Kingdom of Ash

CHAPTER 24

The Crochans ignored her. And ignored the Thirteen. A few hissed insults as they passed, but one glance from Manon and the Thirteen kept their fists balled at their sides.

The Crochans remained in the camp for a week to tend to their wounded, and so Manon and the Thirteen had remained as well, ignored and hated.

“What is this place?” Manon asked Glennis as she found the crone polishing the handle of a gold-bound broom beside the fire. Two others lay on a cloak nearby. Menial work for the witch in charge of this camp.

“This is an ancient camp—one of the oldest we claim.” Glennis’s knobbed fingers flew over the broom handle. “Each of the seven Great Hearths has a fire here, as do many others.” Indeed, there were far more than seven in the camp. “It was a gathering place for us after the war, and since then, it had become a place to usher in some of our younger witches to adulthood. It is a rite we’ve developed over the years—to send them into the deep wilds for a few weeks to hunt and survive with only their brooms and a knife. We remain here while they do so.”

Manon asked quietly, “Do you know what our initiation rite is?”

Glennis’s face tightened. “I do. We all do.” Which hearth had the witch she’d killed at age sixteen belonged to? What had her grandmother done with the Crochan heart she’d brought back in a box to Blackbeak Keep, wearing her enemy’s cloak as a trophy?

But Manon asked, “When do you head to Eyllwe?”

“Tomorrow. Those who were the most gravely wounded in the skirmish have healed enough to travel—or survive here on their own.”

Manon’s gut tightened, but she shut out the regret.

Glennis extended one of the brooms to Manon, its base bound with ordinary metal threads. “Do you fly south with us?”

Manon took the broom, the wood zinging against her hand. The wind whispered at her ear of the fast, wicked current between the peaks above.

She and the Thirteen had already decided days ago. If south was where the Crochans went, then south was where they would go. Even if each passing day might spell doom for those in the North.

“We fly with you,” Manon said.

Glennis nodded. “That broom belongs to a black-haired witch named Karsyn.” The crone jerked her chin toward the tents behind Manon. “She’s on duty by your wyverns.”

Dorian decided he didn’t need a hidden place to practice. Which was lucky, since there was no such thing as privacy in the Crochans’ camp. Not inside the camp, and certainly not around it, not with the sharp eyes of their sentinels patrolling day and night.

Which is how he wound up sitting before Vesta at Glennis’s hearth, the red-haired witch half asleep with boredom. “Learning shifting,” she groused, yawning for the tenth time that hour, “seems like a colossal waste of time.” She flicked a snow-white hand toward the makeshift training ring where the Thirteen kept up their honed bodies and instincts. “You could be sparring with Lin right now.”

“I just watched Lin nearly knock Imogen’s teeth down her throat. Forgive me if I’m in no mood to get into the ring with her.”

Vesta arched an auburn brow. “No male swaggering from you, then.”

“I like my teeth where they are.” He sighed. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

None of the witches, even Manon, had questioned why he practiced. He’d only mentioned, nearly a week ago, that the spider had made him wonder if he might be able to shift, using his raw magic, and they’d shrugged.

Their focus was on the Crochans. On the trip to Eyllwe that would likely happen any day now.

He hadn’t heard any mention of a war band gathering, but if it could divide Morath’s forces even slightly to venture south to deal with them, if it distracted Erawan when Dorian went to the Valg king’s stronghold … He’d accept it.

He’d already offered Manon and Glennis what he knew regarding the kingdom and its rulers. Nehemia’s parents and two younger brothers. Adarlan’s empire had done its work thoroughly in decimating Eyllwe’s army, so any hope on that front was impossible, but if they mustered a few thousand soldiers to head northward … It’d be a boon for his friends.

If they could survive, it would be enough.

Dorian closed his eyes, and Vesta fell silent. For days, she’d sat with him when her training and scouting permitted it, watching for any of the shifting that he attempted: changing his hair, his skin, his eyes.

None of it occurred.

His magic had touched that stolen shifter’s power—had learned it just enough before he’d killed the spider.

It was now a matter of convincing his magic to become like that shifter’s power. Whether it had ever been done with raw magic before, he did not know.

Be what you wish, Cyrene had told him.

Nothing. He wished to be nothing.

But Dorian kept peering inward. Into every hollow, empty corner. He need only do it long enough. To master the shifting. To sneak into Morath and find the third key. To then offer up all he was and had been to the Lock and the gate.

And then it would be over. For Erawan, yes, and for him.

Even if it would leave Hollin with the right to the throne. Hollin, who had been sired by a Valg-infested man as well. Had the demon passed any traits to his brother?

The boy had been beastly—but had he been human?

Hollin had not killed their father. Shattered the castle. Let Sorscha die.

Dorian hadn’t dared ask Damaris. Wasn’t certain what he’d do should the sword reveal what he was, deep down.

So Dorian peered inward, to where his magic flowed in him, to where it could move between flame and water and ice and wind.

But no matter how he willed it, how he pictured brown hair or paler skin or freckles, nothing happened.

She was no messenger, but Manon took the hint—and the offer. Along with three other brooms, all for witches across the camp.

