Gutted, Aelin had confirmed an hour later when she held up a small sliver of metal, by someone with very, very sharp iron nails.
None of them had mentioned that it might have been punishment—for saving him.
Manon was assessing the room with eyes quickly clearing. “Where are we.”
“On the sea.”
Aelin had ordered he not give her any information about their plans and whereabouts.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, wondering what, exactly, she might eat.
Indeed, those gold eyes slashed to his throat.
“Really?” He lifted a brow.
Her nostrils flared slightly. “Only for sport.”
“Aren’t you … partially human, at least?”
“Not in the ways that count.”
Right—because the other parts … Fae, Valg … It was Valg blood that had shaped the witches. The very prince that had infested him shared blood with her. From the black pit of his memory, images and words slithered out—of that prince seeing the gold eyes Dorian now met, screeching at him to get away … Eyes of the Valg kings. He said carefully, “So would you consider yourself more Valg than human, then?”
“The Valg are my enemy—Erawan is my enemy.”
“And does that make us allies?”
She revealed no indication either way. “Is there a young woman in your company named Elide?”
“No.” Who in hell was that? “We’ve never encountered anyone with that name.”
Manon closed her eyes for a heartbeat. Her slender throat bobbed. “Have you heard news of my Thirteen?”
“You’re the first rider and wyvern we’ve seen in weeks.” He contemplated why she’d asked, why she’d gone so still. “You don’t know if they’re alive.”
And with those iron shavings in her gut…
Manon’s voice was flat and cold as death. “Tell Aelin Galathynius not to bother using me for negotiations. The Blackbeak Matron will not acknowledge me, either as heir or witch, and all you will get out of it is revealing your precise location.”
His magic flickered. “What happened after Rifthold?”
Manon lay back down, angling her head away from him. Spindrift from the open porthole caught in her white hair and set it shimmering in the dim cabin. “Everything has a price.”
And it was those words, the fact that the witch had turned her face away and seemed to be waiting for death to claim her, that made him croon, “I once told you to find me again—it seems like you couldn’t wait to see my handsome face.”
Her shoulders stiffened slightly. “I’m hungry.”
He smiled slowly.
As if she’d heard that smile, Manon glared. “Food.”
But there was still an edge—a too-fragile edge limning every line of her body. Whatever had happened, whatever she had endured … Dorian draped an arm along the back of his chair. “It’s coming in a few minutes. I’d hate for you to waste away into nothing. It’d be a shame to lose the most beautiful woman in the world so soon into her immortal, wicked life.”
“I am not a woman,” was all she said. But hot temper laced those molten gold eyes.
He gave her an indolent shrug, perhaps only because she was indeed in chains, perhaps because, even though the death she radiated thrilled him, it did not strike a chord of fear. “Witch, woman … as long as the parts that matter are there, what difference does it make?”
She eased into a sitting position, disbelief and exhausted outrage on that perfect face. She bared her teeth in a silent snarl.
Dorian offered a lazy grin in return. “Believe it or not, this ship has an unnatural number of attractive men and women on board. You’ll fit right in. And fit in with the cranky immortals, I suppose.”
She glanced toward the door moments before he heard approaching footsteps. They were silent until the knob turned, revealing Aedion’s frowning face. “Awake and ready to rip out throats, it seems,” the general said by way of greeting. Dorian rose, taking the tray of what looked to be fish stew from him. He wondered if he should test it for poison from the look Aedion was giving Manon. She glared right back at the golden-haired warrior.
Aedion said, “I would have shot you and your runt of a wyvern clean out of the sky if given my way. Be grateful my queen finds you more useful alive.”
Then he was gone.
Dorian set the tray within Manon’s reach and watched her sniff at it. She took a slow, cautious bite—as if letting it slide into her healing belly and seeing how it settled there. As if indeed testing it for poison. While she waited, Manon said, “You don’t give orders on this ship?”
It was a focused effort not to bristle. “You know my circumstances. I am now at the mercy of my friends.”
“And the Queen of Terrasen is your friend?”
“There is no one else I’d want guarding my back.” Other than Chaol, but … it was no use even thinking about him, missing him.
Manon at last took another bite of her fish stew. Then another. And another.
And he realized she was avoiding speaking to him. Enough so that he asked, “It was your grandmother who did that to you, wasn’t it?”
Her spoon stilled in the chipped wooden bowl. Slowly, she turned her face toward him. Unreadable, a face crafted of nightmares and midnight fantasies.
“I’m sorry,” he admitted, “if the cost of saving me that day in Rifthold was … was this.”
“Find out if my Thirteen are alive, princeling. Do that, and I am yours to command.”
“Where did you last see them?”
Nothing. She swallowed another spoonful.
He pushed, “Were they present when your grandmother did that to you?”
Her shoulders curved a bit, and she scooped another spoonful of cloudy liquid but didn’t sip. “The cost of Rifthold was the life of my Second. I refused to pay it. So I bought my Thirteen time to run. The moment I swung my sword at my grandmother, my title, my legion, was forfeit. I lost the Thirteen while I fled. I do not know if they are alive, or if they have been hunted down.” Her eyes snapped to his, bright from more than the steam of her stew. “Find them for me. Learn if they live or if they have returned to the Darkness.”
