Queen of Shadows

  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—

  The wyvern’s eyes lifted and met Elide’s. Not looked at, but met, as if …

  Elide kept perfectly still, even though every instinct was roaring at her to run for the stairs. The wyvern nudged past Manon, the floor shuddering beneath him, and sniffed in Elide’s direction. Then those giant, depthless eyes moved down—to her legs. No, to the chain.

  There were so many scars all over him—so many brutal lines. She did not think Manon had made them, not with the way she spoke to him. Abraxos was smaller than the others, she realized. Far smaller. And yet the Wing Leader had picked him. Elide tucked that information away, too. If Manon had a soft spot for broken things, perhaps she would spare her as well.

  Abraxos lowered himself to the ground, stretching out his neck until his head rested on the hay not ten feet from Elide. Those giant black eyes stared up at her, almost doglike.

  “Enough, Abraxos,” Manon hissed, grabbing a saddle from the rack by the wall.

  “How do they—exist?” Elide breathed. She’d heard stories of wyverns and dragons, and she remembered glimpses of the Little Folk and the Fae, but …

  Manon hauled the leather saddle over to her mount. “The king made them. I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter.”

  The King of Adarlan made them, like whatever was being made inside those mountains. The man who had shattered her life, murdered her parents, doomed her to this … Don’t be angry, Finnula had said, be smart. And soon the king and his miserable empire wouldn’t be her concern, anyway.

  Elide said, “Your mount doesn’t seem evil.” Abraxos’s tail thumped on the ground, the iron spikes in it glinting. A giant, lethal dog. With wings.

  Manon huffed a cold laugh, strapping the saddle into place. “No. However he was made, something went wrong with that part.”

  Elide didn’t think that constituted going wrong, but kept her mouth shut.

  Abraxos was still staring up at her, and the Wing Leader said, “Let’s go hunt, Abraxos.”

  The beast perked up, and Elide jumped back a step, wincing as she landed hard on her ankle. The wyvern’s eyes shot to her, as if aware of the pain. But the Wing Leader was already finishing with the saddle, and didn’t bother to look in her direction as Elide limped out.

  “You soft-hearted worm,” Manon hissed at Abraxos once the cunning, many-faced girl was gone. The girl might be hiding secrets, but her lineage wasn’t one of them. She had no idea that witch-blood flowed strong in her mortal veins. “A crippled leg and a few chains, and you’re in love?”

  Abraxos nudged her with his snout, and Manon gave him a firm but gentle slap before leaning against his warm hide and ripping open the letter addressed in her grandmother’s handwriting.

  Just like the High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan, it was brutal, to the point, and unforgiving.

  Do not disobey the duke’s orders. Do not question him. If there is another letter from Morath about your disobedience, I will fly down there myself and hang you by your intestines, with your Thirteen and that runt of a beast beside you.

  Three Yellowlegs and two Blueblood covens are arriving tomorrow. See to it there are no fights or trouble. I do not need the other Matrons breathing down my neck about their vermin.

  Manon turned the paper over, but that was it. Crunching it in a fist, she sighed.

  Abraxos nudged at her again, and she idly stroked his head.

  Made, made, made.

  That was what the Crochan had said before Manon slit her throat. You were made into monsters.

  She tried to forget it—tried to tell herself that the Crochan had been a fanatic and a preachy twat, but … She ran a finger down the deep red cloth of her cloak.

  The thoughts opened up like a precipice before her, so many all at once that she stepped back. Turned away.

  Made, made, made.

  Manon climbed into the saddle and was glad to lose herself in the sky.

  “Tell me about the Valg,” Manon said, shutting the door to the small chamber behind her.

  Ghislaine didn’t look up from the book she was poring over. There was a stack of them on the desk before her, and another beside the narrow bed. Where the eldest and cleverest of her Thirteen had gotten them from, who she’d likely gutted to steal them, Manon didn’t care.

