“Why?” A glance at the pouch of money clenched in Elide’s hands.
“I heard what they’re doing with the Yellowlegs. My uncle—if I have … if I have your blood, I can’t let him use me like that.”
“Running away because of Vernon … At least now we know you’re not his spy, witchling.” The witch grinned, and it was almost as terrifying as one of Manon’s smiles.
That was why she’d ambushed her with the knowledge: to see where Elide would run to after.
“Don’t call me that,” Elide breathed.
“Is it so bad to be a witch?” Asterin spread her fingers, appreciating her iron nails in the dim light.
“I’m not a witch.”
“What are you, then?”
“Nothing—I’m nobody. I’m nothing.”
The witch clicked her tongue. “Everybody is something. Even the most common witch has her coven. But who has your back, Elide Lochan?”
“No one.” Only Anneith, and Elide sometimes thought even that could be her imagination.
“There is no such thing as a witch being alone.”
“I’m not a witch,” she said again. And once she got away, once she left this festering empire, she’d be no one at all.
“No, she’s certainly not a witch,” Manon snapped from the doorway, gold eyes cold. “Start talking. Now.”
Manon had endured a fairly shitty day, which was saying something, given her century of existence.
The Yellowlegs coven had been implanted in a subterranean chamber of the Keep, the room carved into the mountain rock itself. Manon had taken one sniff of that bed-lined room and walked right back out again. The Yellowlegs didn’t want her there, anyway, while they were cut open by men, while that bit of stone was sewn inside them. No, a Blackbeak had no place in a room where Yellowlegs were vulnerable, and she’d likely make them vicious and lethal as a result.
So she’d gone to training, where Sorrel had kicked her ass in hand-to-hand combat. Then there had been not one, not two, but three different fights to break apart between the various covens, including the Bluebloods, who were somehow excited about the Valg. They had gotten their noses broken by suggesting to a Blackbeak coven that it was their divine duty not just to go through with the implantation but also to go so far as to physically mate with the Valg.
Manon didn’t blame her Blackbeaks for shutting down the talk. But she’d had to dole out equal punishment between the two groups.
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.”