive mouth and tucked her hands into the folds of her red cloak. He snuffed at it, his new iron teeth glinting in the radiant light, then stretched out one massive, claw-tipped wing and—
Shoved it aside.
Manon rubbed her eyes. “Is it not fresh enough?”
He moved to sniff some white-and-yellow flowers.
A nightmare. This was a nightmare. “You can’t really like flowers.”
Again those dark eyes shifted to her. Blinked once. I most certainly do, he seemed to say.
She splayed her arms. “You never even smelled a flower until yesterday. What’s wrong with the meat now?” He needed to eat tons and tons of meat to put on the muscle he was lacking.
When he went back to sniffing the flowers rather delicately—the insufferable, useless worm—she stalked to the leg of mutton and hauled it up. “If you won’t eat it,” she snarled at him, hoisting it up with both hands to her mouth and popping her iron teeth down, “then I will.”
Abraxos watched her with those bemused dark eyes as she bit into the icy, raw meat. And spat it everywhere.
“What in the Mother’s dark shadow—” She sniffed at the meat. It wasn’t rancid, but like the men here, it tasted off. The sheep were raised inside the mountain, so maybe it was something in the water. As soon as she got back, she’d give the Thirteen the order not to touch the men—not until she knew what in hell was making them taste and smell that way.
Regardless, Abraxos had to eat, because he had to get strong—so she could be Wing Leader, so she could see the look on Iskra’s face when she ripped her apart at the War Games. And if this was the only way to get the worm to eat . . .
“Fine,” she said, chucking the leg away. “You want fresh meat?” She scanned the mountains towering around them, eyeing the gray stones. “Then we’re going to have to hunt.”
•
“You smell like shit and blood.” Her grandmother didn’t turn from her desk, and Manon didn’t flinch at the insult. She was covered in both, actually.
It was thanks to Abraxos, the flower-loving worm, who had just watched while she scaled one of the nearby cliffs and brought down a braying mountain goat for him. “Brought down” was a more elegant phrase than what had actually happened: she half froze to death as she waited for some goats to pass on their treacherous climb, and then, when she’d finally ambushed one, she’d not only rolled in its dung as she’d grappled with it but it had also dumped a fresh load on her, right before it went tumbling out of her arms and broke its skull on the rocks below.
It had nearly taken her with it, but she’d managed to grab on to a dead root. Abraxos was still lying on his belly, sniffing the wildflowers, when she returned with the dead goat in her arms, its blood now iced on her cloak and tunic.
He’d devoured the goat in two bites, then gone back to enjoying the wildflowers. At least he’d eaten. Getting him back to the Northern Fang, however, was a trial in itself. He hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t fled, but he’d pulled on the chains, shaking his head again and again as they neared the cavernous back door where the sounds of the wyverns and men reached them. But he’d gone in—though he’d snapped and growled at the handlers who rushed out to retrieve him. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his reluctance—the way he’d looked at her with a mute plea. She didn’t pity him, because she pitied nothing, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“You summoned me,” said Manon, head high. “I did not want to keep you waiting.”
“You are keeping me waiting, Manon.” The witch turned, eyes full of death and promises of endless pain. “It has been weeks now, and you are not airborne with your Thirteen. The Yellowlegs have been flying as a host for three days. Three days, Manon. And you’re coddling your beast.”
Manon didn’t show one flicker of feeling. Apologizing would make it worse, as would excuses. “Give me orders, and they will be done.”
“I want you airborne by tomorrow evening. Don’t bother coming back if you aren’t.”
•
“I hate you,” Manon panted through her iron teeth as she and Abraxos finished their grueling trek to the top of the mountain peak. It had taken half a day to get here—and if this didn’t work, it would take until evening to get back to the Omega. To pack her belongings.
Abraxos was curled up like a cat on the narrow stretch of flat rock atop the mountain. “Willful, lazy worm.” He didn’t even blink at her.
Take the eastern side, the overseer had said as he’d helped her saddle up and set out from the back door of the Northern Fang before dawn. They used this peak to train the hatchling wyverns—and reluctant fliers. The eastern side, Manon saw as she peered over the lip she’d just climbed, was a smooth incline after a twenty-foot drop. Abraxos could take a running start off the edge, try to glide, and if he fell . . . Well, it would only be twenty feet and then wind-smooth rock to slide down for a ways. Slim possibility for death.
No, death lay on the western side. Frowning at Abraxos, who was licking his new iron claws, Manon crossed the plateau and, despite herself, winced at the blistering wind that shot up.
To the west was an endless plunge through nothing until the spiked, unforgiving rocks below. It would take a crew of men to scrape off her remains. Eastern side it was.
She checked her tight braid and flicked her clear inner lid into place. “Let’s go.”
Abraxos lifted his massive head as if to say, We just got here.
