The duke was studying a giant map spread across his table, his companion or advisor or jester, Lord Vernon Lochan, standing at his side. Down a few seats, staring at the dark glass surface, sat Kaltain, unmoving save for the flutter of her white throat as she breathed. The brutal scar on her arm had somehow darkened into a purplish red. Fascinating.
“What do you want?” Manon demanded.
Asterin took up her place by the door, arms crossed.
The duke pointed to the chair across from him. “We have matters to discuss.”
Manon remained standing. “My mount is hungry, and so am I. I suggest telling me swiftly, so I can get on with my hunt.”
Lord Vernon, dark-haired, slim as a reed, and clothed in a bright-blue tunic that was far too clean, looked Manon over. Manon bared her teeth at him in silent warning. Vernon just smiled and said, “What’s wrong with the food we provide, Lady?”
Manon’s iron teeth slid down. “I don’t eat food made by mortals. And neither does my mount.”
The duke at last lifted his head. “Had I known you would be so picky, I would have asked for the Yellowlegs heir to be made Wing Leader.”
Manon casually flicked her nails out. “I think you would find Iskra Yellowlegs to be an undisciplined, difficult, and useless Wing Leader.”
Vernon slid into a chair. “I’ve heard about the rivalry between Witch Clans. Got something against the Yellowlegs, Manon?”
Asterin let out a low growl at the informal address.
“You mortals have your rabble,” Manon said. “We have the Yellowlegs.”
“What an elitist,” Vernon muttered to the duke, who snorted.
A line of cold flame went down Manon’s spine. “You have five minutes, duke.”
Perrington rapped his knuckles on the glass table. “We are to begin … experimenting. As we look to the future, we need to expand our numbers—to improve the soldiers we already have. You witches, with your history, allow us the chance to do just that.”
“Explain.”
“I am not in the business of explaining every last detail of my plans,” the duke said. “All I need you to do is give me a Blackbeak coven under your command to test.”
“Test how?”
“To determine whether they are compatible for breeding with our allies from another realm—the Valg.”
Everything stopped. The man had to be mad, but—
“Not breed as humans do, of course. It would be an easy, relatively painless procedure—a bit of stone sewn just beneath the belly button. The stone allows them in, you see. And a child born of Valg and witch bloodlines … You can understand what an investment that would be. You witches value your offspring so ardently.”
Both men were smiling blandly, waiting for her acceptance.
The Valg—the demons that had bred with the Fae to create the witches—somehow returned, and in contact with the duke and the king … She shut down the questions. “You have thousands of humans here. Use them.”
“Most are not innately gifted with magic and compatible with the Valg, as you witches are. And only witches have Valg blood already flowing in their veins.”
Did her grandmother know of this? “We are to be your army, not your whores,” Manon said with lethal quiet. Asterin came up to her side, her face tight and pale.
“Pick a coven of Blackbeaks,” was the duke’s only reply. “I want them ready in a week. Interfere with this, Wing Leader, and I’ll make dog meat of your precious mount. Perhaps do the same for your Thirteen.”
“You touch Abraxos, and I’ll peel the skin from your bones.”
The duke went back to his map and waved a hand. “Dismissed. Oh—and go down to the aerial blacksmith. He sent word that your latest batch of blades are ready for inspection.”Manon stood there, calculating the weight of the black glass table—if she could flip it over and use the shards to slowly, deeply cut up both men.
Vernon flicked his brows up in a silent, taunting move, and it was enough to send Manon turning away—out the door before she could do something truly stupid.
They were halfway to her room when Asterin said, “What are you going to do?”
Manon didn’t know. And she couldn’t ask her grandmother, not without looking unsure or incapable of following orders. “I’ll figure it out.”
“But you’re not going to give a Blackbeak Coven over to him for this—this breeding.”
“I don’t know.” Maybe it wouldn’t be bad—to join their bloodline with the Valg. Maybe it’d make their forces stronger. Maybe the Valg would know how to break the Crochan curse.
Asterin grabbed her by the elbow, nails digging in. Manon blinked at the touch, at the outright demand in it. Never before had Asterin even come close to—
“You cannot allow this to happen,” Asterin said.