  “Hello, and come right in, why don’t you” was the response.

  Manon leaned against the door and crossed her arms. Only with books, only when reading, was Ghislaine so snappish. On the battlefield, in the air, the dark-skinned witch was quiet, easy to command. A solid soldier, made more valuable by her razor-sharp intelligence, which had earned her the spot among the Thirteen.

  Ghislaine shut the book and twisted in her seat. Her black, curly hair was braided back, but even the plait couldn’t keep it entirely contained. She narrowed her sea-green eyes—the shame of her mother, as there wasn’t a trace of gold in them. “Why would you want to know about the Valg?”

  “Do you know about them?”

  Ghislaine pivoted on her chair until she was sitting backward in it, her legs straddling the sides. She was in her flying leathers, as if she couldn’t be bothered to remove them before falling into one of her books. “Of course I know about the Valg,” she said with a wave of her hand—an impatient, mortal gesture.

  It had been an exception—an unprecedented exception—when Ghislaine’s mother had convinced the High Witch to send her daughter to a mortal school in Terrasen a hundred years ago. She had learned magic and book-things and whatever else mortals were taught, and when Ghislaine had returned twelve years later, the witch had been … different. Still a Blackbeak, still bloodthirsty, but somehow more human. Even now, a century later, even after walking on and off killing fields, that sense of impatience, of life clung to her. Manon had never known what to make of it.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “There’s too much to tell you in one sitting,” Ghislaine said. “But I’ll give you the basics, and if you want more, you can come back.”

  An order, but this was Ghislaine’s space, and books and knowledge were her domain. Manon motioned with an iron-tipped hand for her sentinel to go on.

  “Millennia ago, when the Valg broke into our world, witches did not exist. It was the Valg, and the Fae, and humans. But the Valg were … demons, I suppose. They wanted our world for their own, and they thought a good way to get it would be to ensure that their offspring could survive here. The humans weren’t compatible—too breakable. But the Fae … The Valg kidnapped and stole whatever Fae they could, and because your eyes are getting that glazed look, I’m just going to jump to the end and say the offspring became us. Witches. The Ironteeth took after our Valg ancestors more, while the Crochans got more of the Fae traits. The people of these lands didn’t want us here, not after the war, but the Fae King Brannon didn’t think it was right to hunt us all down. So he gave us the Western Wastes, and there we went, until the witch wars made us exiles again.”

  Manon picked at her nails. “And the Valg are … wicked?”

  “We are wicked,” Ghislaine said. “The Valg? Legend has it that they’re the origin of evil. They are blackness and despair incarnate.”

  “Sounds like our kind of people.” And maybe good ones indeed to ally with, to breed with.

  But Ghislaine’s smile faded. “No,” she said softly. “No, I do not think they would be our kind of people at all. They have no laws, no codes. They would see the Thirteen as weak for our bonds and rules—as something to break for amusement.”

  Manon stiffened slightly. “And if the Valg were ever to return here?”

  “Brannon and the Fae Queen Maeve found ways to defeat them—to send them back. I would hope that someone would find a way to do so again.”

  More to think about.

  She turned, but Ghislaine said, “That’s the smell, isn
’t it? The smell here, around some of the soldiers—like it’s wrong, from another world. The king found some way to bring them here and stuff them into human bodies.”

  She hadn’t thought that far, but … “The duke described them as allies.”

  “That word does not exist for the Valg. They find the alliance useful, but will honor it only as long as it remains that way.”

  Manon debated the merits of ending the conversation there, but said, “The duke asked me to pick a Blackbeak coven for him to experiment on. To allow him to insert some sort of stone in their bellies that will create a Valg-Ironteeth child.”

  Slowly, Ghislaine straightened, her ink-splattered hands hanging slack on either side of the chair. “And do you plan to obey, Lady?”

  Not a question from a scholar to a curious student, but from a sentinel to her heir.

