Kingdom of Ash

Bronwen spat on the bloody ground and prowled off.

A lie. Manon had lied.

She arched a brow at him, but Dorian turned away. Let the knowledge settle into him. What she’d done.

Thus began a series of orders and movements, gathering the injured and dead. Dorian helped as best he could, healing those who needed it most. Open, gaping wounds that leaked blue blood onto his hands.

The warmth of that blood didn’t reach him.

CHAPTER 15

She was a liar, and a killer, and would likely have to be both again before this was through.

But Manon had no regrets about what she’d done. Had no room in her for regret. Not with time bearing down on them, not with so much resting on their shoulders.

For long hours while they worked to repair camp and Crochans, Manon monitored the frosty skies.

Eight dead. It could have been worse. Much worse. Though she would take the lives of those eight Crochans with her, learn their names so she might remember them.

Manon spent the long night helping the Thirteen haul the fallen wyverns and Ironteeth riders to another ridge. The ground was too hard to bury them, and pyres would be too easily marked, so they opted for snow. She didn’t dare ask Dorian to use his power to assist them.

She’d seen that look in his eyes. Like he knew.

Manon dumped a stiff Yellowlegs body, the sentinel’s lips already blue, ice crusted in her blond hair. Asterin hauled a stout-bodied rider toward her by the boots, then deposited the witch with little fanfare.

But Manon stared at their dead faces. She’d sacrificed them, too.

Both sides of this conflict. Both of her bloodlines.

All would bleed; too many would die.

Would Glennis have welcomed them? Perhaps, but the other Crochans hadn’t seemed so inclined to do so.

And the fact remained that they did not have the time to waste in wooing them. So she’d picked the only method she knew: battle. Had soared off on her own earlier that day, to where she knew Ironteeth would be patrolling nearby, waited until the great northern wind carried her scent southward. And then bided her time.

“Did you know them?” Asterin asked when Manon remained staring at a fallen sentinel’s body. Down the line of them, the wyverns used their wings to brush great drifts of snow over the corpses.

“No,” Manon said. “I didn’t.”

Dawn was breaking by the time they returned to the Crochan camp. Eyes that had spat fire hours earlier now watched them warily, fewer hands drifting toward weapons as they aimed for the large, ringed fire pit. The largest of the camp, and located in its heart. Glennis’s hearth.

The crone stood before it, warming her gnarled, bloodied hands. Dorian sat nearby, and his sapphire eyes were indeed damning as he met Manon’s stare.

Later. That conversation would come later.

Manon halted a few feet away from Glennis, the Thirteen falling into rank at the outskirts of the fire, surveying the five tents around it, the cauldron bubbling at its center. Behind them, Crochans continued their repairs and healing—and kept one eye upon them all.

“Eat something,” Glennis said, gesturing to the bubbling cauldron. To what smelled like goat stew.

Manon didn’t bother objecting before she obeyed, gathering one of the small earthenware bowls beside the fire. Another way to demonstrate trust: to eat their food. Accept it.

So Manon did, devouring a few bites before Dorian followed her lead and did the same. When they were both eating, Glennis sat on a stone and sighed. “It’s been over five hundred years since an Ironteeth witch and a Crochan shared a meal. Since they sought to exchange words in peace. Interrupted, perhaps, only by your mother and father.”

“I suppose so,” Manon said mildly, pausing her eating.

The crone’s mouth twitched toward a smile, despite the battle, the draining night. “I was your father’s grandmother,” she clarified at last. “I myself bore your grandfather, who mated a Crochan Queen before she died giving birth to your father.”

Another thing they’d inherited from the Fae: their difficulty conceiving and the deadly nature of childbirth. A way for the Three-Faced Goddess to keep the balance, to avoid flooding the lands with too many immortal children who would devour her resources.

Manon scanned the half-ruined camp, though.

The crone read her question in her eyes. “Our men dwell at our homes, where they are safe. This camp is an outpost while we conduct our business.” The Crochans had always given birth to more males than the Ironteeth, and had adopted the Fae habit of selecting mates—if not a true mating bond, then in spirit. She’d always thought it outlandish and strange. Unnecessary.

“After your mother never returned, your father was asked to couple with another young witch. He was the sole carrier of the Crochan bloodline, you see, and should your mother and you not have survived the birthing, it would end with him. He didn’t know what had happened to either of you. If you were alive, or dead. Didn’t even know where to look. So he agreed to do his duty, agreed to help his dying people.” Her great-grandmother smiled sadly. “All who met Tristan loved him.” Tristan. That had been his name. Had her grandmother even known it before she’d killed him? “A young witch was chosen for him especially. But he did not love her—not with your mother as his true mate, the song of his soul. Tristan made it work nonetheless. Rhiannon was the result of that.”

Manon tensed. If Rhiannon’s mother were here—

Again, the crone read the question on Manon’s face.

“She was slaughtered by a Yellowlegs sentinel in the river plains of Melisande. Years ago.”

A flicker of shame went through Manon at the relief that flooded her. To avoid that confrontation, to avoid begging for forgiveness, as she should have done.

Dorian set down his spoon. Such a graceful, casual gesture, considering how he’d felled that wyvern. “How is it that the Crochan line survived? Legend says they were wiped out.”

Another sad smile. “You can thank my mother for that. Rhiannon Crochan’s youngest daughter gave birth during the siege on the Witch-City. With our armies felled and only the city walls to hold back the Ironteeth legions, and with so many of her children and grandchildren slaughtered and her mate spiked to the city walls, Rhiannon had the heralds announce that it had been a stillbirth. So the Ironteeth would never know that one Crochan might yet live. That same night, just before Rhiannon began her three-day battle against the Ironteeth High Witches, my mother smuggled the baby princess out on her broom.” The crone’s throat bobbed. “Rhiannon was her dearest friend—a sister to her. My mother wanted to stay, to fight until the end, yet she was asked to do this for her people. Our people. Until the day of her death, my mother believed Rhiannon went to hold the gates against the High Witches as a distraction. To get that last Crochan scion out while the Ironteeth looked the other way.”

Manon didn’t entirely know what to say, how to voice what roiled within her.

“You will find,” Glennis went on, “that you have some cousins in this camp.”

Asterin stiffened at that, Edda and Briar also tensing where they lingered at the edge of the fire. Manon’s own kin, on the Blackbeak side of her heritage. Undoubtedly willing to fight to keep that distinction for themselves.

“Bronwen,” the crone said, gesturing toward the dark-haired coven leader with the gold-bound broom, now monitoring Manon and the Thirteen from the shadows beyond the fire, “is also my great-granddaughter. Your closest cousin.”

No kindness shone on Bronwen’s face, so Manon didn’t bother looking pleasant, either.

“She and Rhiannon were close as sisters,” Glennis murmured.

It took a considerable amount of effort not to touch the scrap of red cloak at the end of her braid.

Dorian, Darkness embrace his soul, cut in, “We found you for a reason.”

Glennis again warmed her hands. “I suppose it is to ask us to join in this war.”

Manon didn’t soften her stare. “It is. You, and all the Crochans scattered across the lands.”

One of the Crochans in the shadows let out a bark of laughter. “That’s rich.” Others chuckled with her.

Glennis’s blue eyes didn’t falter. “We have not rallied a host since before the fall of the Witch-City. You might find it a more difficult task than you anticipated.”