Page 311 of Kingdom of Ash

“Wait,” she said again to Ren when he opened his mouth, her heart thundering, nausea coiling in her gut. She whistled, and Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen looked her way. She waved them over, her arm barking in pain.

“You’re hurt,” Aedion growled.

Lysandra ignored him as the witches stalked over, so much blood and gore on all of them.

She asked Manon, “Will Abraxos live?”

A shallow nod, the Witch-Queen’s golden eyes dull.

Lysandra didn’t have it in her for relief. Not with the news she’d flown back so desperately to deliver. She swallowed the bile in her throat, then pointed to the battlefield. To its dark, misty heart. “They have the witch tower up again. It’s moving this way. I just saw it myself. The witches have gathered atop it.”

Absolute silence.

And as if in answer, the tower erupted.

Not toward them, but skyward. A flash of light, a boom louder than thunder, and then a portion of the sky became empty.

Where Ironteeth, rebels and the faithful alike, had been fighting, where Crochans had been weaving between them, there was nothing.

Just ash.

Lysandra’s voice broke as the tower continued moving. A straight, unbreakable line toward Orynth. “They mean to blast apart the city.”

Hands and arms coated in Abraxos’s blood, Manon stared at the battlefield. Stared at where all those witches, Ironteeth and Crochan fighting for either army, had just … vanished.

Everything her grandmother had claimed about the witch towers was true.

And it was not Kaltain and her shadowfire that fueled that blast of destruction, but Ironteeth witches.

Young Ironteeth witches who offered themselves up. Who made the Yielding as they leaped into the mirror-lined pit within the tower.

An ordinary Yielding might take out twenty, thirty witches around her. Maybe more, if she was older and more powerful.

But a Yielding amplified by the power of those witch mirrors … One blast, and the castle looming above them would be rubble. Another blast, maybe two, and Orynth would follow it.

Ironteeth swarmed the tower, a vicious wall keeping the Crochans and rebel Ironteeth out.

A few Crochans indeed tried to break through those defenses.

Their red-clad bodies fell to the earth in pieces.

Petrah, now within the confines of her coven, even made a run for the tower. To rip it down.

They were beaten back by a swarm of Ironteeth.

The tower advanced. Closer and closer.

It would be within range soon. Another few minutes, and that tower would be close enough for its blast to reach the castle. To wipe away this army, this remnant of resistance, forever.

There would be no survivors. No second chances.

Manon turned to Asterin and said quietly, “I need another wyvern.”

Her Second only stared at her.

Manon repeated, “I need another wyvern.”

Abraxos was in no shape to fly. Wouldn’t be for hours or days.

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