  “The High Witch has given me orders to obey the duke’s every command.” But maybe … maybe she would write her grandmother another letter.

  “Who will you pick?”

  Manon opened the door. “I don’t know. My decision is due in two days.”

  Ghislaine—whom Manon had seen glut herself on the blood of men—had paled by the time Manon shut the door.

  Manon didn’t know how, didn’t know if the guards or the duke or Vernon or some eavesdropping human filth said something, but the next morning, the witches all knew. She knew better than to suspect Ghislaine. None of the Thirteen talked. Ever.

  But everyone knew about the Valg, and about Manon’s choice.

  She strode into the dining hall, its black arches glinting in the rare morning sun. Already, the pounding of the forges was ringing out in the valley below, made louder by the silence that fell as she strode between the tables, headed for her seat at the front of the room.

  Coven after coven watched, and she met their gazes, teeth out and nails drawn, Sorrel a steady force of nature at her back. It wasn’t until Manon slid into her place beside Asterin—and realized it was now the wrong place, but didn’t move—that chatter resumed in the hall.

  She pulled a hunk of bread toward her but didn’t touch it. None of them ate the food. Breakfast and dinner were always for show, to have a presence here.

  The Thirteen didn’t say a word.

  Manon stared each and every one of them down, until they dropped their eyes. But when her gaze met Asterin’s, the witch held it. “Do you have something you want to say,” Manon said to her, “or do you just want to start swinging?”

  Asterin’s eyes flicked over Manon’s shoulder. “We have guests.”

  Manon found the leader of one of the newly arrived Yellowlegs covens standing at the foot of the table, eyes downcast, posture unthreatening—complete submission.

  “What?” Manon demanded.

  The coven leader kept her head low. “We would request your consideration for the duke’s task, Wing Leader.”

  Asterin stiffened, along with many of the Thirteen. The nearby tables had also gone silent. “And why,” Manon asked, “would you want to do that?”

  “You will force us to do your drudgery work, to keep us from glory on the killing fields. That is the way of our Clans. But we might win a different sort of glory in this way.”

  Manon held in her sigh, weighing, contemplating. “I will consider it.”

  The coven leader bowed and backed away. Manon couldn’t decide whether she was a fool or cunning or brave.

  None of the Thirteen spoke for the rest of breakfast.

  “And what coven, Wing Leader, have you selected for me?”

  Manon met the duke’s stare. “A coven of Yellowlegs under a witch named Ninya arrived earlier this week. Use them.”

  “I wanted Blackbeaks.”

  “You’re getting Yellowlegs,” Manon snapped. Down the table, Kaltain did not react. “They volunteered.”

  Better than Blackbeaks, she told herself. Better that the Yellowlegs had offered themselves.

  Even if Manon could have refused them.

  She doubted Ghislaine was wrong about the nature of the Valg, but … Maybe this could work to their advantage, depending on how the Yellowlegs fared.

  The duke flashed his yellowing teeth. “You toe a dangerous line, Wing Leader.”

  “All witches have to, in order to fly wyverns.”

  Vernon leaned forward. “These wild, immortal things are so diverting, Your Grace.”

  Manon gave him a long, long look that told Vernon that one day, in a shadowy hallway, he would find himself with the claws of this wild, immortal thing in his belly.

  Manon turned to go. Sorrel—not Asterin—stood stone-faced by the door. Another jarring sight.

  Then Manon turned back to the duke, the question forming even as she willed herself not to say it. “To what end? Why do all of this—why ally with the Valg, why raise this army … Why?” She could not understand it. The continent already belonged to them. It made no sense.

  “Because we can,” the duke said simply. “And because this world has too long dwelled in ignorance and archaic tradition. It is time to see what might be improved.”

  Manon made a show of contemplating and then nodding as she strode out.

  But she had not missed the words—this world. Not this land, not this continent.

  This world.