It would not be enough to fly with them to Eyllwe. No, she’d have to learn about them. Each of these witches.

Asterin, who’d been monitoring from across the fire, fell into step beside her, taking up two of the brooms. “I forgot they used the redwood,” her Second said, studying the brooms in her arms. “A hell of a lot easier to carve than the ironwood.”

Manon could still feel how her own hands had ached during the long days she’d whittled down her first broom from the log of ironwood she’d found deep in Oakwald. The first two ventures had resulted in snapped shafts, and she’d resolved to carve her broom more carefully. Three tries, one for each face of the Goddess.

She’d been thirteen, mere weeks past her first bleeding, which had brought about the zipping current of power that called to the wind, that flowed through the brooms and carried them into the skies. Each stroke of the chisel, each pound of the hammer that transformed the block of near-impenetrable material, had transferred that power into the emerging broom itself.

“Where’d you leave yours?” Manon asked.

Asterin shrugged. “Somewhere at Blackbeak Keep.”

Manon nodded. Hers was currently discarded in the back of a closet in her room at her grandmother’s seat of power. She’d thrown it in there after magic had vanished, the broom little more than a cleaning tool without it.

“I suppose we won’t be retrieving them now,” Asterin said.

“No, we won’t,” Manon said, scanning the skies. “We fly with the Crochans to Eyllwe tomorrow. To rendezvous with whatever human war band they’re to meet.”

Asterin’s mouth tightened. “Perhaps we’ll convince all of them—the Crochans, the Eyllwe war band—to head north.”

Perhaps. If they were lucky enough. If they did not squander so much time that Erawan crushed the North into dust.

They reached the first of the witches Glennis had indicated, and Asterin said nothing as Manon motioned her Second to pass over the broom.

The Crochan’s nose wrinkled with distaste as she let the broom dangle from two fingers. “Now I’ll need it cleaned again.”

Asterin gave her a crooked smile that meant trouble was swiftly approaching.

So Manon nudged her Second into another walk, wending between the tents in search of the other owners.

“You really think this is worth our time?” Asterin muttered when the second, then the third witch sneered upon receiving their brooms. “Playing servant to these pampered princesses?”

“I hope so,” Manon murmured back as they reached the last of the witches. Karsyn. The dark-haired Crochan was staring toward the ring of wyverns, just where Glennis had said she’d be.

Asterin cleared her throat, and the witch turned, her olive-skinned face tightening.

But she didn’t sneer. Didn’t hiss.

Mission done, Asterin turned away. But Manon said to the Crochan, jerking her chin toward the wyverns, “It’s different from using the brooms. Faster, deadlier, but you also have to feed and water them.”

Karsyn’s green eyes were wary—but curious. She glanced again at the wyverns huddled against the cold, Asterin’s blue mare pressed into Abraxos’s side, his wing draped over her.

Manon said, “Erawan made them, using methods we’re not quite sure of. He took an ancient template and brought it to life.” For there had been wyverns in Adarlan before—long ago. “He meant to breed a host of thoughtless killers, but some did not turn out as such.”

Asterin kept quiet for once.

Karsyn spoke at last. “Your wyvern seems like more of a dog than anything.”

It was not an insult, Manon reminded herself. The Crochans kept dogs as pets. Adored them, as humans did. “His name is Abraxos,” Manon said. “He is … different.”

“He and the blue one are mates.”

Asterin started. “They’re what?”

The Crochan pointed to the blue mare huddled beside Abraxos. “He is smaller, yet he dotes on her. Nuzzles her when no one is looking.”

Manon exchanged a glance with Asterin. Their mounts incessantly flirted, yes, but to mate—

“Interesting,” Manon managed to say.

“You didn’t know they did such things?” Karsyn’s brows knotted.

“We knew they bred.” Asterin stepped in at last. “But we haven’t witnessed it being for … choice.”

“For love,” the Crochan said, and Manon nearly rolled her eyes. “These beasts, despite their dark master, are capable of love.”

Nonsense, yet some kernel in her realized it to be true. Instead, Manon said, though she already knew, “What’s your name?”

But wariness again flooded Karsyn’s eyes, as if remembering whom she spoke to, that there were others who might see them conversing. “Thank you for the broom,” the witch said, and strode between the tents.

At least one of the Crochans had spoken to her. Perhaps this journey to Eyllwe would offer her the chance to speak to more. Even if she could feel each passing hour and minute weighing upon them.

Hurry northward, the wind sang, day and night. Hurry, Blackbeak.

When Karsyn was gone, Asterin remained staring at Abraxos and Narene, scratching her hair. “You really think they’re mated?”

Abraxos lifted his head from where it rested atop Narene’s back and looked toward them, as if to say, It took you long enough to figure it out.

“What am I supposed to be watching for, exactly?”

Sitting knee to knee in their tiny tent, the wind howling outside, Manon’s golden eyes narrowed as she peered into Dorian’s face. “My eyes,” he said. “Just tell me if they change color.”

She growled. “This shape-shifting is really a pressing thing to learn?”

“Indulge me,” he purred, and reached inward, his magic flaring.

Brown. You will change from blue to brown.

