Kingdom of Ash

Iskra’s bull gripped him by the neck, but Abraxos kept them in the air.

At the sight of those powerful jaws around Abraxos’s throat, the fear and pain in his eyes—

Manon couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think around the terror rushing through her, so blinding and sickening that for a few heartbeats, she was frozen. Wholly frozen.

Abraxos, Abraxos—

Hers. He was hers, and she was his, and the Darkness had chosen them to be together.

She had no sense of time, no sense of how long had passed between that bite and when she again moved. It could have been a second, it could have been a minute.

But then she was drawing an arrow from her nearly depleted quiver. The wind threatened to rip it from her fingers, but she nocked it to her bow, the world spinning-spinning-spinning, the wind roaring, and aimed.

Iskra’s bull bucked as her arrow landed—just a hairsbreadth from his eye.

But he did not let go.

He didn’t have the deep grip to rip out Abraxos’s throat, but if he crunched down long enough, if he cut off her mount’s air supply—

Manon unleashed another arrow. The wind shifted it enough that she struck the beast’s jaw, barely embedding in the thick hide.

Iskra was laughing. Laughing as Abraxos fought and could not get free—

Manon looked for any of the Thirteen, for anyone to save them. Save him.

He who mattered more than any other, whom she would trade places with if the Three-Faced Goddess allowed it, to have her own throat gripped in those terrible jaws—

But the Thirteen had been scattered, Iskra’s coven plowing their ranks apart. Asterin and Iskra’s Second were claw-to-claw as their wyverns locked talons and plunged toward the battlefield.

Manon gauged the distance to Iskra’s bull, to the jaws around the neck. Weighed the strength of the straps on the reins. If she could swing down, if she was lucky, she might be able to slash at the bull’s throat, just enough to pry him off—

But Abraxos’s wings faltered. His tail, trying so valiantly to strike the bull, began to slow.

No.

No.

Not like this. Anything but this.

Manon slung her bow over her back, half-frozen fingers fumbling with the straps and buckles of the saddle.

She couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t bear it, this death, his pain and fear before it.

She might have been sobbing. Might have been screaming as his wingbeats faltered again.

She’d leap across the gods-damned wind, rip that bitch from the saddle, and slit her mount’s throat—

Abraxos began to fall.

Not fall. But dive—trying to get lower. To reach the ground, hauling that bull with him.

So Manon might survive.

“PLEASE.” Her scream to Iskra carried across the battlefield, across the world. “PLEASE.”

She would beg, she would crawl, if it bought him the chance to live.

Her warrior-hearted mount. Who had saved her far more than she had ever saved him.

Who had saved her in the ways that counted most.

“PLEASE.” She screamed it—screamed it with every scrap of her shredded soul.

Iskra only laughed. And the bull did not let go, even as Abraxos tried and tried to get them closer to the ground.

Her tears ripped away in the wind, and Manon freed the last of the buckles on her saddle. The gap between the wyverns was impossible, but she had been lucky before.

She didn’t care about any of it. The Wastes, the Crochans and Ironteeth, her crown. She didn’t care about any of it, if Abraxos was not there with her.

Abraxos’s wings strained, fighting with that mighty, loving heart to reach lower air.

Manon sized up the distance to the bull’s flank, ripping off her gloves to free her iron nails. As strong as any grappling hook.

Manon rose in the saddle, sliding a leg under her, body tensing to make the jump ahead. And she said to Abraxos, touching his spine, “I love you.”

It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.

Abraxos thrashed. As if he’d try to stop her.

Manon willed strength to her legs, to her arms, and sucked in a breath, perhaps her last—

Shooting from the heavens, faster than a star racing across the sky, a roaring form careened into Iskra’s bull.

Those jaws came free of Abraxos’s neck, and then they were falling, twisting.

Manon had enough sense to grab onto the saddle, to cling with everything she had as the wind threatened to tear her from him.

His blood streamed upward as they fell, but then his wings spread wide, and he was banking, flapping up. He steadied enough that Manon swung into the saddle, strapping herself in as she whirled to see what had occurred behind her. Who had saved them.

It was not Asterin.

It was not any of the Thirteen.

But Petrah Blueblood.

And behind the Heir to the Blueblood Witch-Clan, now slamming into Morath’s aerial legion from where they’d crept onto the battlefield from high above the clouds, were the Ironteeth.

Hundreds of them.

Hundreds of Ironteeth witches and their wyverns crashed into their own.