  She wondered whether her grandmother had considered the idea that they might one day have to fight to keep the Wastes—fight the very men who had helped them take back their home.

  And wondered what would become of these Valg-Ironteeth witchlings in that world.

  CHAPTER

  21

  He had tried.

  When the blood-soaked woman had spoken to him, when those turquoise eyes had seemed so familiar, he had tried to wrest away control of his body, his tongue. But the demon prince in him had held firm, delighting in his struggle.

  He had sobbed with relief when she trapped it and raised an ancient blade over his head. Then she had hesitated—and then that other woman had fired an arrow, and she had put down the sword and left.

  Left him still trapped with the demon.

  He could not remember her name—refused to remember her name, even as the man on the throne questioned him about the incident. Even as he returned to the exact spot in the garden and prodded the discarded shackles lying in the gravel. She had left him, and with good reason. The demon prince had wanted to feed on her, and then hand her over.

  But he wished she had killed him. He hated her for not killing him.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Chaol left his watch on the roof of Aelin’s apartment the moment the hooded head of one of the rebels appeared and signaled that he would take over. Thank the gods.

  He didn’t bother stopping in the apartment to see how Aedion was holding up. Each of his pounding steps on the wooden stairs accented the raging, thunderous beat of his heart, until it was all he could hear, all he could feel.

  With the other rebels lying low or monitoring the city and Nesryn gone to make sure her father wasn’t in danger, Chaol found himself alone as he stalked through the city streets. Everyone had their orders; everyone was where they were supposed to be. Nesryn had already told him Ress and Brullo had given her the signal that all was clear on their end—and now …

  Liar. Aelin was and had always been a gods-damned liar. She was as much an oath-breaker as he was. Worse.

  Dorian wasn’t gone. He wasn’t. And he didn’t give a shit how much Aelin trumpeted about mercy for Dorian, or that she said it was a weakness not to kill him. The weakness lay in his death—that’s what he should have said. The weakness lay in giving up.

  He stormed down an alley. He should have been hiding as well, but the roaring in his blood and bones was unrelenting. A sewer grate rang beneath his feet. He paused, and peered into the blackness below.

  There were still things to do—so many things to do, so many people to keep from harm. And now that Aelin had yet again humiliated the king, he had no doubt that the Valg
would round up more people as punishment, as a statement. With the city still in an uproar, perhaps it was the perfect time for him to strike. To even the odds between them.

  No one saw as he climbed into the sewer, closing the lid overhead.

  Tunnel after tunnel, his sword gleaming in the afternoon light streaming in through the grates, Chaol hunted those Valg pieces of filth, his steps near-silent. They usually kept to their nests of darkness, but every now and then, stragglers prowled the tunnels. Some of their nests were small—only three or four of them guarding their prisoners—or meals, he supposed. Easy enough for him to ambush.

  And wouldn’t it be wonderful to see those demon heads roll.

  Gone. Dorian is gone.

  Aelin didn’t know everything. Fire or beheading couldn’t be the only choices. Maybe he would keep one of the Valg commanders alive, see just how far gone the man inside of the demon truly was. Maybe there was another way—there had to be another way …

  Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel, all the usual haunts, and no sign of them.

  Not one.

  Chaol hurried into a near-run as he headed for the largest nest he knew of, where they’d always been able to find civilians in need of rescuing, if they were lucky enough to catch the guards unawares. He would save them—because they deserved it, and because he had to keep at it, or else he would crumble and—

  Chaol stared at the gaping mouth of the main nest.

  Watery sunlight filtering from above illuminated the gray stones and the little river at the bottom. No sign of the telltale darkness that usually smothered it like a dense fog.

  Empty.

  The Valg soldiers had vanished. And taken their prisoners with them.

  He didn’t think they’d gone into hiding from fear.

  They’d moved on, concealing themselves and their prisoners, as a giant, laughing go-to-hell to every rebel who’d actually thought they were winning this secret war. To Chaol.