Empire of Storms

  Erawan chuckled. “I’m surprised you tried to save him first. Given what he did to you at Endovier. My prince could scarcely stand to be inside his mind, it was already so vile. Do you find pleasure in deciding who shall be saved and who is beyond it? So easy, to become a little, burning god.”

  Nausea, true and cold, struck her.

  But it was Aedion who smirked, “I’d think you’d have better things to do, Erawan, than taunt us in the dead hours of the morning. Or is this all just a way to make yourself feel better about Dorian Havilliard slipping through your nets?”

  The darkness hissed. Aedion squeezed her shoulder in silent warning. End it now. Before Erawan might strike. Before he could sense that the Wyrdkey he sought was mere feet away.

  So Aelin inclined her head to the force staring at them through flesh and bone. “I suggest you rest and gather your strength, Erawan,” she purred, winking at him with every shred of bravado left in her. “You’re going to need it.”

  A low laugh as flames started to flicker in her eyes, heating her blood with welcome, delicious warmth. “Indeed. Especially considering the plans I have for the would-be King of Adarlan.”

  Aelin’s heart stopped.

  “Perhaps you should have told your lover to disguise himself before he snatched Dorian Havilliard out of Rifthold.” Those eyes narrowed to slits. “What was his name … Oh, yes,” Erawan breathed, as if someone had whispered it to him. “Prince Rowan Whitethorn of Doranelle. What a prize he shall be.”

  Aelin plummeted down into fire and darkness, refusing to yield one inch to the terror creeping over her.

  Erawan crooned, “My hunters are already tracking them. And I am going to hurt them, Aelin Galathynius. I am going to hone them into my most loyal generals. Starting with your Fae Prince—”

  A battering ram of hottest blue slammed into that pit in the man’s chest cavity, into those burning eyes.

  Aelin kept her magic focused on that chest, on the bones and flesh melting away, leaving only that heart of iron and Wyrdstone untouched. Her magic flowed around it like a stream surging past a rock, burning his body, that thing inside him—

  “Don’t bother saving any part of him,” Aedion snarled softly.

  Her magic roaring out of her, Aelin glanced over a shoulder. Lysandra was now in human form beside Aedion, teeth gritted at the overseer—

  The look cost her.

  She heard Aedion’s shout before she felt Erawan’s punch of darkness crash into her chest.

  Felt the air snap against her as she was hurled back, felt her body bark against the stone wall before the agony of that darkness really sank in. Her breath stalled, her blood halted—

  Get up get up get up.

  Erawan laughed softly as Aedion was instantly at her side, dragging her to her feet as her mind, her body tried to reorder itself—

  Aelin threw out her power again, letting Aedion believe she allowed him to hold her upright simply because she forgot to step away, not because her knees were shaking so violently she wasn’t sure she could stand.

  But her hand remained steady, at least, as she extended it.

  The temple around them shuddered at the force of the power she hurled out of herself. Dust and kernels of debris trickled from the ceiling high above; columns swayed like drunken friends.

  Aedion’s and Lysandra’s faces glowed in the blue light of her flame, their features wide-eyed but set with solid determination—and wrath. She leaned farther into Aedion as her magic roared from her, his grip tightening at her waist.

  Each heartbeat was a lifetime; each breath ached.

  But the overseer’s body at last ripped apart under her power—the dark shields around it yielding to her.

  And some small part of her realized that it only did so when Erawan deigned to leave, those amused, ember-like eyes guttering into nothing.

  When the man’s body was only ashes, Aelin reeled back her magic, cocooned her heart in it. She gripped Aedion’s arm, trying not to breathe too loudly, lest he hear the rasp of her battered lungs, realize how hard that single plume of darkness had hit.

  A heavy thud echoed through the silent temple as the lump of iron and Wyrdstone fell.

  That was the cost—Erawan’s plan. To realize that the only mercy she might offer her court would be death.

  If they were ever captured … he’d make her watch as they were all carved apart and filled with his power. Make her look into their faces when he’d finished, and find no trace of their souls within. Then he’d get to work on her.

