Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5)(51)

Made.

Made.

Manon’s iron nails chipped on the dark stone of the balcony rail. And then her grandmother said the words that broke her.

“Do you know why that Crochan was spying in the Ferian Gap this spring? She had been sent to find you. After a hundred and sixteen years of searching, they had finally learned the identity of their dead prince’s lost child.”

Her grandmother’s smile was hideous in its absolute triumph. Manon willed strength to her arms, to her legs.

“Her name was Rhiannon, after the last Crochan Queen. And she was your half sister. She confessed it to me upon our tables. She thought it’d save her life. And when she saw what you had become, she chose to let the knowledge die with her.”

“I am a Blackbeak,” Manon rasped, blood choking her words.

Her grandmother took a step, smiling as she crooned, “You are a Crochan. The last of their royal bloodline with the death of your sister at your own hand. You are a Crochan Queen.”

Absolute silence from the witches gathered.

Her grandmother reached for her. “And you’re going to die like one by the time I’m finished with you.”

Manon didn’t let her grandmother’s nails touch her.

A boom sounded nearby.

Manon used the strength she’d gathered in her arms, her legs, to hurl herself onto the stone ledge of the balcony.

And roll off it into the open air.





Air and rock and wind and blood—

Manon slammed into a warm, leathery hide, screaming as pain from her wounds blacked out her vision.

Above, somewhere far away, her grandmother was shrieking orders—

Manon dug her nails into the leathery hide, burying her claws deep. Beneath her, a bark of discomfort she recognized. Abraxos.

But she held firm, and he embraced the pain as he banked to the side, swerving out of Morath’s shadow—

She felt them around her.

Manon managed to open her eyes, flicking the clear lid against the wind into place.

Edda and Briar, her Shadows, were now flanking her. She knew they’d been there, waiting in the shadows with their wyverns, had heard every one of those damning last words. “The others have flown ahead. We were sent to retrieve you,” Edda, the eldest of the sisters, shouted over the roar of the wind. “Your wound—”

“It’s shallow,” Manon snapped, forcing the pain aside to focus on the task at hand. She was on Abraxos’s neck, the saddle a few feet behind her. One by one, every breath an agony, she released her nails from his skin and slid toward the saddle. He evened out his flight, offering smooth air to buckle herself into the harness.

Blood leaked from the gouges in her belly—soon the saddle was slick with it.

Behind them, several roars set the mountains trembling.

“We can’t let them get to the others,” Manon managed to say.

Briar, black hair streaming behind her, swept in closer. “Six Yellowlegs on our tail. From Iskra’s personal coven. Closing in fast.”

With a score to settle, they’d no doubt been given free rein to slaughter them.

Manon surveyed the peaks and ravines of the mountains around them.

“Two apiece,” she ordered. The Shadows’ black wyverns were enormous—skilled at stealth, but devastating in a fight. “Edda, you drive two to the west; Briar, you slam the other two to the east. Leave the last two to me.”

No sign of the rest of the Thirteen in the gray clouds or mountains.

Good—they had gotten away. It was enough.

“You kill them, then you find the others,” Manon ordered, an arm draped over her wound.

“But, Wing Leader—”

The title almost sapped her will. But Manon barked, “That’s an order.”

The Shadows bowed their heads. Then, as if sharing one mind, one heart, they banked to either direction, peeling away from Manon like petals in the wind.

Bloodhounds on a scent, four Yellowlegs split from their group to deal with each Shadow.

The two in the center flew faster, harder, spreading apart to close in on Manon. Her vision blurred.

Not a good sign—not a good sign at all.

She breathed to Abraxos, “Let’s make it a final stand worthy of song.”

He bellowed in answer.

The Yellowlegs swept near enough for Manon to count their weapons. A battle cry shattered from the one to her right.

Manon dug her left heel into Abraxos’s side.

Like a shooting star, he blasted down toward the peaks of the ashy mountains. The Yellowlegs dove with them.

Manon aimed for a ravine running through the spine of the mountain range, her vision flashing black and white and foggy. A chill crept into her bones.

The walls of the ravine closed around them like the maw of a mighty beast, and she pulled on the reins once.

Abraxos flung out his wings and coasted along the side of the ravine before catching a current and leveling out, flapping like hell through the heart of the crevasse, pillars of stone jutting from the floor like lances.

The Yellowlegs, too ensnared in their bloodlust, their wyverns too large and bulky, balked at the ravine—at the sharp turn—

A boom and a screech, and the whole ravine shuddered.

Manon swallowed her bark of agony to peer behind. One of the wyverns had panicked, too big for the space, and slammed into a stone column. Broken bone and blood rained down.