Petrah and Iskra pulled apart, the Blueblood Heir flapping toward Manon while Abraxos fought to stay upright.

Even with the wind, the battle, Manon still heard Petrah as the Blueblood Heir said to her, “A better world.”

Manon had no words. None, other than to look toward the city wall, to the force trying to enter through the river grates. “The walls—”

“Go.” Then Petrah pointed to where Iskra had paused in midair to gape at what unfolded. At the act of defiance and rebellion so unthinkable that many of the Morath Ironteeth were equally stunned. Petrah bared her teeth, revealing iron glinting in the watery sunlight. “She’s mine.”

Manon glanced between the city walls and Iskra, turning toward them once more. Two against one, and they would surely smash her to bits—

“Go,” Petrah snarled. And when Manon again hesitated, Petrah only said, “For Keelie.”

For the wyvern Petrah had loved—as Manon loved Abraxos. Who had fought for Petrah to her last breath, while Iskra’s bull slaughtered her.

So Manon nodded. “Darkness embrace you.”

Abraxos began soaring for the wall, his wingbeats unsteady, his breathing shallow.

He needed to rest, needed to see a healer—

Manon glanced behind her just as Petrah slammed into Iskra.

The two Heirs went tumbling toward the earth, clashing again, wyverns striking.

Manon couldn’t turn away if she wished.

Not as the wyverns peeled apart and then banked, executing perfect, razor-sharp turns that had them meeting once more, rising up into the sky, tails snapping as they locked talons.

Up and up, Iskra and Petrah flew. Wyverns slashing and biting, claws locking, jaws snapping. Up through the levels of fighting in the skies, up through Crochans and Ironteeth, up through the wisps of clouds.

A race, a mockery of the mating dance of the wyverns, to rise to the highest point of the sky and then plummet down to the earth as one.

Ironteeth halted their fighting. Crochans stilled in midair. Even on the battlefield, Morath soldiers looked up.

The two Heirs shot higher and higher and higher. And when they reached a place where even the wyverns could not draw enough air into their lungs, they tucked in their wings, locked claws, and plunged headfirst toward the earth.

Manon saw the trap before Iskra did.

Saw it the moment Petrah broke free, golden hair streaming as she drew her sword and her wyvern began to circle.

Tight, precise circles around Iskra and her bull as they plummeted.

So tight that Iskra’s bull did not have the space to open its wings. And when it tried, Petrah’s wyvern was there, tail or jaws snapping. When it tried, Petrah’s sword was there, slashing ribbons into the beast.

Iskra realized it then.

Realized it as they fell and fell and fell, and Petrah circled them, so fast that Manon wondered if the Blueblood Heir had been practicing these months, training for this very moment.

For the vengeance owed to her and Keelie.

The very world seemed to pause.

Petrah and her wyvern circled and circled, blood from Iskra’s wyvern raining upward, the beast more frantic with every foot closer to the earth.

But Petrah had not opened her wyvern’s wings, either. Had not pulled on the reins to bank her mount.

“Pull out,” Manon breathed. “Bank now.”

Petrah did not. Two wyverns dropped toward the earth, dark stars falling from the sky.

“Stop,” Iskra barked.

Petrah didn’t deign to respond.

They couldn’t bank at that speed. And soon Petrah wouldn’t be able to bank at all. Would break herself on the ground, right alongside Iskra.

“Stop!” Fear turned Iskra’s order into a sharp cry.

No pity for her kindled in Manon. None at all.

The ground neared, brutal and unyielding.

“You mad bitch, I said stop!”

Two hundred feet to the earth. Then a hundred. Manon couldn’t get down a breath.

Fifty feet.

And as the ground seemed to rise to meet them, Manon heard Petrah’s only words to Iskra like they had been carried on the wind.

“For Keelie.”

Petrah’s wyvern flung out its wings, banking sharper than any wyvern Manon had ever witnessed. Rising up, wing tip grazing the icy ground before it shot back into the skies.

Leaving Iskra and her bull to splatter on the earth.

The boom rumbled past Manon, thundering through the world.

Iskra and her bull did not rise again.

Abraxos gave a groan of pain, and Manon twisted in the saddle, her heart raging.

Iskra was dead. The Yellowlegs Heir was dead.

It didn’t fill her with the joy it should have. Not with that vulnerable grate on the city wall under attack.

