Manon could hardly move fast enough to avoid the nails ripping into her face, her neck, her gut, yielding step after step after step.
She only had to do this long enough to buy the Thirteen time to get to the skies.
Her grandmother slashed for her cheek, and Manon blocked the blow with an elbow, slamming the joint down hard into her grandmother’s forearm. The witch barked in pain, and Manon spun out of reach, circling again.
“It is not so easy to strike now is it, Manon Blackbeak?” her grandmother panted as they surveyed each other. No one around them dared move; the Thirteen had vanished—every last one of them. She almost sagged with relief. Now to keep her grandmother occupied long enough to avoid her giving the onlookers the order to pursue. “So much easier with a blade, the weapon of those cowardly humans,” her grandmother seethed. “With the teeth, the nails … You have to mean it.”
They lunged for each other, some fundamental part of her cracking with every slash and swipe and block. They darted apart again.
“As pathetic as your mother,” her grandmother spat. “Perhaps you’ll die like her, too—with my teeth at your throat.”
Her mother, whom she’d killed coming out of, who had died birthing her—
“For years, I tried to train her weakness out of you.” Her grandmother spat blue blood onto the stones. “For the good of the Ironteeth, I made you into a force of nature, a warrior equal to none. And this is how you repay me—”
Manon didn’t let the words unnerve her. She went for the throat, only to feint and slash.
Her grandmother barked in pain—genuine pain—as Manon’s claws shredded her shoulder.
Blood showered her hand, flesh clinging to her nails—
Manon staggered back, bile burning her throat.
She saw the blow coming, but still didn’t have time to stop it as her grandmother’s right hand slashed across her belly.
Leather, cloth, and skin ripped. Manon screamed.
Blood, hot and blue, rushed out of her before her grandmother had darted back.
Manon shoved a hand against her abdomen, pushing against the shredded skin. Blood dribbled through her fingers, splattering onto the stones.
High above, a wyvern roared.
Abraxos.
The Blackbeak Matron laughed, flicking Manon’s blood off her nails. “I’m going to dice your wyvern into tiny pieces and feed him to the hounds.”
Despite the agony in her belly, Manon’s vision honed. “Not if I kill you first.”
Her grandmother chuckled, still circling, assessing. “You are stripped of your title as Wing Leader. You are stripped of your title as heir.” Step after step, closer and closer, an adder looping around its prey. “From this day, you are Manon Witch Killer, Manon Kin Slayer.”
The words pelted her like stones. Manon backed toward the balcony rail, pushing against the wound in her stomach to keep the blood in. The crowd parted like water around them. Just a little longer—just another minute or two.
Her grandmother paused, blinking toward the open doors, as if realizing the Thirteen had vanished. Manon attacked again before she could give the order to pursue.
Swipe, lunge, slash, duck—they moved in a whirlwind of iron and blood and leather.
But as Manon twisted away, the wounds in her stomach gave more, and she stumbled.
Her grandmother didn’t miss a beat. She struck.
Not with her nails or teeth, but with her foot.
The kick to Manon’s stomach set her screaming, a roar again answered by Abraxos, locked high above. Soon to die, as she would. She prayed the Thirteen would spare him, let him join them wherever they would flee.
Manon slammed into the stone rail of the balcony and crumpled to the black tiles. Blue blood leaked from her, staining the thighs of her pants.
Her grandmother slowly approached, panting.
Manon grabbed the balcony rail, hauling herself to her feet one last time.
“Do you want to know a secret, Kin Slayer?” her grandmother breathed.
Manon slumped against the balcony rail, the drop below endless and a relief. They’d take her to the dungeons—either use her for Erawan’s breeding, or torture her until she begged for death. Maybe both.
Her grandmother spoke so softly that even Manon could barely hear over her own gasps for air. “As your mother labored to push you out, she confessed who your father was. She said you … you would be the one who broke the curse, who saved us. She said your father was a rare-born Crochan Prince. And she said that your mixed blood would be the key.” Her grandmother lifted her nails to her mouth and licked off Manon’s blue blood.
No.
No.
“So you have been a Kin Slayer your whole life,” her grandmother purred. “Hunting down those Crochans—your relatives. When you were a witchling, your father searched the lands for you. He never stopped loving your mother. Loving her,” she spat. “And loving you. So I killed him.”
Manon gazed at the drop below, the death that beckoned.
“His despair was delicious when I told him what I’d done to her. What I would make you into. Not a child of peace—but war.”
Made.
Made.
Made.
Manon’s iron nails chipped on the dark stone of the balcony rail. And then her grandmother said the words that broke her.
“Do you know why that Crochan was spying in the Ferian Gap this spring? She had been sent to find you. After a hundred and sixteen years of searching, they had finally learned the identity of their dead prince’s lost child.”
Her grandmother’s smile was hideous in its absolute triumph. Manon willed strength to her arms, to her legs.
“Her name was Rhiannon, after the last Crochan Queen. And she was your half sister. She confessed it to me upon our tables. She thought it’d save her life. And when she saw what you had become, she chose to let the knowledge die with her.”
“I am a Blackbeak,” Manon rasped, blood choking her words.
Her grandmother took a step, smiling as she crooned, “You are a Crochan. The last of their royal bloodline with the death of your sister at your own hand. You are a Crochan Queen.”
Absolute silence from the witches gathered.
Her grandmother reached for her. “And you’re going to die like one by the time I’m finished with you.”
Manon didn’t let her grandmother’s nails touch her.
A boom sounded nearby.
Manon used the strength she’d gathered in her arms, her legs, to hurl herself onto the stone ledge of the balcony.
And roll off it into the open air.
Air and rock and wind and blood—
Manon slammed into a warm, leathery hide, screaming as pain from her wounds blacked out her vision.
Above, somewhere far away, her grandmother was shrieking orders—
Manon dug her nails into the leathery hide, burying her claws deep. Beneath her, a bark of discomfort she recognized. Abraxos.
But she held firm, and he embraced the pain as he banked to the side, swerving out of Morath’s shadow—
She felt them around her.
Manon managed to open her eyes, flicking the clear lid against the wind into place.
Edda and Briar, her Shadows, were now flanking her. She knew they’d been there, waiting in the shadows with their wyverns, had heard every one of those damning last words. “The others have flown ahead. We were sent to retrieve you,” Edda, the eldest of the sisters, shouted over the roar of the wind. “Your wound—”
“It’s shallow,” Manon snapped, forcing the pain aside to focus on the task at hand. She was on Abraxos’s neck, the saddle a few feet behind her. One by one, every breath an agony, she released her nails from his skin and slid toward the saddle. He evened out his flight, offering smooth air to buckle herself into the harness.
Blood leaked from the gouges in her belly—soon the saddle was slick with it.
Behind them, several roars set the mountains
trembling.
“We can’t let them get to the others,” Manon managed to say.
Briar, black hair streaming behind her, swept in closer. “Six Yellowlegs on our tail. From Iskra’s personal coven. Closing in fast.”
With a score to settle, they’d no doubt been given free rein to slaughter them.
Manon surveyed the peaks and ravines of the mountains around them.