Liar—he supposed he was a liar for keeping his true reasons from her. He didn’t need Damaris to confirm it.

She might forbid him from going to Morath, but there was another possibility, even worse than that.

That she would insist on going with him.

Manon gave him a look that might have sent a lesser man running. “They’re still blue.”

Gods above, she was beautiful. He wondered when it would stop feeling like a betrayal to think so.

Dorian took a long breath, concentrating again. Ignoring the whispering presence of the two keys in his jacket pocket. “Tell me if it changes at all.”

“It’s that different from your magic?”

Dorian sat back, bracing his arms behind him as he sought the words to explain. “It’s not like other sorts of magic, where it flows through my veins, and half a thought has it changing from ice to flame to water.”

She studied him, head angled in a way he’d witnessed the wyverns doing. Right before they devoured a goat whole. “Which do you like the best?”

An unusually personal question. Even though this past week, thanks to the tent’s relative warmth and privacy, they’d spent hours tangling in the blankets now beneath them.

He’d never had anything like her. He sometimes wondered if she’d never had anything like him, either. He’d seen how often she found her pleasure when he took the reins, when her body writhed beneath his and she lost control entirely.

But the hours in this tent hadn’t yielded any sort of intimacy. Only blessed distraction. For both of them. He was glad of it, he told himself. None of this could end well. For either of them.

“I like the ice best,” Dorian admitted at last, realizing he’d let the silence drip on. “It was the first element that came out of me—I don’t know why.”

“You’re not a cold person.”

He arched a brow. “Is that your professional opinion?”

Manon studied him. “You can descend to those levels when you are angry, when your friends are threatened. But you are not cold, not at heart. I’ve seen men who are, and you are not.”

“Neither are you,” he said a bit quietly.

The wrong thing to say.

Manon stiffened, her chin lifting. “I am one hundred seventeen years old,” she said flatly. “I have spent the majority of that time killing. Don’t convince yourself that the events of the past few months have erased that.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” He doubted anyone had ever spoken to her that baldly—relished that he now did, and kept his throat intact.

She snarled in his face. “You’re a fool if you believe the fact that I am their queen wipes away the truth that I have killed scores of Crochans.”

“That fact will always remain. It’s how you make it count now that matters.”

Make it count. Aelin had said as much back in those initial days after he’d been freed of the collar. He tried not to wonder whether the icy bite of Wyrdstone would soon clamp around his neck once more.

“I am not a softhearted Crochan. I will never be, even if I wear their crown of stars.”

He’d heard the whispers about that crown amongst the Crochans this week—about whether it would be found at last. Rhiannon Crochan’s crown of stars, stolen from her dying body by Baba Yellowlegs herself. Where it had gone after Aelin had killed the Matron, Dorian had not the faintest idea. If it had stayed with that strange carnival she’d traveled with, it could be anywhere. Could have been sold for quick coin.

Manon went on, “If that is what the Crochans expect me to become before they join in this war, then I will let them venture to Eyllwe tomorrow alone.”

“Is it so bad, to care?” The gods knew he’d been struggling to do so himself.

“I don’t know how to,” she growled.

Ridiculous. An outright lie. Perhaps it was because of the high likelihood that he’d be collared again at Morath, perhaps it was because he was a king who’d left his kingdom in an enemy’s grip, but Dorian found himself saying, “You do care. You know it, too. It’s what makes you so damn scared of all this.”

Her golden eyes raged, but she said nothing.

“Caring doesn’t make you weak,” he offered.

“Then why don’t you heed your own advice?”

“I care.” His temper rose to meet hers. And he decided to hell with it—decided to let go of that leash he’d put on himself. Let go of that restraint. “I care about more than I should. I even care about you.”

Another wrong thing to say.

Manon stood—as high as the tent would allow. “Then you’re a fool.” She shoved on her boots and stomped into the frigid night.

I even care about you.

Manon scowled as she turned in her sleep, wedged between Asterin and Sorrel. Only hours remained until they were to move out—to head to Eyllwe and whatever force might be waiting to ally with the Crochans. And in need of help.

Caring doesn’t make you weak.

The king was a fool. Little more than a boy. What did he know of anything?

Still the words burrowed under her skin, her bones. Is it so bad, to care?

She didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.

Dawn was not too far off when a warm body slid beside his.

Dorian said into the darkness, “Three to a tent isn’t too comfortable, is it?”

“I didn’t come back because I agree with you.” Manon yanked the blankets over herself.

Dorian smiled slightly, and fell asleep once more, letting his magic warm them both.

When they awoke, something sharp in his chest had dulled—just a fraction.

But Manon was frowning down at him. Dorian sat up, groaning as he stretched his arms as far as the tent would allow. “What is it?” he asked when her brow remained furrowed.

Manon pulled on her boots, then her cape. “Your eyes are brown.”

He lifted a hand to his face, but she was already gone.

Dorian stared after her, the camp already hurrying to be off.

Where that edge had dulled in his chest, his magic now flowed freer. As if it, too, had been freed from those inner restraints he’d loosened slightly last night. What he’d opened up, revealed to her. A sort of freedom, that letting go.

The sun was barely in the sky when they began the long flight to Eyllwe.