  And Rowan and Dorian … If Erawan was hunting them at this very moment, if he learned that they were in Skull’s Bay, and how hard he’d actually struck her—

  Aelin’s flames banked to a quiet ember, and she finally found enough strength in her legs to push away from Aedion’s grip.

  “We need to be on that ship before dawn, Aelin,” he said. “If Erawan wasn’t bluffing…”

  Aelin only nodded. They had to get to Skull’s Bay as fast as the winds and currents could carry them.

  But as she turned toward the archway out of the temple, heading for the archives, she glanced at her chest—utterly untouched, though Erawan’s power had hit her like a hurled spear.

  He’d missed. By three inches, Erawan had narrowly missed hitting the amulet. And possibly sensing the Wyrdkey inside it.

  Yet the blow still reverberated against her bones in brutal ripples.

  A reminder that she might be the heir of fire … but Erawan was King of the Darkness.

  17

  Manon Blackbeak watched the black skies above Morath bleed to rotted gray on the last morning of Asterin’s life.

  She had not slept the entirety of the night; had not eaten or drank; had done nothing but sharpen Wind-Cleaver in the frigid openness of the wyvern’s aerie. Over and over, she had honed the blade, leaning against Abraxos’s warm side, until her fingers were too stiff with cold to grip sword or stone.

  Her grandmother had ordered Asterin locked in the deepest bowels of the Keep’s dungeon, so heavily guarded that escape was impossible. Or rescue.

  Manon had toyed with the idea for the first few hours after the sentence had been given. But to rescue Asterin would be to betray her Matron, her Clan. Her mistake—it was her own mistake, her own damned choices, that had led to this.

  And if she stepped out of line again, the rest of the Thirteen would be put down. She was lucky she hadn’t been stripped of her title as Wing Leader. At least she could still lead her people, protect them. Better than allowing someone like Iskra to take command.

  The Ferian Gap legion’s assault on Rifthold under Iskra’s command had been sloppy, chaotic—not the systematic, careful sacking Manon would have planned had they asked her. It made no difference now whether the city was in full or half ruin. It didn’t alter Asterin’s fate.

  So there was little to be done, other than to sharpen her ancient blade and memorize the Words of Request. Manon would have to utter them at the right moment. This last gift, she could give her cousin. Her only gift.

  Not the long, slow torture and beheading that was typical of a witch execution.

  But the swift mercy of Manon’s own blade.

  Boots scuffed on stone and crunched the hay littering the aerie floor. Manon knew that step—knew it as well as Asterin’s own gait. “What,” she said to Sorrel without looking behind her.

  “Dawn approaches,” her Third said.

  Soon to be Second. Vesta would become Third, and … and maybe Asterin would at last see that hunter of hers, see the stillborn witchling they’d had together.

  Never again would Asterin ride the winds; never again would Asterin soar on the back of her sky-blue mare. Manon’s eyes slid to the wyvern across the aerie—shifting on her two legs, awake when the others were not.

  As if she could sense her mistress’s doom beckoning with each passing moment.

  What would become of the mare when Asterin was gone?

  Manon rose to her feet, Ab
raxos nudging the backs of her thighs with his snout. She reached down, brushing his scaly head. She didn’t know who it was meant to comfort. Her crimson cape, as bloody and filthy as the rest of her, was still clasped at her collarbone.

  The Thirteen would become twelve.

  Manon met Sorrel’s gaze. But her Third’s attention was on Wind-Cleaver, bare in Manon’s hand.

  Her Third said, “You mean to make the Words of Request.”

  Manon tried to speak. But she could not open her mouth. So she only nodded.

  Sorrel stared toward the open archway beyond Abraxos. “I wish she had the chance to see the Wastes. Just once.”

  Manon forced herself to lift her chin. “We do not wish. We do not hope,” she said to her soon-to-be Second. Sorrel’s eyes snapped to her, something like hurt flashing there. Manon took the inner blow. She said, “We will move on, adapt.”

  Sorrel said quietly, but not weakly, “She goes to her death to keep your secrets.”

  It was the closest Sorrel had ever come to outright challenge. To resentment.

