Kingdom of Ash

She was a liar, and a killer, and would likely have to be both again before this was through.

But Manon had no regrets about what she’d done. Had no room in her for regret. Not with time bearing down on them, not with so much resting on their shoulders.

For long hours while they worked to repair camp and Crochans, Manon monitored the frosty skies.

Eight dead. It could have been worse. Much worse. Though she would take the lives of those eight Crochans with her, learn their names so she might remember them.

Manon spent the long night helping the Thirteen haul the fallen wyverns and Ironteeth riders to another ridge. The ground was too hard to bury them, and pyres would be too easily marked, so they opted for snow. She didn’t dare ask Dorian to use his power to assist them.

She’d seen that look in his eyes. Like he knew.

Manon dumped a stiff Yellowlegs body, the sentinel’s lips already blue, ice crusted in her blond hair. Asterin hauled a stout-bodied rider toward her by the boots, then deposited the witch with little fanfare.

But Manon stared at their dead faces. She’d sacrificed them, too.

Both sides of this conflict. Both of her bloodlines.

All would bleed; too many would die.

Would Glennis have welcomed them? Perhaps, but the other Crochans hadn’t seemed so inclined to do so.

And the fact remained that they did not have the time to waste in wooing them. So she’d picked the only method she knew: battle. Had soared off on her own earlier that day, to where she knew Ironteeth would be patrolling nearby, waited until the great northern wind carried her scent southward. And then bided her time.

“Did you know them?” Asterin asked when Manon remained staring at a fallen sentinel’s body. Down the line of them, the wyverns used their wings to brush great drifts of snow over the corpses.

“No,” Manon said. “I didn’t.”

Dawn was breaking by the time they returned to the Crochan camp. Eyes that had spat fire hours earlier now watched them warily, fewer hands drifting toward weapons as they aimed for the large, ringed fire pit. The largest of the camp, and located in its heart. Glennis’s hearth.

The crone stood before it, warming her gnarled, bloodied hands. Dorian sat nearby, and his sapphire eyes were indeed damning as he met Manon’s stare.

Later. That conversation would come later.

Manon halted a few feet away from Glennis, the Thirteen falling into rank at the outskirts of the fire, surveying the five tents around it, the cauldron bubbling at its center. Behind them, Crochans continued their repairs and healing—and kept one eye upon them all.

“Eat something,” Glennis said, gesturing to the bubbling cauldron. To what smelled like goat stew.

Manon didn’t bother objecting before she obeyed, gathering one of the small earthenware bowls beside the fire. Another way to demonstrate trust: to eat their food. Accept it.

So Manon did, devouring a few bites before Dorian followed her lead and did the same. When they were both eating, Glennis sat on a stone and sighed. “It’s been over five hundred years since an Ironteeth witch and a Crochan shared a meal. Since they sought to exchange words in peace. Interrupted, perhaps, only by your mother and father.”

“I suppose so,” Manon said mildly, pausing her eating.

The crone’s mouth twitched toward a smile, despite the battle, the draining night. “I was your father’s grandmother,” she clarified at last. “I myself bore your grandfather, who mated a Crochan Queen before she died giving birth to your father.”

Another thing they’d inherited from the Fae: their difficulty conceiving and the deadly nature of childbirth. A way for the Three-Faced Goddess to keep the balance, to avoid flooding the lands with too many immortal children who would devour her resources.

Manon scanned the half-ruined camp, though.

The crone read her question in her eyes. “Our men dwell at our homes, where they are safe. This camp is an outpost while we conduct our business.” The Crochans had always given birth to more males than the Ironteeth, and had adopted the Fae habit of selecting mates—if not a true mating bond, then in spirit. She’d always thought it outlandish and strange. Unnecessary.

“After your mother never returned, your father was asked to couple with another young witch. He was the sole carrier of the Crochan bloodline, you see, and should your mother and you not have survived the birthing, it would end with him. He didn’t know what had happened to either of you. If you were alive, or dead. Didn’t even know where to look. So he agreed to do his duty, agreed to help his dying people.” Her great-grandmother smiled sadly. “All who met Tristan loved him.” Tristan. That had been his name. Had her grandmother even known it before she’d killed him? “A young witch was chosen for him especially. But he did not love her—not with your mother as his true mate, the song of his soul. Tristan made it work nonetheless. Rhiannon was the result of that.”