“We’re in the middle of the ocean. There won’t be news of anything for a while.”
She went back to eating. “They are all I have left.”
“Then I suppose you and I are both heirs without crowns.”
A humorless snort. Her white hair shifted in the sea breeze.
Dorian rose and walked to the door. “I’ll do what I can.”
“And—Elide.”
Again, that name. “Who is she?”
But Manon was back at her stew. “Just tell Aelin Galathynius that Elide Lochan is alive—and looking for her.”
The conversation with the king took everything out of her. Once that food was in her belly, once she’d downed more water, Manon lay back in bed and slept.
And slept.
And slept.
The door banged open at one point, and she had the vague recollection of the Queen of Terrasen, then her general-prince, demanding answers about something. Elide, perhaps.
But Manon had lain there, half awake, unwilling to think or speak. She wondered if she would have stopped bothering to breathe, if her body hadn’t done it all on its own.
She had not realized how impossible the survival of the Thirteen might indeed have been until she was practically begging Dorian Havilliard to find them for her. Until she had found herself desperate enough to sell her sword for any news of them.
If they even wanted to serve her after everything. A Blackbeak—and a Crochan.
And her parents … murdered by her grandmother. They had promised the world a child of peace. And she had let her grandmother hone her into a child of war.
The thoughts swirled and eddied, sapping her strength, muting colors and sounds. She awoke and saw to her needs when necessary, ate when food was left, but she let that heavy, meaningless sleep take hold.
Sometimes, Manon dreamed that she was in that room in the Omega, her half sister’s blood on her hands and in her mouth. Sometimes, she stood beside her grandmother, a witch fully grown and not the witchling she’d been at the time, and helped the Matron carve up a handsome, bearded man who begged for her life—his offspring’s life. Sometimes, she flew over a lush green land, the song of a western wind singing her home.
Often, the dream was that a great cat, pale and speckled like old snow on granite, sat in the cabin with her, its long tail slashing back and forth when it noticed her glazed attention. Sometimes, it was a grinning white wolf. Or a calm-eyed golden mountain lion.
Manon wished they’d put their jaws around her throat and crunch down.
They never did.
So Manon Blackbeak slept. And so she dreamed.
43
Lorcan was still wondering what the hell he was doing three days later. They’d left that plains town far behind them, but the terror of that night lay draped over the carnival caravan like a heavy blanket with each mile the wagons hurried down the roads.
The others hadn’t wised up to how, exactly, they’d survived the ilken—hadn’t realized the ilken were near-impossible to kill, and no mere mortal could have slain one, let alone four. Nik and Ombriel gave him and Elide a wide berth—and only catching their wary, examining stares at the dinner campfire every night revealed they were still piecing together who and what he was.
Elide kept well away from him, too. They hadn’t had a chance to set up their usual tents thanks to fleeing so quickly, but tonight, safely within the walls of a small plains town, they’d have to share a room at the cheap inn Molly had begrudgingly paid for.
It was hard not to watch Elide as she took in the town, then the inn—the keen-eyed observation, the hint of surprise and confusion that sometimes crossed her face.
He used a tendril of his magic to keep her foot stabilized. She never commented on it. And sometimes that dark, fell magic of his would brush up against whatever it was she carried—the gift from a dying woman to a hotheaded assassin—and recoil.
Lorcan hadn’t pushed to see it since that night, though he’d spent a great deal of time contemplating what might have come out of Morath. Collars and rings were likely the start of it.
Whitethorn and the bitch-queen had no idea about the ilken—perhaps about the majority of horrors Elide had shared with him. He wondered what a wall of wildfire would do to the creatures—wondered if the ilken were somehow training against Aelin Galathynius’s arsenal. If Erawan was smart, he’d have something in mind.
While the others trudged into the ramshackle inn in search of food and rest, Elide informed Molly that she was going on a walk along the river, and headed into the cobblestone streets. And though his stomach was grumbling, Lorcan trailed her, ever the husband wishing to guard his beautiful wife in a town that had seen better days—decades. No doubt caused by Adarlan’s relentless road-building across the continent and the fact that this town had been left far from any artery through the land.
The thunderstorm he’d scented building on the horizon lumbered toward the stone-wrought town, the light shifting from gold to silver. Within minutes, the thick humidity was washed away by a sweep of welcome coolness. Lorcan gave Elide all of three blocks before he fell into step beside her and said, “It’s going to rain.”
She slid a flat glance at him. “I do know what thunder means.”
The walled town had been built on either side of a small, half-forgotten river—two large water gates on either end demanding tolls to enter the city and tracking the goods that passed through. Old water, fish, and rotting wood reached him before the sight of the muddy, calm waters did, and it was precisely at the edge of the river docks that Elide paused.
“What are you looking for?” he asked at last, an eye on the darkening skies. The dockworkers, sailors, and merchants monitored the clouds, too, as they scurried about. Some lingered to tie up the long, flat-bellied barges and latch down the smooth poles they used to navigate the river. He’d seen a kingdom, perhaps three hundred years ago, that relied on barges to sail its goods from one end to another. Its name eluded him, lost to the catacombs of his memory. Lorcan wondered if it still existed, tucked away between two mountain ranges on the other side of the world.