So she snapped the reins, and Abraxos soared for the city walls, and then Sorrel and Vesta were beside her, Asterin coming in fast from behind. They flew low, beneath the Ironteeth now fighting Ironteeth, the Ironteeth still fighting Crochans. Aiming for the spots where the river flowed right up to their sides.

Already, a longboat had reached them. Already, arrows were flying from the small grate—guards frantic to keep the enemy at bay.

The Morath soldiers were so preoccupied with their target ahead that they did not look behind until Abraxos was upon them.

His blood streamed past her as he landed, snapping with talons and teeth and tail. Sorrel and Vesta took care of the others, the longboat soon in splinters.

But it was not enough. Not even close.

“The rocks,” Manon breathed, steering Abraxos toward the other side of the river.

He understood. Her heart strained to the point of agony at pushing him, but he soared to the other side of the river and hauled one of the smaller boulders back across. The Thirteen saw her plan and followed, swift and unfaltering.

Every one of his wingbeats was slower than the last. He lost height with each foot they crossed the river.

But then he made it, just as another group of Morath soldiers were trying to enter the small, vulnerable passage. Manon slammed the stone into the water before it. The Thirteen dropped their stones as well, the splashes carrying over the city walls.

More and more, each trip across the river slower than the last.

But then there were rocks piled up, breaking the surface. Then rising above it, blocking out all access to the river tunnel. Just high enough to seal it over—but not give a leg up to the Morath soldiers swarming on the other bank.

Abraxos’s breathing was labored, his head sagging.

Manon twisted in the saddle to order her Second to halt piling the rocks, but Asterin had already done so. Her Second pointed to the city walls above them. “Get inside!”

Manon didn’t waste time arguing. Snapping Abraxos’s reins, Manon sent him flying over the city walls, his blood raining on the soldiers fighting there.

He made it to the castle battlements before his strength gave out.

Before he hit the stones and slid, the boom of impact ringing across Orynth.

He slammed into the side of the castle itself, wings limp, and Manon was instantly freeing herself from the saddle as she screamed for a healer.

The wound to his neck was so much worse than she’d thought.

And still he’d fought for her. Stayed in the skies.

Manon shoved her hands against the deep bite wound, blood rushing past her fingers like water through a cracked dam. “Help is coming,” she told him, and found her voice to be a broken rasp. “They’re coming.”

The Thirteen landed, Sorrel sprinting into the castle to no doubt drag a healer out if she had to, and then there were eleven pairs of hands on Abraxos’s neck.

Staunching the flow of his blood. Pressing as one, to keep that precious blood inside him while the healer was found.

Manon couldn’t look at them, couldn’t do anything but close her eyes and pray to the Darkness, to the Three-Faced Mother as she held her hands over the bleeding gashes.

Racing footsteps sounded over the battlement stones, and then Sorrel was there beside Manon, her hands rising to cover his wounds, too.

An older woman unpacked a kit, warning them to keep applying pressure.

Manon didn’t bother to tell her that they weren’t going anywhere. None of them were.

Even while the battle raged in the skies and on the land below.

Lysandra could barely draw in breath, each flap of her wings heavier than the last as she aimed for the place where she’d seen Manon Blackbeak and her coven go crashing to the castle battlements.

She’d shifted into a wyvern herself, using the chaos of the Ironteeth rebels’ arrival as a distraction, but the draining of her magic had taken its toll. And the fighting, the wounds that even she could not staunch …

Lysandra spied the two figures hauling a familiar golden-haired warrior up the castle stairs just as she hit the battlements, the witches whirling toward her.

But Lysandra willed herself to shift, forcing her body to do it one last time, to return to that human form. She’d barely finished shoving on the pants and shirt she’d stashed in a pack by the castle wall when Ren Allsbrook and a Bane soldier reached the top of the battlements, a half-conscious Aedion between them.

There was so much blood on him.

Lysandra ran for them, ignoring her deep limp, the splintering pain rippling in her left leg, in her right shoulder. Down the battlements, a healer worked on the injured Abraxos, the Thirteen, coated in his blood, now standing vigil.

“What happened?” Lysandra skidded to a halt before Aedion, who managed to lift his head to give her a grim smile.

“Valg prince,” Ren said, his own body coated in blood, face pale with exhaustion.

Oh gods.

“He didn’t walk away,” Aedion rasped.

Ren snapped, “And you didn’t rest long enough, you stupid bastard. You tore your stitches.”