Manon tensed. If Rhiannon’s mother were here—

Again, the crone read the question on Manon’s face.

“She was slaughtered by a Yellowlegs sentinel in the river plains of Melisande. Years ago.”

A flicker of shame went through Manon at the relief that flooded her. To avoid that confrontation, to avoid begging for forgiveness, as she should have done.

Dorian set down his spoon. Such a graceful, casual gesture, considering how he’d felled that wyvern. “How is it that the Crochan line survived? Legend says they were wiped out.”

Another sad smile. “You can thank my mother for that. Rhiannon Crochan’s youngest daughter gave birth during the siege on the Witch-City. With our armies felled and only the city walls to hold back the Ironteeth legions, and with so many of her children and grandchildren slaughtered and her mate spiked to the city walls, Rhiannon had the heralds announce that it had been a stillbirth. So the Ironteeth would never know that one Crochan might yet live. That same night, just before Rhiannon began her three-day battle against the Ironteeth High Witches, my mother smuggled the baby princess out on her broom.” The crone’s throat bobbed. “Rhiannon was her dearest friend—a sister to her. My mother wanted to stay, to fight until the end, yet she was asked to do this for her people. Our people. Until the day of her death, my mother believed Rhiannon went to hold the gates against the High Witches as a distraction. To get that last Crochan scion out while the Ironteeth looked the other way.”

Manon didn’t entirely know what to say, how to voice what roiled within her.

“You will find,” Glennis went on, “that you have some cousins in this camp.”

Asterin stiffened at that, Edda and Briar also tensing where they lingered at the edge of the fire. Manon’s own kin, on the Blackbeak side of her heritage. Undoubtedly willing to fight to keep that distinction for themselves.

“Bronwen,” the crone said, gesturing toward the dark-haired coven leader with the gold-bound broom, now monitoring Manon and the Thirteen from the shadows beyond the fire, “is also my great-granddaughter. Your closest cousin.”

No kindness shone on Bronwen’s face, so Manon didn’t bother looking pleasant, either.

“She and Rhiannon were close as sisters,” Glennis murmured.

It took a considerable amount of effort not to touch the scrap of red cloak at the end of her braid.

Dorian, Darkness embrace his soul, cut in, “We found you for a reason.”

Glennis again warmed her hands. “I suppose it is to ask us to join in this war.”

Manon didn’t soften her stare. “It is. You, and all the Crochans scattered across the lands.”

One of the Crochans in the shadows let out a bark of laughter. “That’s rich.” Others chuckled with her.

Glennis’s blue eyes didn’t falter. “We have not rallied a host since before the fall of the Witch-City. You might find it a more difficult task than you anticipated.”

Dorian asked, “And if their queen summoned them to fight?”

Snow crunched under stomping steps, and then Bronwen was there, her brown eyes blazing. “Don’t answer, Glennis.”

Such disrespect, such informality to an elder—

Bronwen leveled her burning stare on Manon. “You are not our queen, despite what your blood might suggest. Despite this little skirmish. We do not, and will never, answer to you.”

“Morath found you just now,” Manon said coolly. She’d anticipated this reaction. “It will do so again. Whether it is in a few months, or a year, they will find you. And then there will be no hope of beating them.” She kept her hands at her sides, resisting the urge to unsheathe her iron claws. “A host of many kingdoms rallies in Terrasen. Join them.”

“Terrasen didn’t come to our aid five hundred years ago,” another voice said, coming closer. The pretty, brown-haired witch from earlier. Her broom, too, was bound in fine metal—silver to Bronwen’s gold. “I don’t see why we should bother helping them now.”

“I thought you lot were a bunch of self-righteous do-gooders,” Manon crooned. “Surely this would be your sort of thing.”

The young witch bristled, but Glennis held up a withered hand.

It wasn’t enough to stop Bronwen, though, as the witch looked Manon over and snarled, “You are not our queen. We will never fly with you.”

Bronwen and the younger witch stormed away, the gathered Crochan guards parting to let them pass.

Manon found Glennis wincing slightly. “Our family, you will find, has a hotheaded streak.”

Ruthless.

What Manon had done tonight, leading the Ironteeth to this camp … Dorian didn’t have a word for it other than ruthless.

