Kingdom of Ash

Dorian began small.

First, by changing his eyes to black. Solid black, like the Valg. Then by turning his skin into an icy, pale shade, the sort that never saw sunlight. His hair, he left dark, but he managed to make his nose more crooked, his mouth thinner.

Not a full shift, but one done in pieces. Weaving the image together in himself, forming the tapestry of his new face, new skin, during the long, silent flight up the spine of the Fangs.

He hadn’t told Manon it was likely a suicide mission, too. He’d barely talked to her at all since the forest clearing. They’d left with the dawn, when she’d announced to Glennis and the Crochans what she planned to do. They could fly to the Ferian Gap and return to that hidden camp within the Fangs in four days, if they were lucky.

She’d asked the Crochans to meet them there. To trust her enough to return to their mountain camp and wait.

They had said yes. Maybe it was the grave the Thirteen had dug all day, but the Crochans said yes. A tentative trust—just this once.

So Dorian had flown with Asterin. Had used each frigid hour northward to slowly alter his body.

You want to go to Morath so badly, Manon had hissed again before they’d left, then let’s see if you can do it.

A test. One he was glad to excel at. If only to throw in her face.

Manon knew of a back door that only the wyverns took into the Northern Fang, along with any human grunts unlucky enough to be bound to this place. Asterin and Manon had left the Thirteen farther in the mountains before approaching, and even then they’d stopped far away enough from any scouts that they’d spent hours hiking on foot, taking Asterin’s mare with them. Abraxos had snarled and tugged on the reins, but Sorrel had held him firmly.

The two mammoth peaks flanking the Gap grew larger with each passed mile. Yet as he approached the southern side of the Fang, he hadn’t realized how massive, exactly, they were.

Large enough to hold an aerial host. To train and breed them.

This was what his father and Erawan had built. What Adarlan had become.

No wyverns circled in the skies, but their roars and shrieks echoed from the pass as he strode for the ancient gates that opened into the mountain itself. Behind him, led by a chain, Asterin’s blue mare followed.

Another trainer bringing back his mount after a trip for some air. The few guards—mortal men—at the gates barely blinked as he appeared around a rocky bend.

Dorian’s palms turned sweaty within his gloves. He prayed the shifting held.

He would have no way of knowing, though he supposed few here would recognize his natural face. He’d picked coloring close enough to his own that should the tapestry within himself unravel, someone might dismiss the altering of his skin tone, his eyes, as a trick of the light.

Narene huffed, yanking on the reins. Not wanting to go near this place.

He didn’t blame her. The reek from the mountain set his knees wobbling.

But he’d spent years schooling his expression against the headache-inducing perfumes his mother’s courtiers wore. How far away that world seemed—that palace of perfume and lace and lilting music. Had they not resisted Erawan, would he have allowed it to still exist? Had they bowed to him, would Erawan have maintained his ruse as Perrington and ruled as a mortal king?

Dorian’s legs burned, the hours of walking taking their toll. Manon and Asterin lurked nearby, hidden in the snow and stone. They no doubt marked his every move while he inched closer to the gates.

His parting words with Manon had been brief. Terse.

He’d dropped the two Wyrdkeys into her awaiting palm, the Amulet of Orynth clinking faintly against her iron nails. Only a fool would bring them into one of Erawan’s strongholds. “They might not be your priority,” Dorian said, “but they remain vital to our success.”

Manon’s eyes had narrowed as she pocketed the keys, utterly unfazed at holding in her jacket a power great enough to level kingdoms. “You think I’d toss them away like rubbish?”

Asterin suddenly found the snow to be in need of her careful attention.

Dorian shrugged, and unbuckled Damaris, the sword too fine for a mere wyvern trainer. He passed it to Manon, too. An ordinary dagger would be his only weapon—and the magic in his veins. “If I don’t come back,” he said while she tied the ancient blade to her belt, “the keys must go to Terrasen.” It was the only place he could think of—even if Aelin wasn’t there to take them.

“You’ll come back,” Manon said. It sounded like more of a threat than anything.

Dorian smirked. “Would you miss me if I didn’t?”

Manon didn’t reply. He didn’t know why he expected her to.