Lysandra ran her hands over Aedion’s face, his brow. “Let’s get you to a healer—”

“I’ve already seen one,” Aedion grunted, setting his feet on the ground and trying to straighten. “They brought me up here to rest.” As if such a thing was a ridiculous idea.

Ren indeed unlooped Aedion’s arm from around his shoulder. “Sit down, before you fall and crack your head on the stones.” Lysandra was inclined to agree, but then Ren said, “I’m heading back to the walls.”

“Wait.”

Ren turned toward her, but Lysandra didn’t speak until the Bane soldier helped Aedion to sit against the side of the castle itself.

“Wait,” she said again to Ren when he opened his mouth, her heart thundering, nausea coiling in her gut. She whistled, and Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen looked her way. She waved them over, her arm barking in pain.

“You’re hurt,” Aedion growled.

Lysandra ignored him as the witches stalked over, so much blood and gore on all of them.

She asked Manon, “Will Abraxos live?”

A shallow nod, the Witch-Queen’s golden eyes dull.

Lysandra didn’t have it in her for relief. Not with the news she’d flown back so desperately to deliver. She swallowed the bile in her throat, then pointed to the battlefield. To its dark, misty heart. “They have the witch tower up again. It’s moving this way. I just saw it myself. The witches have gathered atop it.”

Absolute silence.

And as if in answer, the tower erupted.

Not toward them, but skyward. A flash of light, a boom louder than thunder, and then a portion of the sky became empty.

Where Ironteeth, rebels and the faithful alike, had been fighting, where Crochans had been weaving between them, there was nothing.

Just ash.

Lysandra’s voice broke as the tower continued moving. A straight, unbreakable line toward Orynth. “They mean to blast apart the city.”

Hands and arms coated in Abraxos’s blood, Manon stared at the battlefield. Stared at where all those witches, Ironteeth and Crochan fighting for either army, had just … vanished.

Everything her grandmother had claimed about the witch towers was true.

And it was not Kaltain and her shadowfire that fueled that blast of destruction, but Ironteeth witches.

Young Ironteeth witches who offered themselves up. Who made the Yielding as they leaped into the mirror-lined pit within the tower.

An ordinary Yielding might take out twenty, thirty witches around her. Maybe more, if she was older and more powerful.

But a Yielding amplified by the power of those witch mirrors … One blast, and the castle looming above them would be rubble. Another blast, maybe two, and Orynth would follow it.

Ironteeth swarmed the tower, a vicious wall keeping the Crochans and rebel Ironteeth out.

A few Crochans indeed tried to break through those defenses.

Their red-clad bodies fell to the earth in pieces.

Petrah, now within the confines of her coven, even made a run for the tower. To rip it down.

They were beaten back by a swarm of Ironteeth.

The tower advanced. Closer and closer.

It would be within range soon. Another few minutes, and that tower would be close enough for its blast to reach the castle. To wipe away this army, this remnant of resistance, forever.

There would be no survivors. No second chances.

Manon turned to Asterin and said quietly, “I need another wyvern.”

Her Second only stared at her.

Manon repeated, “I need another wyvern.”

Abraxos was in no shape to fly. Wouldn’t be for hours or days.

Aedion Ashryver rasped, “No one is getting through that wall of Ironteeth.”

Manon bared her teeth. “I am.” She pointed at the shape-shifter. “You can carry me.”

Aedion snarled, “No.”

But Lysandra shook her head, sorrow and despair in her green eyes. “I can’t—the magic is drained. If I had an hour—”

“We have five minutes,” Manon snapped. She whirled to the Thirteen. “We have trained for this. To break apart enemy ranks. We can get through them. Take apart that tower.”

But they all looked at one another. Like they’d had some unspoken conversation and agreement.

The Thirteen stalked toward their own mounts. Sorrel clasped Manon’s shoulder as she passed, then climbed onto her wyvern’s back. Leaving Asterin before Manon.

Her Second, her cousin, her friend, smiled, eyes bright as stars. “Live, Manon.”

Manon blinked.

Asterin smiled wider, kissed Manon’s brow, and whispered again, “Live.”

Manon didn’t see the blow coming.

The punch to her gut, so hard and precise that it knocked the wind from her. Sent her to her knees.

She was struggling to get a breath down, to get up, when Asterin reached Narene and mounted the blue mare, gathering the reins. “Bring our people home, Manon.”

Manon knew then. What they were going to do.

Her legs failed her, her body failed her, as she tried to get to her feet. As she rasped, “No.”

But Asterin and the Thirteen were already in the skies.

