Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(48)

Boots scuffed on stone and crunched the hay littering the aerie floor. Manon knew that step—knew it as well as Asterin’s own gait. “What,” she said to Sorrel without looking behind her.

“Dawn approaches,” her Third said.

Soon to be Second. Vesta would become Third, and … and maybe Asterin would at last see that hunter of hers, see the stillborn witchling they’d had together.

Never again would Asterin ride the winds; never again would Asterin soar on the back of her sky-blue mare. Manon’s eyes slid to the wyvern across the aerie—shifting on her two legs, awake when the others were not.

As if she could sense her mistress’s doom beckoning with each passing moment.

What would become of the mare when Asterin was gone?

Manon rose to her feet, Abraxos nudging the backs of her thighs with his snout. She reached down, brushing his scaly head. She didn’t know who it was meant to comfort. Her crimson cape, as bloody and filthy as the rest of her, was still clasped at her collarbone.

The Thirteen would become twelve.

Manon met Sorrel’s gaze. But her Third’s attention was on Wind-Cleaver, bare in Manon’s hand.

Her Third said, “You mean to make the Words of Request.”

Manon tried to speak. But she could not open her mouth. So she only nodded.

Sorrel stared toward the open archway beyond Abraxos. “I wish she had the chance to see the Wastes. Just once.”

Manon forced herself to lift her chin. “We do not wish. We do not hope,” she said to her soon-to-be Second. Sorrel’s eyes snapped to her, something like hurt flashing there. Manon took the inner blow. She said, “We will move on, adapt.”

Sorrel said quietly, but not weakly, “She goes to her death to keep your secrets.”

It was the closest Sorrel had ever come to outright challenge. To resentment.

Manon sheathed Wind-Cleaver at her side and strode for the stairwell, unable to meet Abraxos’s curious stare. “Then she will have served me well as Second, and will be remembered for it.”

Sorrel said nothing.

So Manon descended into the gloom of Morath to kill her cousin.





The execution was not to be held in the dungeon.

Rather, her grandmother had selected a broad veranda overlooking one of the endless drops into the ravine curled around Morath. Witches were crowded onto the balcony, practically thrumming with bloodlust.

The Matrons stood before the gathered group, Cresseida and the Yellowlegs Matron flanked by each of their heirs, all facing the open doors through which Manon and the Thirteen exited the Keep proper.

Manon did not hear the murmur of the crowd; did not hear the roaring wind ripping between the high turrets; did not hear the strike of hammers in the forges of the valley below.

Not when her attention went to Asterin, on her knees before the Matrons. She, too, was facing Manon, still in her riding leathers, her golden hair limp and knotted, flecked with blood. She lifted her face—

“It was only fair,” Manon’s grandmother drawled, the crowd silencing, “for Iskra Yellowlegs to also avenge the four sentinels slaughtered on your watch. Three blows apiece for each of the sentinels killed.”

Twelve blows total. But from the cuts and bruises on Asterin’s face, the split lip, from the way she cradled her body as she bent over her knees … It had been far more than that.

Slowly, Manon looked at Iskra. Cuts marred her knuckles—still raw from the beating she’d given Asterin in the dungeon.

While Manon had been upstairs, brooding.

Manon opened her mouth, her rage a living thing thrashing in her gut, her blood. But Asterin spoke instead.

“Be glad to know, Manon,” her Second rasped with a faint, cocky smile, “that she had to chain me up to beat me.”

Iskra’s eyes flashed. “You still screamed, bitch, when I whipped you.”

“Enough,” Manon’s grandmother cut in, waving a hand.

Manon barely heard the order.

They had whipped her sentinel like some underling, like some mortal beast—

Someone snarled, low and vicious, to her right.

The breath went out of her as she found Sorrel—unmovable rock, unfeeling stone—baring her teeth at Iskra, at those assembled here.

Manon’s grandmother stepped forward, brimming with displeasure. Behind Manon, the Thirteen were a silent, unbreakable wall.

Asterin began scanning their faces, and Manon realized her Second understood that it was the last time she’d do so.

“Blood shall be paid with blood,” Manon’s grandmother and the Yellowlegs Matron said in unison, reciting from their eldest rituals. Manon steeled her spine, waiting for the right moment. “Any witch who wishes to extract blood in the name of Zelta Yellowlegs may come forward.”

Iron nails slid out from the hands of the entire Yellowlegs coven.

Asterin only stared at the Thirteen, her bloody face unmoved, eyes clear.

The Yellowlegs Matron said, “Form the line.”

Manon pounced.

“I invoke the right of execution.”

Everyone froze.

Manon’s grandmother’s face went pale with rage. But the other two Matrons, even Yellowlegs, just waited.

Manon said, head high, “I claim the right to my Second’s head. Blood shall be paid with blood—but at my sword’s edge. She is mine, and so shall her death be mine.”