Kingdom of Ash

River, he signaled. Enemy.

Manon cast her gaze to the earth far below. And saw what Morath was covertly trying to do.

“To the walls!” she called to the Thirteen, still a hammer behind her, and made to steer Abraxos toward the city, tugging on the reins to have him fly high above the fray.

Asterin’s warning cry reached her a heartbeat too late.

Shooting from below, a predator ambushing prey, the massive bull aimed right for Abraxos.

Manon knew the rider as the bull slammed into Abraxos, claws and teeth digging deep.

Iskra Yellowlegs was already smiling.

The world tilted and spun, but Abraxos, roaring in pain, kept in the air, kept flapping.

Even as Iskra’s bull pulled back his head—only to close his jaws around Abraxos’s throat.

CHAPTER 89

Iskra’s bull gripped him by the neck, but Abraxos kept them in the air.

At the sight of those powerful jaws around Abraxos’s throat, the fear and pain in his eyes—

Manon couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think around the terror rushing through her, so blinding and sickening that for a few heartbeats, she was frozen. Wholly frozen.

Abraxos, Abraxos—

Hers. He was hers, and she was his, and the Darkness had chosen them to be together.

She had no sense of time, no sense of how long had passed between that bite and when she again moved. It could have been a second, it could have been a minute.

But then she was drawing an arrow from her nearly depleted quiver. The wind threatened to rip it from her fingers, but she nocked it to her bow, the world spinning-spinning-spinning, the wind roaring, and aimed.

Iskra’s bull bucked as her arrow landed—just a hairsbreadth from his eye.

But he did not let go.

He didn’t have the deep grip to rip out Abraxos’s throat, but if he crunched down long enough, if he cut off her mount’s air supply—

Manon unleashed another arrow. The wind shifted it enough that she struck the beast’s jaw, barely embedding in the thick hide.

Iskra was laughing. Laughing as Abraxos fought and could not get free—

Manon looked for any of the Thirteen, for anyone to save them. Save him.

He who mattered more than any other, whom she would trade places with if the Three-Faced Goddess allowed it, to have her own throat gripped in those terrible jaws—

But the Thirteen had been scattered, Iskra’s coven plowing their ranks apart. Asterin and Iskra’s Second were claw-to-claw as their wyverns locked talons and plunged toward the battlefield.

Manon gauged the distance to Iskra’s bull, to the jaws around the neck. Weighed the strength of the straps on the reins. If she could swing down, if she was lucky, she might be able to slash at the bull’s throat, just enough to pry him off—

But Abraxos’s wings faltered. His tail, trying so valiantly to strike the bull, began to slow.

No.

No.

Not like this. Anything but this.

Manon slung her bow over her back, half-frozen fingers fumbling with the straps and buckles of the saddle.

She couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t bear it, this death, his pain and fear before it.

She might have been sobbing. Might have been screaming as his wingbeats faltered again.

She’d leap across the gods-damned wind, rip that bitch from the saddle, and slit her mount’s throat—

Abraxos began to fall.

Not fall. But dive—trying to get lower. To reach the ground, hauling that bull with him.

So Manon might survive.

“PLEASE.” Her scream to Iskra carried across the battlefield, across the world. “PLEASE.”

She would beg, she would crawl, if it bought him the chance to live.

Her warrior-hearted mount. Who had saved her far more than she had ever saved him.

Who had saved her in the ways that counted most.

“PLEASE.” She screamed it—screamed it with every scrap of her shredded soul.

Iskra only laughed. And the bull did not let go, even as Abraxos tried and tried to get them closer to the ground.

Her tears ripped away in the wind, and Manon freed the last of the buckles on her saddle. The gap between the wyverns was impossible, but she had been lucky before.

She didn’t care about any of it. The Wastes, the Crochans and Ironteeth, her crown. She didn’t care about any of it, if Abraxos was not there with her.

Abraxos’s wings strained, fighting with that mighty, loving heart to reach lower air.

Manon sized up the distance to the bull’s flank, ripping off her gloves to free her iron nails. As strong as any grappling hook.

Manon rose in the saddle, sliding a leg under her, body tensing to make the jump ahead. And she said to Abraxos, touching his spine, “I love you.”

It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.

Abraxos thrashed. As if he’d try to stop her.

Manon willed strength to her legs, to her arms, and sucked in a breath, perhaps her last—

Shooting from the heavens, faster than a star racing across the sky, a roaring form careened into Iskra’s bull.

Those jaws came free of Abraxos’s neck, and then they were falling, twisting.

Manon had enough sense to grab onto the saddle, to cling with everything she had as the wind threatened to tear her from him.

His blood streamed upward as they fell, but then his wings spread wide, and he was banking, flapping up. He steadied enough that Manon swung into the saddle, strapping herself in as she whirled to see what had occurred behind her. Who had saved them.

It was not Asterin.

It was not any of the Thirteen.

But Petrah Blueblood.

And behind the Heir to the Blueblood Witch-Clan, now slamming into Morath’s aerial legion from where they’d crept onto the battlefield from high above the clouds, were the Ironteeth.

Hundreds of them.

Hundreds of Ironteeth witches and their wyverns crashed into their own.

Petrah and Iskra pulled apart, the Blueblood Heir flapping toward Manon while Abraxos fought to stay upright.

Even with the wind, the battle, Manon still heard Petrah as the Blueblood Heir said to her, “A better world.”

Manon had no words. None, other than to look toward the city wall, to the force trying to enter through the river grates. “The walls—”

“Go.” Then Petrah pointed to where Iskra had paused in midair to gape at what unfolded. At the act of defiance and rebellion so unthinkable that many of the Morath Ironteeth were equally stunned. Petrah bared her teeth, revealing iron glinting in the watery sunlight. “She’s mine.”

Manon glanced between the city walls and Iskra, turning toward them once more. Two against one, and they would surely smash her to bits—

“Go,” Petrah snarled. And when Manon again hesitated, Petrah only said, “For Keelie.”

For the wyvern Petrah had loved—as Manon loved Abraxos. Who had fought for Petrah to her last breath, while Iskra’s bull slaughtered her.

So Manon nodded. “Darkness embrace you.”

Abraxos began soaring for the wall, his wingbeats unsteady, his breathing shallow.

He needed to rest, needed to see a healer—

Manon glanced behind her just as Petrah slammed into Iskra.

The two Heirs went tumbling toward the earth, clashing again, wyverns striking.

Manon couldn’t turn away if she wished.

Not as the wyverns peeled apart and then banked, executing perfect, razor-sharp turns that had them meeting once more, rising up into the sky, tails snapping as they locked talons.

Up and up, Iskra and Petrah flew. Wyverns slashing and biting, claws locking, jaws snapping. Up through the levels of fighting in the skies, up through Crochans and Ironteeth, up through the wisps of clouds.

A race, a mockery of the mating dance of the wyverns, to rise to the highest point of the sky and then plummet down to the earth as one.

Ironteeth halted their fighting. Crochans stilled in midair. Even on the battlefield, Morath soldiers looked up.

The two Heirs shot higher and higher and higher. And when they reached a place where even the wyverns could not draw enough air into their lungs, they tucked in their wings, locked claws, and plunged headfirst toward the earth.

Manon saw the trap before Iskra did.

Saw it the moment Petrah broke free, golden hair streaming as she drew her sword and her wyvern began to circle.