Already in formation, that battering ram that had served them so well. Spearing toward the battlefield. Toward the approaching witch tower.

Manon clawed her way to the battlement ledge, and hauled herself to her feet. Leaned against the stones, panting, trying to get air into her lungs so she might find some way to get airborne, find some Crochan and steal her broom—

But there were no witches here. No brooms to be found. Abraxos remained unconscious.

Manon was distantly aware of the shifter and Prince Aedion coming up beside her, Lord Ren with them. Distantly aware of the silence that fell over the castle, the city, the walls.

As all of them watched that witch tower approach, their doom gathering within it.

As the Thirteen raced for it, raced against the wind and death itself.

A wall of Ironteeth rose up before the tower, blocking their path.

A hundred against twelve.

Inside the witch tower, close enough now that Manon could see through the open archway of the uppermost level, a young witch in black robes stepped toward the hollowed interior.

Stepped toward where Manon’s grandmother stood, gesturing to the pit below.

The Thirteen neared the enemy in their path and did not falter.

Manon dug her fingers into the stones so hard her iron nails cracked. Began shaking her head, something in her chest fracturing completely.

Fracturing as the Thirteen slammed into the Ironteeth blockade.

The maneuver was perfect. More flawless than any they’d done. A lethal phalanx that speared through the enemy’s ranks. Aiming right for the tower.

Seconds. They had seconds until that young witch summoned the power and unleashed the Yielding in a blast of blackness.

The Thirteen punched through the Ironteeth, spreading wide, pushing them to the side.

Clearing a path right to the tower as Asterin swept in from the back, aiming for the uppermost level.

Imogen went down first.

Then Lin.

And Ghislaine, her wyvern swarmed by their enemy.

Then Thea and Kaya, together, as they had always been.

Then the green-eyed demon twins, laughing as they went. Then the Shadows, Edda and Briar, arrows still firing. Still finding their marks.

Then Vesta, roaring her defiance to the skies.

And then Sorrel. Sorrel, who held the way open for Asterin, a solid wall for Manon’s Second as she soared in. A wall against whom the waves of Ironteeth broke and broke.

The young witch inside the tower began glowing black, steps from the pit.

Beside Manon, Lysandra and Aedion wrapped their arms around each other. Ready for the end heartbeats away.

And then Asterin was there. Asterin was barreling toward that open stretch of air, for the tower itself, bought with the lives of the Thirteen. With their final stand.

Manon could only watch, watch and watch and watch, shaking her head as if she could undo it, as Asterin removed her leathers, the shirt beneath.

As Asterin rose in the saddle, freed of the buckles, a dagger in hand as her wyvern aimed straight for the tower.

Manon’s grandmother turned then. Away from the pit, the acolyte about to leap inside and destroy them all.

Asterin hurled her dagger.

The blade flew true.

It plunged into the acolyte’s back, sending the witch sprawling to the stones. A foot away from the drop to the pit.

Asterin drew the twin swords from the sheaths at her hips and slammed her wyvern into the side of the tower. The crack of bone on rock echoed across the world.

But Asterin was already leaping. Already arching through the air, swords raised, wyvern tumbling away beneath, Narene’s body broken on impact.

Manon began screaming then.

Screaming, endless and wordless, as that thing in her chest, as her heart, shattered.

As Asterin landed in the witch tower’s open archway, swords swinging at the witches who rushed to kill her. They might as well have been blades of grass. Might as well have been mist, for how easily Asterin cut them down, one after another, driving forward, toward the Matron who had branded the letters on stark display across Asterin’s abdomen.

UNCLEAN

Twirling, twisting, blades flying, Asterin slaughtered her way toward Manon’s grandmother.

The High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan backed away, shaking her head. Her mouth moved, as if she breathed, “Asterin, no—”

But Asterin was already there.

And it was not darkness, but light—light, bright and pure as the sun on snow, that erupted from Asterin.

Light, as Asterin made the Yielding.

As the Thirteen, their broken bodies scattered around the tower in a near-circle, made the Yielding as well.

Light. They all burned with it. Radiated it.

Light that flowed from their souls, their fierce hearts as they gave themselves over to that power. Became incandescent with it.

Asterin tackled the Blackbeak Matron to the ground, Manon’s grandmother little more than a shadow against the brightness. Then little more than a scrap of hate and memory as Asterin exploded.

As she and the Thirteen Yielded completely, and blew themselves and the witch tower to smithereens.