He left Manon and her great-grandmother, the Thirteen looking on, and went in search of the spider.

He found Cyrene where he’d left her, crouched in the shadows of one of the farther tents.

She’d returned to her human form, her dark hair tangled, bundled in a Crochan cloak. As if one of them had taken pity on her. Not realizing the hunger in Cyrene’s eyes wasn’t for the goat stew.

“Where does the shifting come from?” Dorian asked as he paused before her, a hand on Damaris. “Inside you?”

The spider-shifter blinked up at him, then stood. Someone had given her a worn brown tunic, pants, and boots, too. “That was a great feat of magic you performed.” She smiled, revealing sharp little teeth. “What a king it might make you. Unchallenged, unrivaled.”

Dorian didn’t feel like saying he wasn’t entirely sure what manner of king he wished to be, should he live long enough to reclaim his throne. Anyone and anything but his father seemed like a good place to start.

Dorian kept his stance relaxed, even as he asked again, “Where does the shifting come from inside you?”

Cyrene angled her head as if listening to something. “It was strange, mortal king, to find that I had a new place within me with the return of magic. To find that something new had taken root.” Her small hand drifted to her middle, just above her navel. “A little seed of power. I will the shift, think of what I wish to be, and the change starts within here first. Always, the heat comes from here.” The spider settled her stare on him. “If you wish to be something, king-with-no-crown, then be it. That is the secret to the shifting. Be what you wish.”

He avoided the urge to roll his eyes, though Damaris warmed in his grip. Be what you wish—a thing far easier said than done. Especially with the weight of a crown.

Dorian put a hand on his stomach, despite the layers of clothes and cloak. Only toned muscle greeted him. “Is that what you do to summon the change: first think of what you want to become?”

“With limits. I need a clear image within my mind, or else it will not work at all.”

“So you cannot change into something you have not seen.”

“I can invent certain traits—eye color, build, hair—but not the creature itself.” A hideous smile bloomed on her mouth. “Use that lovely magic of yours. Change your pretty eyes,” the spider dared. “Change their color.”

Gods damn him, but he tried. He thought of brown eyes. Pictured Chaol’s bronze eyes, fierce after one of their sparring sessions. Not how they had been before his friend had sailed to the southern continent.

Had Chaol managed to be healed? Had he and Nesryn convinced the khagan to send aid? How would Chaol even learn where he was, what had happened to all of them, when they’d been scattered to the winds?

“You think too much, young king.”

“Better than too little,” he muttered.

Damaris warmed again. He could have sworn it had been in amusement.

Cyrene chuckled. “Do not think of the eye color so much as demand it.”

“How did you learn this without instruction?”

“The power is in me now,” the spider said simply. “I listened to it.”

Dorian let a tendril of his magic snake toward the spider. She tensed. But his magic brushed up against her, gentle and inquisitive as a cat. Raw magic, to be shaped as he desired.

He willed it toward her—willed it to find that seed of power within her. To learn it.

“What are you doing,” the spider breathed, shifting on her feet.

His magic wrapped around her, and he could feel it—each hateful, horrible year of existence.

Each—

His mouth dried out. Bile surged in his throat at the scent his magic detected. He’d never forget that scent, that vileness. He’d bear the mark on his throat forever as proof.

Valg. The spider, somehow, was Valg. And not possessed, but born.

He kept his face neutral. Uninterested. Even as his magic located that glowing, beautiful bit of magic.

Stolen magic. As the Valg stole all things.

Took everything they wanted.

His blood became a dull, pounding roar in his ears.

Dorian studied her tiny frame, her ordinary face. “You’ve been rather quiet regarding the quest for revenge that sent you hunting across the continent.”

Cyrene’s dark eyes turned to depthless pits. “Oh, I have not forgotten that. Not at all.”

Damaris remained warm. Waiting.

He let his magic wrap soothing hands around the seed of power trapped within the black hell inside the spider.

He didn’t care to know why and how the stygian spiders were Valg. How they’d come here. Why they’d lingered.

They fed off dreams and life and joy. Delighted in it.

The seed of shape-shifting power flickered in his hands, as if grateful for a kind touch. A human touch.

This. His father had allowed these sorts of creatures to grow, to rule. Sorscha had been slaughtered by these things, their cruelty.

