Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(21)

The nearby guard shifted on his feet. She gave him a smile. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.

Because she could, because she was growing bored, Manon cocked her jaw, sending her iron teeth snapping down. The guard took a step back, his breath coming faster, the acrid tang of fear sharpening.

With her moon-­white hair, alabaster skin, and burnt-­gold eyes, she’d been told by ill-­fated men that she was beautiful as a Fae queen. But what those men realized too late was that her beauty was merely a weapon in her natural-­born arsenal. And it made things so, so fun.

Feet crunched in the snow and bits of dead grass, and Manon turned from the trembling guard and the roaring brown Acanthus to find her grandmother approaching.

In the ten years since magic had vanished, their aging pro­cess had warped. Manon herself was well over a century old, but until ten years ago, she had looked no older than sixteen. Now, she looked to be in her midtwenties. They ­were aging like mortals, they had soon realized with no small amount of panic. And her grandmother . . .

The rich, voluminous midnight robes of Mother Blackbeak flowed like water in the crisp breeze. Her grandmother’s face was now marred with the beginnings of wrinkles, her ebony hair sprinkled with silver. The High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan ­wasn’t just beautiful—­she was alluring. Even now, with mortal years pressing down upon her bone-­white skin, there was something entrancing about the Matron.

“We leave now,” Mother Blackbeak said, walking north along the river. Behind them, the duke’s men closed ranks around the encampment. Smart for mortals to be so cautious when the Thirteen ­were present—­and bored.

One jerk of the chin from Manon was all it took for the Thirteen to fall in line. The twelve other sentinels kept the required distance behind Manon and her grandmother, footsteps near silent in the winter grass. None of them had been able to find a single Crochan in the months they’d been infiltrating town after town. And Manon fully expected some form of punishment for it later. Flogging, perhaps a few broken fingers—­nothing too permanent, but it would be public. That was her grandmother’s preferred method of punishment: not the how, but the humiliation.

Yet her grandmother’s gold-­flecked black eyes, the heirloom of the Blackbeak Clan’s purest bloodline, ­were bent on the northern horizon, toward Oakwald Forest and the towering White Fangs far beyond. The gold-­speckled eyes ­were the most cherished trait in their Clan for a reason Manon had never bothered to learn—­and when her grandmother had seen that Manon’s ­were wholly of pure, dark gold, the Matron had carried her away from her daughter’s still-­cooling corpse and proclaimed Manon her undisputed heir.

Her grandmother kept walking, and Manon didn’t press her to speak. Not unless she wanted her tongue ripped clean from her mouth.

“We’re to travel north,” her grandmother said when the encampment was swallowed up by the foothills. “I want you to send three of your Thirteen south, west, and east. They are to seek out our kith and kin and inform them that we will all assemble in the Ferian Gap. Every last Blackbeak—­no witch or sentinel left behind.”

Nowadays there was no difference—­every witch belonged to a coven and was therefore a sentinel. Since the downfall of their western kingdom, since they had started clawing for their survival, every Blackbeak, Yellowlegs, and Blueblood had to be ready to fight—­ready at any time to reclaim their lands or die for their people. Manon herself had never set foot in the former Witch Kingdom, had never seen the ruins or the flat, green expanse that stretched to the western sea. None of her Thirteen had seen it, either, all of them wanderers and exiles thanks to a curse from the last Crochan Queen as she bled out on that legendary battlefield.

The Matron went on, still staring at the mountains. “And if your sentinels see members of the other clans, they are to inform them to gather in the Gap, too. No fighting, no provoking—­just spread the word.” Her grandmother’s iron teeth flashed in the afternoon sun. Like most of the ancient witches—­the ones who had been born in the Witch Kingdom and fought in the Ironteeth Alliance to shatter the chains of the Crochan Queens—­Mother Blackbeak wore her iron teeth permanently on display. Manon had never seen them retracted.

Manon bit back her questions. The Ferian Gap—­the deadly, blasted bit of land between the White Fang and Ruhnn Mountains, and one of the few passes between the fertile lands of the east and the Western Wastes.

Manon had made the passage through the snow-­crusted labyrinth of caves and ravines on foot—­just once, with the Thirteen and two other covens, right after magic had vanished, when they ­were all nearly blind, deaf, and dumb with the agony of suddenly being grounded. Half of the other witches hadn’t made it through the Gap. The Thirteen had barely survived, and Manon had almost lost an arm to an ice cavern cave-­in. Almost lost it, but kept it thanks to the quick thinking of Asterin, her second in command, and the brute strength of Sorrel, her Third. The Ferian Gap; ­Manon hadn’t been back since. For months now there had been rumors of far darker things than witches dwelling there.

“Baba Yellowlegs is dead.” Manon whipped her head to her grandmother, who was smiling faintly. “Killed in Rifthold. The duke received word. No one knows who, or why.”

“Crochans?”

“Perhaps.” Mother Blackbeak’s smile spread, revealing iron teeth spotted with rust. “The King of Adarlan has invited us to assemble in the Ferian Gap. He says he has a gift for us there.”