A long, hot huff of air into her hands.

“Once all that is done,” she said, smiling faintly at her wyvern, “you and I are going to learn how to fly. And then we’ll stain this kingdom red.”

•

Abraxos did everything she asked, though he growled at the handlers who inspected and poked and prodded, and nearly bit off the arm of the physician who had to dig out his rotted teeth to make way for the iron fangs. It took five days to do it all.

He almost took out a wall when they welded the iron spikes onto his tail, but Manon stood with him the entire time, talking to him about what it was like to ­ride with the Thirteen on their ironwood brooms and hunt down the Crochan witches. She told the stories as much to distract him as she did to remind the men that if they made a mistake, if they hurt him, her retribution would be a long, bloody pro­cess. Not one of them made an error.

During the five days they worked on him, she missed her riding lessons with the Thirteen. And with each passing day, the window for getting Abraxos airborne became smaller and smaller.

Manon stood with Asterin and Sorrel in the training hall, watching the tail end of the day’s sparring session. Sorrel had been working with the youn­gest coven of Blackbeaks—­all of them under seventy, and few of them experienced.

“How bad?” Manon asked, crossing her arms.

Sorrel, small and dark-­haired, crossed her arms as well. “Not as bad as we feared. But they’re still sorting out coven dynamics—­and their leader is . . .” Sorrel frowned at a mousy-­looking witch who had just been thrown to the ground by an inferior. “I’d suggest either having her coven decide what to do with her or picking a new leader. One weak coven in the wing and we could lose the War Games.”

The coven leader was panting on the hard stone floor, nose dripping blue blood. Manon ground her teeth. “Give her two days—­let’s see if she sorts herself out.” No need to have word of unstable covens get around. “But have Vesta take her out to­night,” Manon added, glancing to the red-­haired beauty leading another coven in archery drills. “To wherever she’s been going to torment the men in the Northern Fang.”

Sorrel raised her thick brows innocently, and Manon rolled her eyes. “You’re a worse liar than Vesta. You think I ­haven’t noticed those men grinning at her at all hours of the day? Or the bite marks on them? Just keep the death toll down. We have enough to worry about as it is—­we don’t need a mutiny from the mortals.”

Asterin snorted, but when Manon gave her a sidelong look, the witch kept her gaze ahead, face all ­too innocent. Of course, if Vesta had been bedding and bleeding the men, then Asterin had been right there with her. Neither of them had reported anything about the men tasting strange.

“As you will it, Lady,” Sorrel said, a faint hint of color on her tan cheeks. If Manon was ice and Asterin was fire, then Sorrel was rock. Her grandmother had told her on occasion to make Sorrel her Second, as ice and stone ­were sometimes too similar. But without Asterin’s flame, without her Second being able to rile up a host or rip out the throat of any challenger to Manon’s dominance, Manon would not have led the Thirteen so successfully. Sorrel was grounded enough to even them both out. The perfect Third.

“The only ones having fun right now,” Asterin said, “are the green-­eyed demon-­twins.”

Indeed, the midnight-­haired Faline and Fallon ­were grinning with maniacal glee as they led three covens in knife-­throwing exercises, using their inferiors as target practice. Manon just shook her head. What­ever worked; ­whatever shook the dust off these Blackbeak ­warriors.

“And my Shadows?” Manon asked Asterin. “How are they doing?”

Edda and Briar, two cousins that ­were as close as sisters, had been trained since infancy to blend into any sliver of darkness and listen—­and they ­were nowhere to be seen in this hall. Just as Manon had ordered.

“They’ll have a report for you to­night,” Asterin said. Distant cousins to Manon, the Shadows bore the same moon-­white hair. Or they had, until they’d discovered eighty years ago that the silver hair was as good as a beacon and dyed it solid black. They rarely spoke, never laughed, and sometimes even Asterin herself ­couldn’t detect them until they ­were at her throat. It was their sole source of amusement: sneaking up on people, though they’d never dared do it to Manon. It was no surprise they’d taken two onyx wyverns.

Manon eyed her Second and Third. “I want you both in my room for their report, too.”

“I’ll have Lin and Vesta stand watch,” Asterin said. They ­were Manon’s fallback sentries—­Vesta for the disarming smiles, and Lin because if anyone ever called her by her full name, Linnea—­the name her softhearted mother had given her before Lin’s grandmother tore out her heart—­that person wound up with missing teeth at best. A missing face at worst.

Manon was about to turn away when she caught her Second and Third watching her. She knew the question they didn’t dare ask, and said, “I’ll be airborne with Abraxos in a week, and then we’ll be flying as one.”

It was a lie, but they believed her anyway.

28

Days passed, and not all of them ­were awful. Out of nowhere, Rowan decided to take Celaena to the commune of healers fifteen miles away, where the finest healers in the world learned, taught, and worked. Situated on the border between the Fae and mortal world, they ­were accessible to anyone who could reach them. It was one of the few good things Maeve had done.

As a child, Celaena had begged her mother to bring her. But the answer had always been no, accompanied by a vague promise that they would someday take a trip to the Torre Cesme in the southern continent, where many of the teachers had been taught by the Fae. Her mother had done everything she could to keep her from Maeve’s clutches. The irony of it ­wasn’t wasted on her.

So Rowan took her. She could have spent all day—­all month—­wandering the grounds under the clever, kind eyes of the Head Healer. But her time there was halved thanks to the distance and her inability to shift, and Rowan wanted to be home before nightfall. Honestly, while she’d actually enjoyed herself at the peaceful riverside compound, she wondered whether Rowan had just brought her there to make her feel bad about the life she’d fallen into. It had made her quiet on the long hike back.

And he didn’t give her a moment’s rest: they ­were to set out the following dawn on an overnight trip, but he ­wouldn’t say where. Fantastic.

Already making the day’s bread, Emrys only looked faintly amused as Celaena hurried in, stuffed her face with food and guzzled down tea, and hurried back out.

Rowan was waiting by her rooms, a small pack dangling from his hands. He held it open for her. “Clothes,” he said, and she stuffed the extra shirt and underclothes she’d laid out into the bag. He shouldered it—­which she supposed meant he was in a good mood, as she’d fully expected to play pack mule on their way to wherever they ­were going. He didn’t say anything until they ­were in the mist-­shrouded trees, again heading west. When the fortress walls had vanished behind them, the ward-­stones zinging against her skin as they passed through, he stopped at last, throwing back the heavy hood of his jacket. She did the same, the cool air biting her warm cheeks.

“Shift, and let’s go,” he said. His second words to her this morning.

“And ­here I was, thinking we’d become friends.”

He raised his brows and gestured with a hand for her to shift. “It’s twenty miles,” he said by way of encouragement, and gave her a wicked grin. “We’re running. Each way.”

Her knees trembled at the thought of it. Of course he’d make this into some sort of torture session. Of course. “And where are we going?”

He clenched his jaw, the tattoo stretching. “There was another body—­a demi-­Fae from a neighboring fortress. Dumped in the same area, same patterns. I want to go to the nearby town to question the citizens, but . . .” His mouth twisted to the side, then he shook his head at some silent conversation with himself. “But I need your help. It’ll be easier for the mortals to talk to you.”