“I can make a bargain with you, you know,” Cyrene whispered. “When the time comes, I will make sure you are spared.”

Damaris went colder than ice.

Dorian met her stare. Withdrew his magic, and could have sworn that seed of shape-shifting power trapped within her reached for him. Tried to beg him not to go.

He smiled at the spider. She smiled back.

And then he struck.

Invisible hands wrapped around her neck and twisted. Right as his magic plunged into her navel, into where the stolen seed of human magic resided, and wrapped around it.

He held on, a baby bird in his hands, as the spider died. Studied the magic, every facet of it, before it seemed to sigh in relief and fade into the wind, free at last.

Cyrene slumped to the ground, eyes unseeing.

Half a thought and Dorian had her incinerated. No one came to inquire after the stench that rose from her ashes. The black stain that lingered beneath them.

Valg. Perhaps a ticket for him into Morath, and yet he found himself staring at that dark stain on the half-thawed earth.

He let go of Damaris, the blade reluctantly quieting.

He’d find his way into Morath. Once he mastered the shifting.

The spider and all her kind could burn in hell.

Dorian’s heart was still racing when he found himself an hour later lying in a tent not even tall enough to stand in, on one of two bedrolls.

Manon entered the tent just as he toed off his boots and hauled the heavy wool blankets over him. They smelled of horses and hay, and might very well have been snatched from a stable, but he didn’t care. It was warm and better than nothing.

Manon surveyed the tight space, the second bedroll and blanket. “Thirteen is an uneven number,” she said by way of explanation. “I’ve always had a tent to myself.”

“Sorry to ruin that for you.”

She cut him a drily amused glance before seating herself on the bedroll and unlacing her boots. But her fingers halted as her nostrils flared.

Slowly, she looked over her shoulder at him. “What did you do.”

Dorian held her stare. “You did what you had to today,” he said simply. “I did as well.” He didn’t bother trying to touch Damaris where it lay nearby.

She sniffed him again. “You killed the spider.” No judgment in her face, just raw curiosity.

“She was a threat,” he admitted. And a Valg piece of shit.

Wariness now flooded her eyes. “She could have killed you.”

He gave her a half smile. “No, she couldn’t have.”

Manon assessed him again, and he withstood it. “You have nothing to say about my own … choices?”

“My friends are fighting and likely being killed in the North,” Dorian said. “We don’t have the time to spend weeks winning the Crochans over.”

There it was, the brutal truth. To gain some degree of welcome here, they’d had to cross that line. Perhaps such callous decisions were part of wearing a crown.

He’d keep her secret—so long as she wished it hidden.

“No self-righteous speeches?”

“This is war,” he said simply. “We’re past that sort of thing.”

And it wouldn’t matter, would it, when his eternal soul would be the asking price to staunch so much of the slaughter? He’d already had it wrecked enough. If crossing line after line would spare any others from harm, he’d do it. He didn’t know what manner of king that made him.

Manon hummed, deeming that an acceptable answer. “You know about court intrigue and scheming,” she said, deft fingers again flying over the laces and hooks of the boots. “How would you … play this, as you called it earlier? My situation with the Crochans.”

Dorian rested a hand under his head. “The problem is that they hold all the cards. You need them far more than they need you. The only card you have to play is your heritage—and that they seem to have rejected, even with the skirmish. So how do we make it vital for them? How do you prove that they need their last living queen, the last of the Crochan bloodline?” He contemplated it. “There is also the prospect of peace between your peoples, but you …” He winced. “You’re no longer recognized as Heir. Any bargaining you might have as a Blackbeak would be on behalf of only you and the Thirteen, not the rest of the Ironteeth. It wouldn’t be a true peace treaty.”

Manon finished with her boots and lay back on her bedroll, sliding the blanket over her as she stared up at the tent’s low ceiling. “Did they teach you these things in your glass castle?”

“Yes.” Before he’d shattered that castle into shards and dust.

Manon turned on her side, propping her head with a hand, her white hair spilling from its braid to frame her face. “You can’t use that magic of yours to simply … compel them, can you?”

Dorian huffed a laugh. “Not that I know of.”

“Maeve wormed her way into Prince Rowan’s mind to convince him to take a false mate.”

“I don’t even know what Maeve’s power is,” Dorian said, cringing. What the Fae Queen had done to Rowan, what she was now doing to the Queen of Terrasen … “And I’m not entirely certain I want to start experimenting on potential allies.”