He’d taken all of a step, when Asterin clasped his shoulder. “In and out, quick as you can,” she warned him. “Take care of Narene.” Worry indeed shone in the Second’s gold-flecked black eyes.

Dorian bowed his head. “With my life,” he promised as he approached her mount and grasped the dangling reins. He didn’t fail to miss the gratitude that softened Asterin’s features. Or that Manon had already turned away from him.

A fool to start down this path with her. He should have known better.

The guards’ faces became clear. Dorian embraced the portrait of a tired, bored handler.

He waited for the questioning, but it never came.

They simply waved him through, equally tired and bored. And cold.

Asterin had given him a layout of the Northern Fang and the Omega across from it, so he knew to turn left upon entering the towering hallway. Wyvern bellows and grunts sounded all around, and that rotting scent stuffed itself up his nose.

But he found the stables precisely where Asterin said they’d be, the blue mare patient while he loosely tied her chains to the anchor in the wall.

Dorian left Narene with a soothing pat to her neck, and went to see what the Ferian Gap might reveal.

The hours that passed were some of the longest of Manon’s existence.

From anticipation, she told herself. Of what she had to do.

Abraxos, unsurprisingly, found them within an hour, his reins sliced from the struggle he’d no doubt waged and won with Sorrel. He waited, however, beside Manon in silence, wholly focused upon the gate where Dorian and Narene had vanished.

Time dripped by. The king’s sword was a constant weight at her side.

She cursed herself for needing to prove—to him, to herself—that she refused to let him go into Morath for practical, ordinary reasons. Erawan wasn’t at the Ferian Gap. It’d be safer.

Somewhat. But if the Matrons were there …

That was why he’d gone. To learn if they were. To see if Petrah truly commanded the host there, and how many Ironteeth were present.

He had not been trained as a spy, but he’d grown up in a court where people wielded smiles and clothes like weapons. He knew how to blend in, how to listen. How to make people see what they wished to see.

She’d sent Elide into the dungeons of Morath, Darkness damn her. Sending the King of Adarlan into the Ferian Gap was no different.

It didn’t stop her breath from escaping when Abraxos stiffened, scanning the sky. As if he heard something they couldn’t.

And it was the joy that sparked in her mount’s eyes that told her.

Moments later, Narene sailed toward them, making a lazy path over the mountains, a dark-haired, pale-skinned rider atop her. He’d truly been able to change parts of himself. Had made his face nearly unrecognizable. And kept it that way.

Asterin rushed toward the mare, and even Manon blinked as her Second threw her arms around Narene’s neck. Holding her tight. The mare only leaned her head against Asterin’s back and huffed.

Dorian slid off the mare, leaving the reins dangling.

“Well?” Manon demanded.

His eyes—dark as a Valg’s—flashed. She didn’t try to explain that her knees had been shaking. Still buckled while she handed him his sword, then the two keys, her nails grazing his gloved hand.

Dorian’s eyes lightened to that crushing sapphire, his skin becoming golden once more. “The Matrons are not there. Only Petrah Blueblood, and about three hundred Ironteeth from all three clans.” His mouth curved in a cruel half smile, cold as the peaks around them. Damning. “The way is clear, Majesty.”

The patrols at the Ferian Gap spotted them miles away.

The Thirteen were still allowed to land in the Omega.

Manon had left Dorian in the small pass where they’d gathered the Thirteen. If they did not return within a day, he was to do what he wished. Go to Morath and Erawan’s awaiting embrace, if he was that reckless.

There had been no good-byes between them.

Manon kept her heartbeat steady as she sat atop Abraxos just inside the cavernous mouth leading into the Omega, aware of every enemy eye on them, both at their front and back. “I wish to speak to Petrah Blueblood,” she declared to the hall.

A young voice answered “I assumed so.”

The Blueblood Heir appeared through the nearest archway, an iron band on her brow, blue robes flowing.

Manon inclined her head. “Gather your host in this hall.”

Manon hadn’t dwelled long on what she’d say.

And as the three hundred Ironteeth witches filed into the hall, some coming off their patrols, Manon half wondered if she should have. They watched her, watched the Thirteen, with a wary disdain.

