There—it was there that Manon would strike first. The one who now wondered if they had somehow made a grave mistake in coming here.
A mistake that would cost them what they had come to protect.
A mistake that would cost them this war.
And their lives.
For Cresseida saw the steadiness of Manon’s breathing. Saw the clear conviction in her eyes. Saw the lack of fear in her heart as Manon advanced another step.
Manon smiled at the Blueblood Matron as if to say yes.
“You did not kill me then,” Manon said to her grandmother. “I do not think you will be able to now.”
“We’ll see about that,” her grandmother hissed, and charged.
Manon was ready.
An upward swing of Wind-Cleaver met her grandmother’s first two blows, and Manon ducked the third. Turning right into the onslaught of the Yellowlegs Matron, who swept up with unnatural speed, feet almost flying over the snow, and slashed for Manon’s exposed back.
Manon deflected the crone’s assault, sending the witch darting back. Just as Cresseida launched herself at Manon.
Cresseida was not a trained fighter. Not as the Blackbeak and Yellowlegs Matrons were. Too many years spent reading entrails and scanning the stars for the answers to the Three-Faced Goddess’s riddles.
A duck to the left had Manon easily evading the sweep of Cresseida’s nails, and a countermove had Manon driving her elbow into the Blueblood Matron’s nose.
Cresseida stumbled. The Yellowlegs Matron and her grandmother attacked again.
So fast. Their three assaults had happened in the span of a few blinks.
Manon kept her feet under her. Saw where one Matron moved and the other left a dangerous gap exposed.
She was not a broken-spirited Wing Leader unsure of her place in the world.
She was not ashamed of the truth before her.
She was not afraid.
Manon’s grandmother led the attack, her maneuvers the deadliest.
It was from her that the first slice of pain appeared. A rip of iron nails through Manon’s shoulder.
But Manon swung her sword, again and again, iron on steel ringing out across the icy peaks.
No, she was not afraid at all.
Dorian had never seen fighting like what unfolded before him. Had never seen anything that fast, that lethal.
Had never seen anyone move like Manon, a whirlwind of steel and iron.
Three against one—the odds weren’t in her favor. Not when standing against one of them had left Manon on death’s threshold months earlier.
Yet where they struck, she was already gone. Already parrying.
She did not land many blows, but rather kept them at bay.
Yet they did not land many, either.
Dorian’s magic writhed, seeking a way out, to stop this. But she had ordered him to stand down. And he’d obey.
Around him, the Crochans thrummed with fear and dread. Either for the fight unfolding or the three Matrons who had found them.
But Glennis did not tremble. At her side Bronwen hummed with the energy of one eager to leap into the fight.
Manon and the High Witches sprang apart, breathing heavily. Blue blood leaked down Manon’s shoulder, and small slices peppered the three Matrons.
Manon still remained on the far side of the line she’d drawn. Still held it.
The dark-haired witch in voluminous black robes spat blue blood onto the snow. Manon’s grandmother. “Pathetic. As pathetic as your mother.” A sneer toward Glennis. “And your father.”
The snarl that ripped from Manon’s throat rang across the mountains themselves.
Her grandmother let out a crow’s caw of a laugh. “Is that all you can do, then? Snarl like a dog and swing your sword like some human filth? We will wear you down eventually. Better to kneel now and die with some honor intact.”
Manon only flung out an iron-tipped hand behind her, fingers splaying in demand as her eyes remained fixed on the Matrons.
Dorian reached for Damaris, but Bronwen moved first.
The Crochan tossed her sword, steel flashing over snow and sun.
Manon’s fingers closed on the hilt, the blade singing as she whipped it around to face the High Witches again. “Rhiannon Crochan held the gates for three days and three nights, and she did not kneel before you, even at the end.” A slash of a smile. “I think I shall do the same.”
Dorian could have sworn the sacred flame burning to their left flared brighter. Could have sworn Glennis sucked in a breath. That every Crochan watching did the same.
Manon’s knees bent, swords rising. “Let us finish what was started then, too.”
She attacked, blades flashing. Her grandmother conceded step after step, the other two Matrons failing to break past her defenses.
Gone was the witch who had slept and wished for death. Gone was the witch who had raged at the truth that had torn her to shreds.
And in her place, fighting as if she were the very wind, unfaltering against the Matrons, stood someone Dorian had not yet met.
Stood a queen of two peoples.
The Yellowlegs Matron launched an offensive that had Manon yielding a step, then another, swords rising against each slashing blow.
Yielding only those few steps, and nothing more.
Because Manon with conviction in her heart, with utter fearlessness in her eyes, was wholly unstoppable.
The Yellowlegs Matron pushed Manon close enough to the line that her heels nearly touched it. The other two witches had fallen back, as if waiting to see what might happen.
For a hunched crone, the Yellowlegs witch was the portrait of nightmares. Worse than Baba Yellowlegs had ever been. Her feet barely seemed to touch the ground, and her curved iron nails drew blood wherever they slashed.
Manon’s swords blocked blow after blow, but she made no move to advance. To push back, though Dorian saw several chances to do so.
Manon took the slashings that left her arm and side bleeding. But she yielded no further ground. A wall against which the Yellowlegs Matron could not advance. The crone let out a snarl, attacking again and again, senseless and raging.
Dorian saw the trap the moment it happened.
Saw the side that Manon left open, the bait laid on a silver platter.
Worked into a fury, the Yellowlegs Matron didn’t think twice before she lunged, claws out.
Manon was waiting.
Lost in her bloodlust, the Yellowlegs Matron’s horrible face lit with triumph as she went for the easy killing blow that would rip out Manon’s heart.
The Blackbeak Matron barked in warning, but Manon was already moving.
Just as those curved claws tore through leather and skin, Manon twisted to the side and brought down Wind-Cleaver upon the Yellowlegs Matron’s outstretched neck.
Blue blood sprayed upon the snow.
Dorian did not look away this time at the head that tumbled to the ground. At the brown-robed body that fell with it.
The two remaining Matrons halted. None of the Crochans behind Dorian so much as spoke as Manon stared down pitilessly at the bleeding torso of the Yellowlegs Matron.
No one seemed to breathe at all as Manon plunged Bronwen’s sword into the icy earth beneath and bent to take the crown of stars from the Yellowlegs witch’s fallen head.
He had never seen a crown like it.
A living, glowing thing that glittered in her hand. As if nine stars had been plucked from the heavens and set to shine along the simple silver band.
The crown’s light danced over Manon’s face as she lifted it above her head and set it upon her unbound white hair.
Even the mountain wind stopped.
Yet a phantom breeze shifted the strands of Manon’s hair as the crown glowed bright, the white stars shining with cores of cobalt and ruby and amethyst.
As if it had been asleep for a long, long time. And now awoke.
That phantom wind pulled Manon’s hair to the side, silver strands brushing across her face.
And beside him, around him, the Thirteen touched two fingers to their brow in deference.
In allegiance to the queen who stared down the two remaining High Witches.
The Crochan Queen, crowned anew.
The sacred fire leaped and danced, as if in joyous welcome.
Manon scooped up Bronwen’s sword, lifting it and Wind-Cleaver, and said to the Blueblood Matron, the witch appearing barely a few years older than Manon herself, “Go.”
The Blueblood witch blinked, eyes wide with what could only be fear and dread.