Page 56 of Kingdom of Ash

Bronwen spat on the bloody ground and prowled off.

A lie. Manon had lied.

She arched a brow at him, but Dorian turned away. Let the knowledge settle into him. What she’d done.

Thus began a series of orders and movements, gathering the injured and dead. Dorian helped as best he could, healing those who needed it most. Open, gaping wounds that leaked blue blood onto his hands.

The warmth of that blood didn’t reach him.

CHAPTER 15

She was a liar, and a killer, and would likely have to be both again before this was through.

But Manon had no regrets about what she’d done. Had no room in her for regret. Not with time bearing down on them, not with so much resting on their shoulders.

For long hours while they worked to repair camp and Crochans, Manon monitored the frosty skies.

Eight dead. It could have been worse. Much worse. Though she would take the lives of those eight Crochans with her, learn their names so she might remember them.

Manon spent the long night helping the Thirteen haul the fallen wyverns and Ironteeth riders to another ridge. The ground was too hard to bury them, and pyres would be too easily marked, so they opted for snow. She didn’t dare ask Dorian to use his power to assist them.

She’d seen that look in his eyes. Like he knew.

Manon dumped a stiff Yellowlegs body, the sentinel’s lips already blue, ice crusted in her blond hair. Asterin hauled a stout-bodied rider toward her by the boots, then deposited the witch with little fanfare.

But Manon stared at their dead faces. She’d sacrificed them, too.

Both sides of this conflict. Both of her bloodlines.

All would bleed; too many would die.

Would Glennis have welcomed them? Perhaps, but the other Crochans hadn’t seemed so inclined to do so.

And the fact remained that they did not have thetimeto waste in wooing them. So she’d picked the only method she knew: battle. Had soared off on her own earlier that day, to where she knew Ironteeth would be patrolling nearby, waited until the great northern wind carried her scent southward. And then bided her time.

“Did you know them?” Asterin asked when Manon remained staring at a fallen sentinel’s body. Down the line of them, the wyverns used their wings to brush great drifts of snow over the corpses.

“No,” Manon said. “I didn’t.”

Dawn was breaking by the time they returned to the Crochan camp. Eyes that had spat fire hours earlier now watched them warily, fewer hands drifting toward weapons as they aimed for the large, ringed fire pit. The largest of the camp, and located in its heart. Glennis’s hearth.

The crone stood before it, warming her gnarled, bloodied hands. Dorian sat nearby, and his sapphire eyes were indeed damning as he met Manon’s stare.

Later. That conversation would come later.

Manon halted a few feet away from Glennis, the Thirteen falling into rank at the outskirts of the fire, surveying the five tents around it, the cauldron bubbling at its center. Behind them, Crochans continued their repairs and healing—and kept one eye upon them all.

“Eat something,” Glennis said, gesturing to the bubbling cauldron. To what smelled like goat stew.

Manon didn’t bother objecting before she obeyed, gathering one ofthe small earthenware bowls beside the fire. Another way to demonstrate trust: to eat their food. Accept it.

So Manon did, devouring a few bites before Dorian followed her lead and did the same. When they were both eating, Glennis sat on a stone and sighed. “It’s been over five hundred years since an Ironteeth witch and a Crochan shared a meal. Since they sought to exchange words in peace. Interrupted, perhaps, only by your mother and father.”

“I suppose so,” Manon said mildly, pausing her eating.

The crone’s mouth twitched toward a smile, despite the battle, the draining night. “I was your father’s grandmother,” she clarified at last. “I myself bore your grandfather, who mated a Crochan Queen before she died giving birth to your father.”

Another thing they’d inherited from the Fae: their difficulty conceiving and the deadly nature of childbirth. A way for the Three-Faced Goddess to keep the balance, to avoid flooding the lands with too many immortal children who would devour her resources.

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