She pointed to the eastern edge. “Flying. Now.”
He huffed, curling his back to her, the leather saddle gleaming. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she snapped, stalking around to get in his face. She pointed to the edge again. “We’re flying, you rutting coward.”
He tucked his head toward his belly, his tail wrapping around him. He was pretending he couldn’t hear her.
She knew it might cost her life, but she gripped his nostrils—hard enough to make his eyes fly open. “Your wings are functional. The humans said they were. So you can fly, and you are going to fly, because I say so. I’ve been fetching your useless carcass mountain goats by the herd, and if you humiliate me, I’ll use your hide for a new leather coat.” She rustled her torn and stained crimson cloak. “This is ruined, thanks to your goats.”
He shifted his head away, and she let go—because it was either let go or be tossed into the air. He set down his head and closed his eyes.
This was punishment, somehow. For what, she didn’t know. Perhaps her own stupidity in picking a bait beast for a mount.
She hissed to herself, eyeing the saddle on his back. Even with a running jump she couldn’t make it. But she needed to be in that saddle and airborne, or else . . . Or else the Thirteen would be broken apart by her grandmother.
Abraxos continued to lie in the sun, vain and indulgent as a cat. “Warrior heart indeed.”
She eyed the eastern edge, the saddle, the dangling reins. He’d bucked and thrashed the first time they’d shoved the bit into his mouth, but he’d gotten used to it now—at least, enough so that he’d tried to take off the head of only one handler today.
The sun was still rising high, but soon it
would start its descent, and then she’d be completely and perfectly ruined. Like hell she would be.
“You had this coming” was all the warning she gave him before she took a running leap, landing on his haunch and then scrambling, so fast he had barely lifted his head by the time she scuttled across his scaly back and into the saddle.
He jerked upright, stiff as a board as she shoved her booted feet into the stirrups and gripped the reins. “We’re flying—now.” She dug her heels into his sides.
Perhaps the spurs hurt or surprised him, because Abraxos bucked—bucked and roared. She yanked on the reins as hard as she could. “Enough,” she barked, hauling with one arm to guide him over the eastern edge. “Enough, Abraxos.”
He was still thrashing, and she clenched her thighs as hard as she could to stay in the saddle, leaning into each movement. When the bucking didn’t dislodge her, he lifted his wings, as if he would fling her off. “Don’t you dare,” she growled, but he was still twisting and bellowing.
“Stop it.” Her brain rattled in her skull and her teeth clacked together so hard she had to retract her fangs so they didn’t punch right through her skin.
But Abraxos kept bucking, wild and frantic. Not toward the eastern edge, but away—toward the lip of the western plunge.
“Abraxos, stop.” He was going to go right over. And then they’d splatter on the stones.
He was so panicked, so enraged that her voice was no more than a crackling leaf on the wind. The western drop loomed to her right, then her left, flashing beneath the leathery, mottled wings as they flapped and snapped. Under Abraxos’s massive talons, stones hissed and crumbled as he neared the edge.
“Abraxos—” But then his leg slid off the cliff, and Manon’s world tilted down—down, down, as he lost his grip and they plummeted into open air.
32
Manon didn’t have time to contemplate her oncoming death.
She was too busy holding on to the saddle, the world flipping and spinning, the wind shrieking, or perhaps that was Abraxos, as they plunged down the cliff face.
Her muscles locked and trembled, but she kept her arms laced through the straps, the only thing keeping her from death, even as it swiftly approached with every rotation of Abraxos’s ruined body.
The trees below took shape, as did the spiked, wind-carved rocks between them. Faster and faster, the cliff wall a blur of gray and white.
Maybe his body would take the impact and she could walk away.
Maybe all those rocks would go right through them both.
Maybe he’d flip and she would land on the rocks first.
She hoped it would happen too quickly for her to recognize just how she was dying, to know what part of her broke first. They hurtled down. There was a little river running through the spiked rocks.
Wind slammed into them from below, a draft that rocked Abraxos upright, but they were still rotating, still plunging.
“Open your wings!” she screamed over the wind, over her thundering heart. They stayed shut.
“Open them and pull up!” she bellowed, just as the rapids on the stream began to appear, just as she understood that she hated the oncoming embrace of the Darkness, and that there was nothing to do to stop this splattering, this doom from—
She could see the pine cones on the trees. “Open them!” A last, rallying war cry against the Darkness.
A war cry that was answered with a piercing shriek as Abraxos flung open his wings, caught the updraft, and sent them soaring away from the ground.
Manon’s stomach went from her throat right out her ass, but they were swooping upward, and his wings were pumping, each boom the most beautiful sound she had ever heard in her long, miserable life.