  Manon sheathed Wind-Cleaver at her side and strode for the stairwell, unable to meet Abraxos’s curious stare. “Then she will have served me well as Second, and will be remembered for it.”

  Sorrel said nothing.

  So Manon descended into the gloom of Morath to kill her cousin.

  The execution was not to be held in the dungeon.

  Rather, her grandmother had selected a broad veranda overlooking one of the endless drops into the ravine curled around Morath. Witches were crowded onto the balcony, practically thrumming with bloodlust.

  The Matrons stood before the gathered group, Cresseida and the Yellowlegs Matron flanked by each of their heirs, all facing the open doors through which Manon and the Thirteen exited the Keep proper.

  Manon did not hear the murmur of the crowd; did not hear the roaring wind ripping between the high turrets; did not hear the strike of hammers in the forges of the valley below.

  Not when her attention went to Asterin, on her knees before the Matrons. She, too, was facing Manon, still in her riding leathers, her golden hair limp and knotted, flecked with blood. She lifted her face—

  “It was only fair,” Manon’s grandmother drawled, the crowd silencing, “for Iskra Yellowlegs to also avenge the four sentinels slaughtered on your watch. Three blows apiece for each of the sentinels killed.”

  Twelve blows total. But from the cuts and bruises on Asterin’s face, the split lip, from the way she cradled her body as she bent over her knees … It had been far more than that.

  Slowly, Manon looked at Iskra. Cuts marred her knuckles—still raw from the beating she’d given Asterin in the dungeon.

  While Manon had been upstairs, brooding.

  Manon opened her mouth, her rage a living thing thrashing in her gut, her blood. But Asterin spoke instead.

  “Be glad to know, Manon,” her Second rasped with a faint, cocky smile, “that she had to chain me up to beat me.”

  Iskra’s eyes flashed. “You still screamed, bitch, when I whipped you.”

  “Enough,” Manon’s grandmother cut in, waving a hand.

  Manon barely heard the order.

  They had whipped her sentinel like some underling, like some mortal beast—

  Someone snarled, low and vicious, to her right.

  The breath went out of her as she found Sorrel—unmovable rock, unfeeling stone—baring her teeth at Iskra, at those assembled here.

  Manon’s grandmother stepped forward, brimming with displeasure. Behind Manon, the Thirteen were a silent, unbreakable wall.

  Asterin began scanning their faces, and Manon realized her Second understood that it was the last time she’d do so.

  “Blood shall be paid with blood,” Manon’s grandmother and the Yellowlegs Matron said in unison, reciting from their eldest rituals. Manon steeled her spine, waiting for the right moment. “Any witch who wishes to extract blood in the name of Zelta Yellowlegs may come forward.”

  Iron nails slid out from the hands of the entire Yellowlegs coven.

  Asterin only stared at the Thirteen, her bloody face unmoved, eyes clear.

  The Yellowlegs Matron said, “Form the line.”

  Manon pounced.

  “I invoke the right of execution.”

  Everyone froze.

  Manon’s grandmother’s face went pale with rage. But the other two Matrons, even Yellowlegs, just waited.

  Manon said, head high, “I claim the right to my Second’s head. Blood shall be paid with blood—but at my sword’s edge. She is mine, and so shall her death be mine.”

  For the first time, Asterin’s mouth tightened, eyes gleaming. Yes, she understood the only gift Manon could give her, the only honor left.

  It was Cresseida Blueblood who cut in before the other two Matrons could speak. “For saving my daughter’s life, Wing Leader, it shall be granted.”

  The Yellowlegs Matron whipped her head to Cresseida, a retort on her lips, but it was too late. The words had been spoken, and the rules were to be obeyed at any cost.

  The Crochan’s red cape fluttering behind her in the wind, Manon dared a look at her grandmother. Only hatred glowed in those ancient eyes—hatred, and a flicker of satisfaction that Asterin would be ended after decades of being deemed an unfit Second.

  But at least this death was now hers to give.

  And in the east, slipping over the mountains like molten gold, the sun began to rise.

  A hundred years she’d had with Asterin. She’d always thought they’d have a hundred more.

  Manon said softly to Sorrel, “Turn her around. My Second shall see the dawn one last time.”