“I’ve had enough of orders for one day. You give me another, and you’ll find your tongue on the floor.”
Asterin’s face went splotchy. “Witchlings are sacred—sacred, Manon. We do not give them away, not even to other Clans.”
It was true. Witchlings were so rare, and all of them female, as a gift from the Three-Faced Goddess. They were sacred from the moment the mother showed the first signs of pregnancy to when they came of age at sixteen. To harm a pregnant witch, to harm her unborn witchling or her daughter, was a breach of code so profound that there was no amount of suffering that could be inflicted upon the perpetrator to match the heinousness of the crime. Manon herself had participated in the long, long executions twice now, and the punishment had never seemed enough.
Human children didn’t count—human children were as good as veal to some of the Clans. Especially the Yellowlegs. But witchlings … there was no greater pride than to bear a witch-child for your Clan; and no greater shame than to lose one.
Asterin said, “What coven would you pick?”
“I haven’t decided.” Perhaps she’d pick a lesser coven—just in case—before allowing a more powerful one to join with the Valg. Maybe the demons would give their dying race the shot of vitality they had so desperately needed for the past few decades. Centuries.
“And if they object?”
Manon hit the stairs to her personal tower. “The only person who objects to anything these days, Asterin, is you.”
“It’s not right—”
Manon sliced out with a hand, tearing through the fabric and skin right above Asterin’s breasts. “I’m replacing you with Sorrel.”
Asterin didn’t touch the blood pooling down her tunic.
Manon began walking again. “I warned you the other day to stand down, and since you’ve chosen to ignore me, I have no use for you in those meetings, or at my back.” Never—not once in the past hundred years—had she changed their rankings. “As of right now, you are Third. Should you prove yourself to possess a shred of control, I’ll reconsider.”
“Lady,” Asterin said softly.
Manon pointed to the stairs behind. “You get to be the one to tell the others. Now.”
“Manon,” Asterin said, a plea in her voice that Manon had never heard before.
Manon kept walking, her red cloak stifling in the stairwell. She did not particularly care to hear what Asterin had to say—not when her grandmother had made it clear that any step out of line, any disobedience, would earn them all a brutal and swift execution. The cloak around her would never allow her to forget it.
“I’ll see you at the aerie in an hour,” Manon said, not bothering to look back as she entered her tower.
And smelled a human inside.
The young servant knelt before the fireplace, a brush and dustpan in her hands. She was trembling only slightly, but the tang of her fear had already coated the room. She’d likely been panicked from the moment she’d set foot inside the chamber.
The girl ducked her head, her sheet of midnight hair sliding over her pale face—but not before Manon caught the flash of assessment in her dark eyes.
“What are you doing in here?” Manon said flatly, her iron nails clicking against each other—just to see what the girl would do.
“C-c-cleaning,” the girl stammered—too brokenly, too perfectly. Subservient, docile, and terrified, exactly the way the witches preferred. Only the scent of fear was real.
Manon retracted her iron teeth.
The servant eased to her feet, wincing in pain. She shifted enough that the threadbare, homespun skirts of her dress swayed, revealing a thick chain between her ankles. The right ankle was mangled, her foot twisted on its side, glossy with scar tissue.
Manon hid her predator’s smile. “Why would they give me a cripple for a servant?”
“I-I only follow orders.” The voice was watery, unremarkable.
Manon snorted and headed for the nightstand, her braid and bloodred cloak flowing behind her. Slowly, listening, she poured herself some water.
The servant gathered her supplies quickly and deftly. “I can come back when it won’t disturb you, Lady.”
“Do your work, mortal, and then be gone.” Manon turned to watch the girl finish.
The servant limped through the room, meek and breakable and unworthy of a second glance.
“Who did that to your leg?” Manon asked, leaning against the bedpost.
The servant didn’t even lift her head. “It was an accident.” She gathered the ashes into the pail she’d lugged up here. “I fell down a flight of stairs when I was eight, and there was nothing to be done. My uncle didn’t trust healers enough to let them into our home. I was lucky to keep it.”