Heir of Fire(168)
“We’re waiting, Manon,” her grandmother barked from above. She waved a hand toward the cave mouth. “But by all means, take your time.”
Laughter—from the Yellowlegs, Blackbeaks . . . everyone. Yet Petrah wasn’t smiling. And none of the Thirteen, gathered closest along the viewing platform, were smiling, either.
Manon turned to Abraxos, looking into those eyes. “Let’s go.” She tugged on the reins.
But he refused to move—not from fear or terror. He slowly lifted his head—looking to where her grandmother stood—and let out a low, warning growl. A threat.
Manon knew she should reprimand him for the disrespect, but the fact that he could grasp what was occurring in this hall . . . it should have been impossible.
“The night is waning,” her grandmother called, heedless of the beast that stared at her with such rage in his eyes.
Sorrel and Asterin exchanged glances, and she could have sworn her Second’s hand twitched toward the hilt of her sword. Not to hurt Abraxos, but . . . Every single one of the Thirteen was casually reaching for their weapons. To fight their way out—in case her grandmother gave the order to have Manon and Abraxos put down. They’d heard the challenge in Abraxos’s growl—understood that the beast had drawn a line in the sand.
They were not born with hearts, her grandmother said. They had all been told that. Obedience, discipline, brutality. Those were the things they were supposed to cherish.
Asterin’s eyes were bright—stunningly bright—and she nodded once at Manon.
It was that same feeling she’d gotten when Iskra whipped Abraxos—that thing she couldn’t describe, but it blinded her.
Manon gripped Abraxos’s snout, forcing his gaze away from her grandmother. “Just once,” she whispered. “All you have to do is make this jump just once, Abraxos, and then you can shut them up forever.”
Then, rising up from the deep, there came a steady two-note beat. The beat of the chained bait beasts, who hauled the massive machines around. Like a thudding heart. Or beating wings.
Louder the beat sounded, as if the wyverns down in the pits knew what was happening. It grew and grew, until it reached the cavern—until Asterin reached for her shield and joined in. Until each one of the Thirteen took up the beat. “You hear that? That is for you.”
For a moment, as the beat pulsed around them, phantom wings from the mountain itself, Manon thought that it would not be so bad to die—if it was with him, if she was not alone.
“You are one of the Thirteen,” she said to him. “From now until the Darkness cleaves us apart. You are mine, and I am yours. Let’s show them why.”
He huffed into her palms as if to say he already knew all that and that she was just wasting time. She smiled faintly, even as Abraxos cast another challenging glare in her grandmother’s direction. The wyvern lowered himself to the ground for Manon to climb into the saddle.
The distance to the entrance seemed so much shorter in the saddle than on foot, but she did not let herself doubt him as she blinked her inner lid into place and retracted her teeth. The Spidersilk would hold—she would consider no other alternative. “Fly, Abraxos,” she told him, and dug her spurs into his sides.
Like a roaring star, he thundered down the long shoot, and Manon moved with him, meeting each gallop of his powerful body, each step in time with the beat of the wyverns locked in the belly of the mountain. Abraxos flapped his wings open, pounding them once, twice, gathering speed, fearless, unrelenting, ready.
Still, the beat did not stop, not from the wyverns or from the Thirteen or from the Blackbeak covens, who picked it up, stomping their feet or clapping their hands. Not from the Blueblood heir, who clapped her sword against her dagger, or the Blueblood witches who followed her lead. The entire mountain shook with the sound.