Page 309 of Kingdom of Ash

Petrah didn’t deign to respond.

They couldn’t bank at that speed. And soon Petrah wouldn’t be able to bank at all. Would break herself on the ground, right alongside Iskra.

“Stop!” Fear turned Iskra’s order into a sharp cry.

No pity for her kindled in Manon. None at all.

The ground neared, brutal and unyielding.

“You mad bitch, I said stop!”

Two hundred feet to the earth. Then a hundred. Manon couldn’t get down a breath.

Fifty feet.

And as the ground seemed to rise to meet them, Manon heard Petrah’s only words to Iskra like they had been carried on the wind.

“For Keelie.”

Petrah’s wyvern flung out its wings, banking sharper than any wyvern Manon had ever witnessed. Rising up, wing tip grazing the icy ground before it shot back into the skies.

Leaving Iskra and her bull to splatter on the earth.

The boom rumbled past Manon, thundering through the world.

Iskra and her bull did not rise again.

Abraxos gave a groan of pain, and Manon twisted in the saddle, her heart raging.

Iskra was dead. The Yellowlegs Heir was dead.

It didn’t fill her with the joy it should have. Not with that vulnerable grate on the city wall under attack.

So she snapped the reins, and Abraxos soared for the city walls, and then Sorrel and Vesta were beside her, Asterin coming in fast from behind. They flew low, beneath the Ironteeth now fighting Ironteeth, the Ironteeth still fighting Crochans. Aiming for the spots where the river flowed right up to their sides.

Already, a longboat had reached them. Already, arrows were flying from the small grate—guards frantic to keep the enemy at bay.

The Morath soldiers were so preoccupied with their target ahead that they did not look behind until Abraxos was upon them.

His blood streamed past her as he landed, snapping with talons and teeth and tail. Sorrel and Vesta took care of the others, the longboat soon in splinters.

But it was not enough. Not even close.

“The rocks,” Manon breathed, steering Abraxos toward the other side of the river.

He understood. Her heart strained to the point of agony at pushing him, but he soared to the other side of the river and hauled one of the smaller boulders back across. The Thirteen saw her plan and followed, swift and unfaltering.

Every one of his wingbeats was slower than the last. He lost height with each foot they crossed the river.

But then he made it, just as another group of Morath soldiers were trying to enter the small, vulnerable passage. Manon slammed the stone into the water before it. The Thirteen dropped their stones as well, the splashes carrying over the city walls.

More and more, each trip across the river slower than the last.

But then there were rocks piled up, breaking the surface. Then rising above it, blocking out all access to the river tunnel. Just high enough to seal it over—but not give a leg up to the Morath soldiers swarming on the other bank.

Abraxos’s breathing was labored, his head sagging.

Manon twisted in the saddle to order her Second to halt piling the rocks, but Asterin had already done so. Her Second pointed to the city walls above them. “Get inside!”

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