And then this. Asterin and Elide in her rooms, the girl wide-eyed and reeking of terror, her Third seeming to try to convince the girl to join their ranks.
“Start talking now.”
Temper—she knew she should rein it in, but the room smelled like human fear, and this was her space.
Asterin stepped in front of the girl. “She’s not a spy for Vernon, Manon.”
Manon did them the honor of listening as Asterin told her what had happened. When she finished, Manon crossed her arms. Elide was cowering by the bathing chamber door, the bag of coins still gripped in her hands.
“Where does the line get drawn?” Asterin said quietly.
Manon flashed her teeth. “Humans are for eating and rutting and bleeding. Not helping. If she’s got witch-blood in her, it’s a drop. Not enough to make her our own.” Manon stalked toward her Third. “You are one of the Thirteen. You have duties and obligations, and yet this is how you spend your time?”
Asterin held her ground. “You said to keep an eye on her, and I did. I got to the bottom of things. She’s barely past being a witchling. You want Vernon Lochan bringing her down to that chamber? Or over to one of the other mountains?”
“I don’t give a shit what Vernon does with his human pets.”
But once the words were out, they tasted foul.
“I brought her here so you could know—”
“You brought her here as a prize to win back your position.”
Elide was still trying her best to vanish through the wall.
Manon snapped her fingers in the girl’s direction. “I’m escorting you back to your room. Keep the money, if you want. My Third has an aerie full of wyvern shit to clean out.”
“Manon,” Asterin began.
“Wing Leader,” Manon growled. “When you’ve stopped acting like a simpering mortal, you may again address me as Manon.”
“And yet you tolerate a wyvern who sniffs flowers and makes puppy eyes at this girl.”
Manon almost struck her—almost went for her throat. But the girl was watching, listening. So Manon grabbed Elide by the arm and yanked her toward the door.
Elide kept her mouth shut as Manon led her down the stairs. She didn’t ask how the Wing Leader knew where her room was.
She wondered if Manon would kill her once they reached it.
Wondered if she’d beg and grovel for mercy when the time came.
But after a while, the witch said, “If you try to bribe anyone here, they’ll just turn you in. Save the money for when you run.”
Elide hid the shaking in her hands and nodded.
The witch gave her a sidelong glance, her golden eyes shimmering in the torchlight. “Where the hell would you have run to, anyway? There’s nothing within a hundred miles. The only way you would stand a chance is if you got on the …” Manon snorted. “The supply wagons.”
Elide’s heart sank. “Please—please don’t tell Vernon.”
“Don’t you think if Vernon wanted to use you like that, he’d have done it already? And why make you play servant?”
“I don’t know. He likes games; he might be waiting for one of you to confirm what I am.”
Manon fell silent again—until they rounded a corner.
Elide’s stomach dropped down to her feet when she beheld who stood in front of her door as if she’d summoned him by mere thought.
Vernon was wearing his usual vibrant tunic—today a Terrasen green—and his brows rose at the sight of Manon and Elide.
“What are you doing here?” Manon snapped, coming to a stop in front of Elide’s little door.
Vernon smiled. “Visiting my beloved niece, of course.”
Though Vernon was taller, Manon seemed to look down her nose at him, seemed bigger than him as she kept her grip on Elide’s arm and said, “For what purpose?”
“I was hoping to see how you two were getting along,” her uncle purred. “But …” He looked at the hand Manon had around Elide’s wrist. And the door beyond them. “It seems I needn’t have worried.”
It took Elide longer to catch it than Manon, who bared her teeth and said, “I’m not in the habit of forcing my servants.”
“Only slaughtering men like pigs, correct?”
“Their deaths equate to their behavior in life,” Manon replied with a kind of calm that made Elide wonder whether she should start running.
Vernon let out a low laugh. He was so unlike her father, who had been warm and handsome and broad-shouldered—a year past thirty when he was executed by the king. Her uncle had watched that execution and smiled. And then come to tell her all about it.