Manon sighed through her nose. “My training did not include these things.”

He wasn’t surprised. “You want my honest opinion?” Her golden eyes pinned him to the spot as she gave a curt nod. “Find the thing they need, and use it to your advantage. What would prompt them to rally behind you, to see you as their Crochan Queen? Fighting in battle tonight won some degree of trust, but not immediate acceptance. Perhaps Glennis might know.”

“I’d have to risk asking her.”

“You don’t trust her.”

“Why should I?”

“She’s your great-grandmother. And didn’t order you executed on sight.”

“My grandmother didn’t until the end, either.” No emotion passed over her face, but her fingers dug into her scalp at her words.

So Dorian said, “Aelin needed Captain Rolfe and his people shaken out of centuries of hiding in order to rally the Mycenian fleet. She learned they would only return to Terrasen when a sea dragon reappeared at last, one of their long-lost allies on the waves. So she engineered it to happen: provoked a small Valg fleet to attack Skull’s Bay while it lay mostly defenseless, and then used the battle to showcase the sea dragon that arrived to aid them, summoned from air and magic.”

“The shifter,” Manon said. Dorian nodded. “And the Mycenians bought it?”

“Absolutely,” Dorian drawled. “Aelin learned what the Mycenians needed in order to be convinced to join her cause. What sort of thing might the Crochans require to do the same?”

Manon lay back onto her bedroll, as graceful as a dancer. She toyed with the end of her braid, the red strip there. “I’ll ask Ghislaine in the morning.”

“I don’t think Ghislaine is going to know.”

Those gold eyes slid to his. “You truly believe I should ask Glennis?”

“I do. And I think she will help you.”

“Why bother?”

He wondered if the Thirteen could ever see it—that hint of self-loathing that sometimes flickered across her face. “Her mother willingly abandoned her city, her people, her queen in their last hours so she might preserve the royal bloodline. Your bloodline. I think she told you that story tonight so you might realize she will do the same as well.”

“Why not say it outright, then?”

“Because, in case you didn’t notice, you’re not exactly a popular person in this camp, despite your ploy with the Ironteeth. Glennis knows how to play the game. You just need to catch up with her. Find out why they’re even here, then plan your next move.”

Her mouth tightened, then relaxed. “Your tutors taught you well, princeling.”

“Being raised by a demon-infested tyrant did have its benefits, it seems.” His words rang flat, even as an edge sharpened inside him.

Her gaze drifted to his throat, to the pale line across it. He could almost feel her stare like a phantom touch.

“You still hate him.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Am I not supposed to?”

Her moon-white hair gleamed in the dim light. “You told me he was human. Deep down, he’d remained human, and tried to protect you as best he could. Yet you hate him.”

“You’ll forgive me if I find his methods of protecting me to be unpalatable.”

“But it was the demon, not the man, who killed your healer.”

Dorian clenched his jaw. “It makes no difference.”

“Doesn’t it?” Manon frowned. “Most can barely withstand a few months of Valg infestation. You barely withstood it.” He tried not to flinch at the blunt words. “Yet he held on for decades.”

He held her stare. “If you’re trying to cast my father as some sort of noble hero, you’re wasting your breath.” He debated ending it there, but he asked, “If someone told you that your grandmother was secretly good, that she hadn’t wanted to murder your parents and so many others, that she’d been forced to make you kill your own sister, would you find it so easy to believe? To forgive her?”

Manon glanced down at her abdomen—at the scar hidden beneath her leathers. He braced himself for the answer. But she only said, “I’m tired of talking.”

Good. So was he.

“Is there something you’d rather do instead, witchling?” His voice turned rough, and he knew she could hear his heartbeat as it began hammering.

Her only answer was to slide over him, strands of her hair falling around them in a curtain. “I said I don’t want to talk,” she breathed, and lowered her mouth to his neck. Dragged her teeth over it, right through that white line where the collar had been.

Dorian groaned softly, and shifted his hips, grinding himself into her. Her breath became jagged in answer, and he ran a hand down her side.

“Shut me up, then,” he said, a hand drifting southward to cup her backside as she nipped at his neck, his jaw. No hint of those iron teeth, but the promise of them lingered, an exquisite sword over his head.

