Bronwen fell silent for a few steps. Manon had just entered the ring of Glennis’s hearth when the witch said, “We shouldn’t have bothered to hope, then.”
Manon had no answer, so she walked away, the Thirteen not giving Bronwen a passing glance.
Manon found Glennis stirring the coals of her hearth, the sacred fire in its center a bright lick of flame that needed no wood to burn. A gift from Brannon—a piece of Terrasen’s queen here.
Glennis said, “We must move out by midmorning tomorrow. It was decided: we are to return to our home-hearths.”
Manon only sat on the rock nearest the crone, leaving the Thirteen to scrounge up whatever food they could find. Dorian had remained back with the wyverns. The last she’d seen of him minutes ago, a few Crochans had been approaching him. Either for pleasure or information, Manon didn’t know. She doubted he’d share her bed again anytime soon. Especially if he remained hell-bent on going to Morath.
The thought didn’t sit entirely well.
Manon said to Glennis, “Do you think the Ironteeth are capable of change?”
“You would know that answer best.”
She did, and she wasn’t wholly certain she liked the conclusion she reached. “Did Rhiannon think we could be?” Did she think I could be?
Glennis’s eyes softened, a hint of sorrow gracing them as she added another log to the flame. “Your half sister was your opposite, in so many ways. And like your father in many regards. She was open, and honest, and spoke her feelings, regardless of the consequences. Brash, some called her. You might not know it from how they act now,” the crone said, smirking a bit, “but there were more than a few around these various hearths who disliked her. Who didn’t want to hear her lectures on our failing people, on how a better solution existed. How our peoples might find peace. Every day, she spoke loudly and to anyone who might listen about the possibility of a united Witch Kingdom. The possibility of a future where we did not need to hide, or be spread so thin. Many called her a fool. Thought her a fool especially when she went to look for you. To see if you agreed with her, despite what your bloody history suggested.”
She’d died for that dream, that possibility of a future. Manon had killed her for it.
Glennis said, “So did Rhiannon think the Ironteeth capable of change? She might have been the only witch in the Crochans who did, but she believed it with every shred of her being.” Her sagging throat bobbed. “She believed you two could rule it together—the Witch Kingdom. You would lead the Ironteeth, and she the Crochans, and together you would rebuild what fractured long ago.”
“And now there is just me.” Juggling both.
“Now it is just you.” Glennis’s stare turned direct, unforgiving. “A bridge between us.”
Manon accepted the plate of food Asterin handed her before the Second sat beside her.
Asterin said, “The Ironteeth will turn. You’ll see.”
Sorrel grunted from the nearest rock, disagreement written across her face.
Asterin gave Manon’s Third a vulgar gesture. “They’ll turn. I swear it.”
Glennis offered a small smile, but Manon said nothing as she dug into her food.
Hope, she had told Elide all those months ago.
But perhaps there would be none for them after all.
Dorian lingered by the wyverns to answer the questions of the Crochans who either did not want to or were perhaps too skittish to ask the Thirteen what had occurred in the Ferian Gap.
No, a host was not rallying behind them. No, no one had tracked them. Yes, Manon had spoken to the Ironteeth and asked them to join. Yes, they had gotten in and out alive. Yes, she had spoken as both Ironteeth and Crochan.
At least, Asterin had told him so on the long flight back here. Speaking to Manon, discussing their next steps … He didn’t bother. Not yet.
And when Asterin herself had gone quiet, he’d fallen deep into thought. Mulled over all he’d seen in the Ferian Gap, every twisted hall and chamber and pit that reeked of pain and fear.
What his father and Erawan had built. The sort of kingdom he’d inherited.
The Wyrdkeys stirred, whispering. Dorian ignored them and ran a hand over Damaris’s hilt. The gold remained warm despite the bitter cold.
A sword of truth, yes, but also reminder of what Adarlan had once been. What it might become again.
If he did not falter. Did not doubt himself. For whatever time he had left.
He could make it right. All of it. He could make it right.
Damaris heated in silent comfort and confirmation.
Dorian left the small crowd of Crochans and strode to a sliver of land overlooking a deadly plunge to a snow-and-rock-strewn chasm.
Brutal mountains rippled away in every direction, but he cast his gaze to the southeast. To Morath, looming far beyond sight.
He’d been able to shift into a raven that night in the Eyllwe forest. Now he supposed he only needed to learn how to fly.
He reached inward, to that eddy of raw power. Warmth bloomed in him, bones groaning, the world widening.
He opened his beak, and a throaty caw cracked from him.
Stretching out his sooty wings, Dorian began to practice.
CHAPTER 53
Someone had set fire to her thigh.
Not Aelin, because Aelin was gone, sealed in an iron sarcophagus and taken across the sea.
But someone had burned her down to the bone, so thoroughly that the slightest of movements on wherever she lay—a bed? A cot?—sent agony searing through her.
Lysandra cracked open her eyes, a low groan working its way up her parched throat.
“Easy,” a deep voice rumbled.
She knew that voice. Knew the scent—like a clear brook and new grass. Aedion.
She dragged her eyes, heavy and burning, toward the sound.
His shining hair hung limp, matted with blood. And those turquoise eyes were smudged with purple beneath—and utterly bleak. Empty.
A rough tent stood around them, the sole light provided by a lantern swinging in the bitter wind that crept in through the flaps. She’d been piled high with blankets, though he sat on an overturned bucket, still in his armor, with nothing to warm him.
Lysandra peeled her tongue off the roof of her mouth and listened to the world beyond the dim tent.
Chaos. Shouting. Some men screaming.
“We yielded Perranth,” Aedion said hoarsely. “We’ve been on the run for two days now. Another three days, and we’ll reach Orynth.”
Her brows narrowed slightly. She’d been unconscious for that long?
“We had to put you in a wagon with the other wounded. Tonight’s the first we’ve dared to stop.” The strong column of his throat bobbed. “A storm struck to the south. It’s slowed Morath down—just enough.”
She tried to swallow against the dryness in her throat. The last she remembered, she’d been facing those ilken, never so aware of the limitations of a mortal body, of how even Aelin, who seemed so tall as she swaggered through the world, was dwarfed by the creatures. Then those claws had ripped into her leg. And she’d managed to make a perfect swing. To take one of them down.
“You rallied our army,” he said. “We lost the battle, but they didn’t run in shame.”
Lysandra managed to pull a hand from beneath the blankets, and strained for the jug of water set beside the bed. Aedion was instantly in motion, filling a cup.
But as her fingers closed around it, she noted their color, their shape.
Her own hands. Her own arm.
“You … shifted,” Aedion said, noting her widened eyes. “While the healer was sewing up your leg. I think the pain … You shifted back into this body.”
Horror, roaring and nauseating, roiled through her. “How many saw?” Her first words, each as rough and dry as sandpaper.
“Don’t worry about it.”
She gulped down the water. “They all know?”
A solemn nod.
“What did you tell them—about Aelin?”
“That she has been off on a vital quest with Rowan and the others. And that it is so secret we do not dare speak of it.”
“Are the soldiers—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. But she could see it in his face. The strain.