Their disgraced Wing Leader; their fallen Heir.

When all were gathered, Petrah, still standing in the doorway where she’d appeared, merely said, “My life debt for an audience, Blackbeak.”

Manon swallowed, her tongue as dry as paper. Seated atop Abraxos, she could see every shifting movement in the crowd, the wide eyes or hands gripping swords.

“I will not tell you the particulars of who I am,” Manon said at last. “For I think you have already heard them.”

“Crochan bitch,” someone spat.

Manon set her eyes on the Blackbeaks, stone-faced where the others bristled with hatred. It was for them she spoke, for them she had come here.

“All my life,” Manon said, her voice wavering only slightly, “I have been fed a lie.”

“We don’t have to listen to this trash,” another sentinel spat.

Asterin snarled at Manon’s side, and the others fell silent. Even disgraced, the Thirteen were deadly.

Manon went on, “A lie, about who we are, what we are. That we are monsters, and proud to be.” She ran a finger over the scrap of red fabric binding her braid. “But we were made into them. Made,” she repeated. “When we might be so much more.”

Silence fell.

Manon took that as encouragement enough. “My grandmother does not plan to only reclaim the Wastes when this war is done. She plans to rule the Wastes as High Queen. Your only queen.”

A murmur at that. At the words, at the betrayal Manon made in revealing her Matron’s private plans.

“There will be no Bluebloods, or Yellowlegs, not as you are now. She plans to take the weapons you have built here, plans to use our Blackbeak riders, and make you into our subjects. And if you do not bend to her, you will not exist at all.”

Manon took a breath. Another.

“We have known only bloodshed and violence for five hundred years. We will know it for another five hundred yet.”

“Liar,” someone shouted. “We fly to glory.”

But Asterin moved, unbuttoning her leather jacket, then hoisting up her white shirt. Rising in the stirrups to bare her scarred, brutalized abdomen. “She does not lie.”

UNCLEAN

There, the word remained stamped. Would always be stamped.

“How many of you,” Asterin called out, “have been similarly branded? By your Matron, by your coven leader? How many of you have had your stillborn witchlings burned before you might hold them?”

The silence that fell now was different from before. Shaking—shuddering.

Manon glanced at the Thirteen to find tears in Ghislaine’s eyes as she took in the brand on Asterin’s womb. Tears in the eyes of all of them, who had not known.

And it was for those tears, which Manon had never seen, that she faced the host again. “You will be killed in this war, or after it. And you will never see our homeland again.”

“What is it that you want, Blackbeak?” Petrah asked from the archway.

“Ride with us,” Manon breathed. “Fly with us. Against Morath. Against the people who would keep you from your homeland, your future.” Murmuring broke out again. Manon pushed ahead, “An Ironteeth-Crochan alliance. Perhaps one to break our curse at last.”

Again, that shuddering silence. Like a storm about to break.

Asterin sat back in the saddle, but kept her shirt open.

“The choice of how our people’s future shall be shaped is yours,” Manon told each of the witches assembled, all the Blackbeaks who might fly to war and never return. “But I will tell you this.” Her hands shook, and she fisted them on her thighs. “There is a better world out there. And I have seen it.”

Even the Thirteen looked toward her now.

“I have seen witch and human and Fae dwell together in peace. And it is not a weakness to do so, but a strength. I have met kings and queens whose love for their kingdoms, their peoples, is so great that the self is secondary. Whose love for their people is so strong that even in the face of unthinkable odds, they do the impossible.”

Manon lifted her chin. “You are my people. Whether my grandmother decrees it so or not, you are my people, and always will be. But I will fly against you, if need be, to ensure that there is a future for those who cannot fight for it themselves. Too long have we preyed on the weak, relished doing so. It is time that we became better than our foremothers.” The words she had given the Thirteen months ago. “There is a better world out there,” she said again. “And I will fight for it.” She turned Abraxos away, toward the plunge behind them. “Will you?”

Manon nodded to Petrah. Eyes bright, the Heir only nodded back. They would be permitted to leave as they had arrived: unharmed.

So Manon nudged Abraxos, and he leaped into the sky, the Thirteen following suit.

Not a child of war.

But of peace.