Higher he flapped, legs tucked beneath him. Manon crouched in her saddle, clinging to his warm hide as he took them up the face of the neighboring mountain. Its peaks rose to meet them like lifted hands, but he wobbled past, beating hard. Manon lifted and fell with him, not taking one breath as they cleared the highest snow-capped peak and Abraxos, in joy or rage or for the hell of it, gripped clawfuls of snow and ice and set them scattering behind, the sun lighting them up like a trail of stars.
The sun was blinding as they hit the open sky, and there was nothing around them but clouds as massive as the mountains far below, castles and temples of white and purple and blue.
And the cry that Abraxos let out as they entered that hall of clouds, as he leveled out and caught a lightning-fast current carving a pathway through it . . .
She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.
Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.
They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.
And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart.
•
The gray skies were just filling with light as the sun slipped over the horizon at their backs. Bundled in her red cloak, Manon sat atop Abraxos, her vision slightly cloudy from the inner lid she’d already blinked into place. Still, she surveyed her Thirteen, astride their wyverns at the mouth of the canyon run.
They’d assembled in two rows of six, Asterin and her pale blue mount directly behind Manon, leading the first row, Sorrel claiming center in the second. They were all awake and alert—and slightly befuddled. Abraxos’s damaged wings weren’t ready to make the narrow Crossing, not yet. So they’d met at the back door, where they’d walked their wyverns the two miles to the first canyon run—walked like a proper unit, in rank and quietly.
The mouth of the canyon was wide enough for Abraxos to leap into an easy glide. Takeoffs were a problem thanks to the shredded muscle and weak spots in his wings—areas that had taken too many beatings and might never be at their full strength.
But she did not explain that to her Thirteen, because it was none of their damn business and it did not impact them.
“Every morning, from today until the War Games,” Manon said, staring into the labyrinth of ravines and archways that made up the wind-carved canyon, “we will meet here, and until breakfast, we are going to train. Then we’ll have our afternoon training with the other covens. Tell no one.” She’d just have to leave early so she could get Abraxos airborne while the others made the Crossing.
“I want us in close quarters. I don’t care what the men say about keeping the mounts separate. Let the wyverns sort out their dominance, let them squabble, but they are going to fly, tight as armor. There will be no gaps and no room for attitude or territorial horseshit. We fly this canyon together, or we don’t fly at all.”
She looked each of the witches and their mounts in the eye. Abraxos, to her surprise, did the same. What he lacked in size he made up for in sheer will, speed, and dexterity. He sensed currents even before Manon did. “When we are done, if we survive, we’ll meet on the other side and do it again. Until it’s perfect. Your beasts will learn to trust each other and follow orders.” The wind kissed her cheeks. “Don’t fall behind,” she said, and Abraxos plunged into the canyon.
33
In the week that followed, there were no more bodies, and certainly no hint of the creature that had drained those people, though Celaena often found herself thinking over the details as Rowan made her light candle after candle at the ruins of the Sun Goddess’s temple. Now that she could shift on command, this was her new task: to light a candle without destroying everything in sight. She failed every
time, singeing her cloak, cracking the ruins, incinerating trees as her magic tore out of her. But Rowan had a bottomless supply of candles, so she spent her days staring at them until her eyes crossed. She could sweat for hours and focus on honing her anger and all that nonsense but not get as much as a tendril of smoke. The only thing that came of it was an unending appetite: Celaena ate whatever and whenever she could, thanks to her magic gobbling so much of her energy.
The rain returned, and with it, the crowd for Emrys’s stories. Celaena always listened while she washed the night’s dishes, to tales of shield maidens and enchanted animals and cunning sorcerers, all the legends of Wendlyn. Rowan still appeared in his hawk form—and there were some nights when she even sat beside the back door, and Rowan sidled a bit closer, too.
Celaena was standing at the sink, back throbbing and hunger gnawing at her belly as she scrubbed the last of the copper pots while Emrys finished narrating the story of a clever wolf and a magical fire-bird. There was a pause, and then came the usual requests for the same old stories. Celaena didn’t acknowledge the heads that turned in her direction as she asked from the sink, “Do you know any stories about Queen Maeve?”
Dead. Silence. Emrys’s eyes widened before he smiled faintly and said, “Lots. Which one would you like to hear?”
“The earliest ones that you know. All of them.” If she was going to face her aunt again, perhaps she should start learning as much as she could. Emrys might know stories that hadn’t reached the shores of her own lands. If the stories about the skinwalkers had been true, if the immortal stags were real . . . perhaps she could glean something vital here.
There were some nervous glances, but at last Emrys said, “Then I shall start at the beginning.”
Celaena nodded and moved to sit in her usual chair, propped against the back door near the sharp-eyed hawk. Rowan clicked his beak, but she didn’t dare look over her shoulder at him. Instead, she dug into an entire loaf of bread.