Kingdom of Ash

Tight, precise circles around Iskra and her bull as they plummeted.

So tight that Iskra’s bull did not have the space to open its wings. And when it tried, Petrah’s wyvern was there, tail or jaws snapping. When it tried, Petrah’s sword was there, slashing ribbons into the beast.

Iskra realized it then.

Realized it as they fell and fell and fell, and Petrah circled them, so fast that Manon wondered if the Blueblood Heir had been practicing these months, training for this very moment.

For the vengeance owed to her and Keelie.

The very world seemed to pause.

Petrah and her wyvern circled and circled, blood from Iskra’s wyvern raining upward, the beast more frantic with every foot closer to the earth.

But Petrah had not opened her wyvern’s wings, either. Had not pulled on the reins to bank her mount.

“Pull out,” Manon breathed. “Bank now.”

Petrah did not. Two wyverns dropped toward the earth, dark stars falling from the sky.

“Stop,” Iskra barked.

Petrah didn’t deign to respond.

They couldn’t bank at that speed. And soon Petrah wouldn’t be able to bank at all. Would break herself on the ground, right alongside Iskra.

“Stop!” Fear turned Iskra’s order into a sharp cry.

No pity for her kindled in Manon. None at all.

The ground neared, brutal and unyielding.

“You mad bitch, I said stop!”

Two hundred feet to the earth. Then a hundred. Manon couldn’t get down a breath.

Fifty feet.

And as the ground seemed to rise to meet them, Manon heard Petrah’s only words to Iskra like they had been carried on the wind.

“For Keelie.”

Petrah’s wyvern flung out its wings, banking sharper than any wyvern Manon had ever witnessed. Rising up, wing tip grazing the icy ground before it shot back into the skies.

Leaving Iskra and her bull to splatter on the earth.

The boom rumbled past Manon, thundering through the world.

Iskra and her bull did not rise again.

Abraxos gave a groan of pain, and Manon twisted in the saddle, her heart raging.

Iskra was dead. The Yellowlegs Heir was dead.

It didn’t fill her with the joy it should have. Not with that vulnerable grate on the city wall under attack.

So she snapped the reins, and Abraxos soared for the city walls, and then Sorrel and Vesta were beside her, Asterin coming in fast from behind. They flew low, beneath the Ironteeth now fighting Ironteeth, the Ironteeth still fighting Crochans. Aiming for the spots where the river flowed right up to their sides.

Already, a longboat had reached them. Already, arrows were flying from the small grate—guards frantic to keep the enemy at bay.

The Morath soldiers were so preoccupied with their target ahead that they did not look behind until Abraxos was upon them.

His blood streamed past her as he landed, snapping with talons and teeth and tail. Sorrel and Vesta took care of the others, the longboat soon in splinters.

But it was not enough. Not even close.

“The rocks,” Manon breathed, steering Abraxos toward the other side of the river.

He understood. Her heart strained to the point of agony at pushing him, but he soared to the other side of the river and hauled one of the smaller boulders back across. The Thirteen saw her plan and followed, swift and unfaltering.

Every one of his wingbeats was slower than the last. He lost height with each foot they crossed the river.

But then he made it, just as another group of Morath soldiers were trying to enter the small, vulnerable passage. Manon slammed the stone into the water before it. The Thirteen dropped their stones as well, the splashes carrying over the city walls.

More and more, each trip across the river slower than the last.

But then there were rocks piled up, breaking the surface. Then rising above it, blocking out all access to the river tunnel. Just high enough to seal it over—but not give a leg up to the Morath soldiers swarming on the other bank.

Abraxos’s breathing was labored, his head sagging.

Manon twisted in the saddle to order her Second to halt piling the rocks, but Asterin had already done so. Her Second pointed to the city walls above them. “Get inside!”

Manon didn’t waste time arguing. Snapping Abraxos’s reins, Manon sent him flying over the city walls, his blood raining on the soldiers fighting there.

He made it to the castle battlements before his strength gave out.

Before he hit the stones and slid, the boom of impact ringing across Orynth.

He slammed into the side of the castle itself, wings limp, and Manon was instantly freeing herself from the saddle as she screamed for a healer.

The wound to his neck was so much worse than she’d thought.

And still he’d fought for her. Stayed in the skies.

Manon shoved her hands against the deep bite wound, blood rushing past her fingers like water through a cracked dam. “Help is coming,” she told him, and found her voice to be a broken rasp. “They’re coming.”

The Thirteen landed, Sorrel sprinting into the castle to no doubt drag a healer out if she had to, and then there were eleven pairs of hands on Abraxos’s neck.

Staunching the flow of his blood. Pressing as one, to keep that precious blood inside him while the healer was found.

Manon couldn’t look at them, couldn’t do anything but close her eyes and pray to the Darkness, to the Three-Faced Mother as she held her hands over the bleeding gashes.

Racing footsteps sounded over the battlement stones, and then Sorrel was there beside Manon, her hands rising to cover his wounds, too.

An older woman unpacked a kit, warning them to keep applying pressure.

Manon didn’t bother to tell her that they weren’t going anywhere. None of them were.

Even while the battle raged in the skies and on the land below.

Lysandra could barely draw in breath, each flap of her wings heavier than the last as she aimed for the place where she’d seen Manon Blackbeak and her coven go crashing to the castle battlements.

She’d shifted into a wyvern herself, using the chaos of the Ironteeth rebels’ arrival as a distraction, but the draining of her magic had taken its toll. And the fighting, the wounds that even she could not staunch …

Lysandra spied the two figures hauling a familiar golden-haired warrior up the castle stairs just as she hit the battlements, the witches whirling toward her.

But Lysandra willed herself to shift, forcing her body to do it one last time, to return to that human form. She’d barely finished shoving on the pants and shirt she’d stashed in a pack by the castle wall when Ren Allsbrook and a Bane soldier reached the top of the battlements, a half-conscious Aedion between them.

There was so much blood on him.

Lysandra ran for them, ignoring her deep limp, the splintering pain rippling in her left leg, in her right shoulder. Down the battlements, a healer worked on the injured Abraxos, the Thirteen, coated in his blood, now standing vigil.

“What happened?” Lysandra skidded to a halt before Aedion, who managed to lift his head to give her a grim smile.

“Valg prince,” Ren said, his own body coated in blood, face pale with exhaustion.

Oh gods.

“He didn’t walk away,” Aedion rasped.

Ren snapped, “And you didn’t rest long enough, you stupid bastard. You tore your stitches.”

Lysandra ran her hands over Aedion’s face, his brow. “Let’s get you to a healer—”

“I’ve already seen one,” Aedion grunted, setting his feet on the ground and trying to straighten. “They brought me up here to rest.” As if such a thing was a ridiculous idea.

Ren indeed unlooped Aedion’s arm from around his shoulder. “Sit down, before you fall and crack your head on the stones.” Lysandra was inclined to agree, but then Ren said, “I’m heading back to the walls.”

“Wait.”

Ren turned toward her, but Lysandra didn’t speak until the Bane soldier helped Aedion to sit against the side of the castle itself.

“Wait,” she said again to Ren when he opened his mouth, her heart thundering, nausea coiling in her gut. She whistled, and Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen looked her way. She waved them over, her arm barking in pain.