“Allying yourself with the witches?” Vernon asked Elide. “How ruthless of you.”
Elide lowered her eyes to the ground. “There is nothing to ally against, Uncle.”
“Perhaps I kept you too sheltered for all those years, if you believe that’s so.”
Manon cocked her head. “Say your piece and be gone.”
“Careful, Wing Leader,” Vernon said. “You know precisely where your power ends.”
Manon shrugged. “I also know precisely where to bite.”
Vernon grinned and bit the air in front of him. His amusement honed itself into something ugly as he turned to Elide. “I wanted to check on you. I know how hard today was.”
Her heart stopped. Had someone told him about the conversation in the kitchens? Had there been a spy in the tower just now?
“Why would it be hard for her, human?” Manon’s stare was as cold as iron.
“This date is always difficult for the Lochan family,” Vernon said. “Cal Lochan, my brother, was a traitor, you know. A rebel leader for the few months after Terrasen was inherited by the king. But he was caught like the rest of them and put down. Difficult for us to curse his name and still miss him, isn’t it, Elide?”
It hit her like a blow. How had she forgotten? She hadn’t said the prayers, hadn’t beseeched the gods to look after him. Her father’s death-day, and she had forgotten him, as surely as the world had forgotten her. Keeping her head down wasn’t an act now, even with the Wing Leader’s eyes on her.
“You’re a useless worm, Vernon,” Manon said. “Go spew your nonsense elsewhere.”
“Whatever would your grandmother say,” Vernon mused, stuffing his hands into his pockets, “about such … behavior?” Manon’s growl chased after him as he sauntered down the hall.
Manon flung open Elide’s door, revealing a room barely big enough for a cot and a pile of clothes. She hadn’t been permitted to bring any belongings, none of the keepsakes that Finnula had hidden all these years: the small doll her mother had brought back from a trip to the Southern Continent, her father’s seal ring, her mother’s ivory comb—the first gift Cal Lochan had given Marion the Laundress while courting her. Apparently, Marion the Ironteeth Witch would have been a better name.
Manon shut the door with a backward kick.
Too small—the room was too small for two people, especially when one of them was ancient and dominated the space just by breathing. Elide slumped onto the cot, if only to put more air between her and Manon.
The Wing Leader stared at her for a long moment, and then said, “You can choose, witchling. Blue or red.”
“What?”
“Does your blood run blue or red? You decide. If it runs blue, it turns out I have jurisdiction over you. Little shits like Vernon can’t do as they will to my kind—not without my permission. If your blood runs red … Well, I don’t particularly care about humans, and seeing what Vernon does with you might be entertaining.”
“Why would you offer this?”
Manon gave her a half smile, all iron teeth and no remorse. “Because I can.”
“If my blood runs … blue, won’t it confirm what Vernon suspects? Won’t he act?”
“A risk you’ll have to take. He can try to act on it—and learn where it gets him.”
A trap. And Elide was the bait. Claim her heritage as a witch, and if Vernon took her to be implanted, Manon could have the grounds to kill him.
She had a feeling Manon might hope for that. It was not just a risk; it was a suicidal, stupid risk. But better than nothing.
The witches, who lowered their eyes for no man … Until she could get away, perhaps she might learn a thing or two about what it was like to have fangs and claws. And how to use them.
“Blue,” she whispered. “My blood runs blue.”
“Good choice, witchling,” Manon said, and the word was a challenge and an order. She turned away, but glanced over her shoulder. “Welcome to the Blackbeaks.”
Witchling. Elide stared after her. She had likely just made the biggest mistake of her life, but … it was strange.
Strange, that feeling of belonging.
26
“I’m not about to keel over dead,” Aedion said to his cousin, his queen, as she helped him walk around the roof. This was their third rotation, the moon shimmering on the tiles beneath them. It was an effort to keep upright, not from the steady throb in his side, but from the fact that Aelin—Aelin—was beside him, an arm around his waist.
A cool night breeze laced with the plume of smoke on the horizon wrapped around him, chilling the sweat on his neck.