  Sorrel obediently stepped forward, pivoting Asterin to face the High Witches, the crowd by the rail—and the rare sunrise piercing through Morath’s gloom.

  Blood soaked through the back of her Second’s leathers.

  And yet Asterin knelt, shoulders square and head high, as she looked not at the dawn—but at Manon herself while she stalked around her Second to take a place a few feet before the Matrons.

  “Sometime before breakfast, Manon,” her grandmother said from a few feet behind.

  Manon drew Wind-Cleaver, the blade singing softly as it slid free of its sheath.

  The sunlight gilded the balcony as Asterin whispered, so softly that only Manon could hear, “Bring my body back to the cabin.”

  Something in Manon’s chest broke—broke so violently that she wondered if it was possible for no one to have heard it.

  Manon lifted her sword.

  All it would take was one word from Asterin, and she could save her own hide. Spill Manon’s secrets, her betrayals, and she’d walk free. Yet her Second uttered no other word.

  And Manon understood in that moment that there were forces greater than obedience, and discipline, and brutality. Understood that she had not been born soulless; she had not been born without a heart.

  For there were both, begging her not to swing that blade.

  Manon looked to the Thirteen, standing around Asterin in a half circle.

  One by one, they lifted two fingers to their brows.

  A murmur went through the crowd. The gesture not to honor a High Witch.

  But a Witch-Queen.

  There had not been a Queen of Witches in five hundred years, either among the Crochans or the Ironteeth. Not one.

  Forgiveness shone in the faces of her Thirteen. Forgiveness and understanding and loyalty that was not blind obedience, but forged in pain and battle, in shared victory and defeat. Forged in hope for a better life—a better world.

  At last, Manon found Asterin’s gaze, tears now rolling down her Second’s face. Not from fear or pain, but in farewell. A hundred years—and yet Manon wished she’d had more time.

  For a heartbeat, she thought of that sky-blue mare in the aerie, the wyvern that would wait and wait for a rider who would never return. Thought of a green rocky land spreading to the western sea.

  Hand
trembling, Asterin pressed her fingers to her brow and extended them. “Bring our people home, Manon,” she breathed.

  Manon angled Wind-Cleaver, readying for the strike.

  The Blackbeak Matron snapped, “Be done with it, Manon.”

  Manon met Sorrel’s eyes, then Asterin’s. And Manon gave the Thirteen her final order.

  “Run.”

  Then Manon Blackbeak whirled and brought Wind-Cleaver down upon her grandmother.

  18

  Manon saw only the flash of her grandmother’s rusted iron teeth, the glimmer of her iron nails as she raised them to ward against the sword—but too late.

  Manon slashed Wind-Cleaver down, a blow that would have cut most men in half.

  Yet her grandmother darted back fast enough that the sword sliced down her torso, ripping fabric and skin as it cut between her breasts in a shallow line. Blue blood sprayed, but the Matron was moving, blocking Manon’s next blow with her iron nails—iron so hard that Wind-Cleaver bounced off.

  Manon did not look to see if the Thirteen obeyed. But Asterin was roaring; roaring and shouting to stop. The cries grew more distant, then echoed, as if she were now inside the hall, being dragged away.

  No sounds of pursuit—as if the onlookers were too stunned. Good.

  Iskra and Petrah had swords out, iron teeth down as they stepped between their Matrons and Manon, herding their two High Witches away.

  The Blackbeak Matron’s coven lunged forward, only to be halted by a hand. “Stay back,” her grandmother commanded, panting as Manon circled her. Blue blood leaked down her grandmother’s front. An inch closer, and she’d have been dead.

  Dead.

  Her grandmother bared her rusted teeth. “She’s mine.” She jerked her chin at Manon. “We do this the ancient way.”

  Manon’s stomach roiled, but she sheathed her sword.

  A flick of her wrists had her nails out, and a snap of her jaw had her teeth descending.

  “Let’s see how good you are, Wing Leader,” her grandmother hissed, and attacked.

  Manon had never seen her grandmother fight, never trained with her.

  And some small part of Manon wondered if it was because her grandmother did not want others to know how skilled she was.