Page 307 of Kingdom of Ash

She might have been sobbing. Might have been screaming as his wingbeats faltered again.

She’d leap across the gods-damned wind, rip that bitch from the saddle, and slit her mount’s throat—

Abraxos began to fall.

Not fall. But dive—trying to get lower. To reach the ground, hauling that bull with him.

So Manon might survive.

“PLEASE.” Her scream to Iskra carried across the battlefield, across the world. “PLEASE.”

She would beg, she would crawl, if it bought him the chance to live.

Her warrior-hearted mount. Who had saved her far more than she had ever saved him.

Who had saved her in the ways that counted most.

“PLEASE.” She screamed it—screamed it with every scrap of her shredded soul.

Iskra only laughed. And the bull did not let go, even as Abraxos tried and tried to get them closer to the ground.

Her tears ripped away in the wind, and Manon freed the last of the buckles on her saddle. The gap between the wyverns was impossible, but she had been lucky before.

She didn’t care about any of it. The Wastes, the Crochans and Ironteeth, her crown. She didn’t care about any of it, if Abraxos was not there with her.

Abraxos’s wings strained, fighting with that mighty, loving heart to reach lower air.

Manon sized up the distance to the bull’s flank, ripping off her gloves to free her iron nails. As strong as any grappling hook.

Manon rose in the saddle, sliding a leg under her, body tensing to make the jump ahead. And she said to Abraxos, touching his spine, “I love you.”

It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.

Abraxos thrashed. As if he’d try to stop her.

Manon willed strength to her legs, to her arms, and sucked in a breath, perhaps her last—

Shooting from the heavens, faster than a star racing across the sky, a roaring form careened into Iskra’s bull.

Those jaws came free of Abraxos’s neck, and then they were falling, twisting.

Manon had enough sense to grab onto the saddle, to cling with everything she had as the wind threatened to tear her from him.

His blood streamed upward as they fell, but then his wings spread wide, and he was banking, flapping up. He steadied enough that Manon swung into the saddle, strapping herself in as she whirled to see what had occurred behind her. Who had saved them.

It was not Asterin.

It was not any of the Thirteen.

But Petrah Blueblood.

And behind the Heir to the Blueblood Witch-Clan, now slamming into Morath’s aerial legion from where they’d crept onto the battlefield from high above the clouds, were the Ironteeth.

Hundreds of them.

Hundreds of Ironteeth witches and their wyverns crashed into their own.

Petrah and Iskra pulled apart, the Blueblood Heir flapping toward Manon while Abraxos fought to stay upright.

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