Only with her did he not need to explain. Only with her did he not need to be a king, or anything but what he was. Only with her would there be no judgment for what he’d done, who he’d failed, what he might still have to do.

Just this—pleasure and utter oblivion.

Manon’s hand found his belt buckle, and Dorian reached for hers, and neither spoke for some time after that.

The release she found that night—twice—couldn’t entirely dull the edge when morning broke, gray and bleak, and Manon approached Glennis’s larger tent.

She’d left the king sleeping, bundled in the blankets they’d shared, though she hadn’t allowed him to hold her. She’d simply turned onto her side, putting her back to him, and closed her eyes. He hadn’t seemed to care, sated and drowsy after she’d ridden him until they’d both found their pleasure, and had been quickly asleep. Had stayed asleep, while Manon had contemplated how, exactly, she was to have this meeting.

Perhaps she should have brought Dorian. He certainly knew how to play these games. To think like a king.

He’d killed that spider like a blue-blooded witch, though. Not an ounce of mercy.

It shouldn’t have thrilled her the way it did.

But Manon knew her pride would never recover, and she’d never again be able to call herself a witch, if she let him do this task for her.

So Manon shouldered through Glennis’s tent flaps without announcing herself. “I need to speak to you.”

She found Glennis buckling on her glamoured cloak before a tiny bronze mirror. “Prior to breakfast? I suppose you got that urgency from your father. Tristan was always rushing into my tent with his various pressing matters. I could barely convince him to sit still long enough to eat.”

Manon discarded the kernel of information. Ironteeth didn’t have fathers. Only their mothers and mothers’ mothers. It had always been that way. Even if it was an effort to keep her questions about him at bay. How he’d met Lothian Blackbeak, what had prompted them to set aside their ancient hatred.

“What would it take—to win the Crochans over? To join us in war?”

Glennis adjusted her cape in the mirror. “Only a Crochan Queen may ignite the Flame of War, to summon every witch from her hearth.”

Manon blinked at the frank answer. “The Flame of War?”

Glennis jerked her chin toward the tent flaps, to the fire pit beyond. “Every Crochan family has a hearth that moves with them to each camp or home we make; the fires never extinguish. The flame in my hearth dates back to the Crochan city itself, when Brannon Galathynius gave Rhiannon a spark of eternally burning fire. My mother carried it with her in a glass globe, hidden in her cloak, when she smuggled out your ancestor, and it has continued to burn at every royal Crochan hearth since then.”

“What about when magic disappeared for ten years?”

“Our seers had a vision that it would vanish, and the flame would die. So we ignited several ordinary fires from that magic flame, and kept them burning. When magic disappeared, the flame indeed winked out. And when magic returned this spring, the flame again kindled, right in the hearth where we had last seen it.” Her great-grandmother turned toward her. “When a Crochan Queen summons her people to war, a flame is taken from the royal hearth, and passed to each hearth, one camp and village to the other. The arrival of the flame is a summons that only a true Crochan Queen may make.”

“So I only need to use the flame in that pit out there and the army will come to me?”

A caw of laughter. “No. You must first be accepted as queen to do that.”

Manon ground her teeth. “And how might I achieve that?”

“That’s not for me to figure out, is it?”

It took all her self-restraint to keep from unsheathing her iron nails and prowling through the tent. “Why are you here—why this camp?”

Glennis’s brows rose. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday?”

Manon tapped a foot on the ground.

The witch noted the impatience and chuckled. “We were on our way to Eyllwe.”

Manon started. “Eyllwe? If you think to run from this war, I can tell you that it’s found that kingdom as well.” Long had Eyllwe borne the brunt of Adarlan’s wrath. In her endless meetings with Erawan, he’d been particularly focused on ensuring the kingdom stayed fractured.

Glennis nodded. “We know. But we received word from our southern hearths that a threat had arisen. We journey to meet with some of the Eyllwe war bands who have managed to survive this long—to take on whatever horror Morath might have sent.”

To go south, not north to Terrasen.

“Erawan might be unleashing his horrors in Eyllwe just to divide you,” Manon said. “To keep you from aiding Terrasen. He’ll have guessed I’m trying to gather the Crochans. Eyllwe is already lost—come with us to the North.”

The crone merely shook her head. “That may be. But we have given our word. So to Eyllwe we will go.”