“Chaol, keep an eye on him,” the queen barked.
Then, holding Manon’s gaze, Aelin sheathed her mighty blade across her back, the giant ruby in the pommel catching in the midday light.
“Swords are boring,” the queen said, and palmed two fighting knives.
Manon sheathed Wind-Cleaver along her own back. She flicked her wrists, the iron nails shooting out. She cracked her jaw, and her fangs descended. “Indeed.”
The queen looked at the nails, the teeth, and grinned.
Honestly—it was a shame that Manon had to kill her.
Manon Blackbeak lunged, as swift and deadly as an adder.
Aelin darted back, dodging each swipe of those lethal iron nails. For her throat, for her face, for her guts. Back, and back, circling around the pillars.
It was only a matter of minutes before the wyverns arrived.
Aelin jabbed with her daggers, and the witch sidestepped her, only to slash with her nails, right at Aelin’s neck.
Aelin spun aside, but the nails grazed her skin. Blood warmed her neck and shoulders.
The witch was so d.a.m.n fast. And one h.e.l.l of a fighter.
But Rowan and the others were across the second bridge.
Now she just had to get there, too.
Manon Blackbeak feinted left and slashed right.
Aelin ducked and rolled aside.
The pillar shuddered as those iron claws gouged four lines deep into the stone.
Manon hissed. Aelin made to drive her dagger into her spine; the witch lashed out with a hand and wrapped it clean around the blade.
Blue blood welled, but the witch bore down on the blade until it snapped into three pieces in her hand.
G.o.ds above.
Aelin had the sense to go in low with her other dagger, but the witch was already there—and Aedion’s shout rang in her ears as Manon’s knee drove up into her gut.
The air knocked from her in a whoosh, but Aelin kept her grip on the dagger, even as the witch threw her into another pillar.
The stone column rocked against the blow, and Aelin’s head cracked, agony arcing through her, but—
A slash, directly for her face.
Aelin ducked.
Again, the stone shuddered beneath the impact.
Aelin squeezed air into her body. Move—she had to keep moving, smooth as a stream, smooth as the wind of her carranam, bleeding and hurt across the way.
Pillar to pillar, she retreated, rolling and ducking and dodging.
Manon swiped and slashed, slamming into every column, a force of nature in her own right.
And then back around, again and again, pillar after pillar absorbing the blows that should have shredded her face, her neck. Aelin slowed her steps, let Manon think she was tiring, growing clumsy—
“Enough, coward,” Manon hissed, making to tackle Aelin to the ground.
But Aelin swung around a pillar and onto the thin lip of bare rock beyond the temple platform, the drop looming, just as Manon collided with the column.
The pillar groaned, swayed—and toppled to the side, hitting the pillar beside it, sending them both cracking to the ground.
Along with the domed roof.
Manon didn’t even have time to lunge out of the way as the marble crashed down on her.
One of the few remaining witches on the other side of the ravine screamed.
Aelin was already running, even as the rock island itself began trembling, as if whatever ancient force held this temple together had died the moment the roof crumbled.
s.h.i.t.
Aelin sprinted for the second bridge, dust and debris burning her eyes and lungs.
The island jolted with a thunderous crack, so violent that Aelin stumbled. But there were the posts and the bridge beyond, Aedion waiting on the other side—an arm held out, beckoning.
The island swayed again—wider and longer this time.
It was going to collapse beneath them.
There was a flicker of blue and white, a flash of red cloth, a glimmer of iron—
A hand and a shoulder, grappling with a fallen column.
Slowly, painfully, Manon heaved herself onto a slab of marble, her face coated in pale dust, blue blood leaking down her temple.
Across the ravine, cut off entirely, the golden-haired witch was on her knees. “Manon!”
I don’t think you’ve ever groveled for anything in your life, Wing Leader, the king had said.
But there was a Blackbeak witch on her knees, begging whatever G.o.ds they worshipped; and there was Manon Blackbeak, struggling to rise as the temple island crumbled away.
Aelin took a step onto the bridge.
Asterin—that was the golden-haired witch’s name. She screamed for Manon again, a plea to rise, to survive.
The island jolted.
The remaining bridge—the bridge to her friends, to Rowan, to safety—still held.
Aelin had felt it before: a thread in the world, a current running between her and someone else. She’d felt it one night, years ago, and had given a young healer the money to get the h.e.l.l out of this continent. She’d felt the tug—and had decided to tug back.
Here it was again, that tug—toward Manon, whose arms buckled as she collapsed to the stone.
Her enemy—her new enemy, who would have killed her and Rowan if given the chance. A monster incarnate.
But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.
“Run!” Aedion roared from across the ravine.
So she did.
Aelin ran for Manon, leaping over the fallen stones, her ankle wrenching on loose debris.
The island rocked with her every step, and the sunlight was scalding, as if Mala were holding that island aloft with every last bit of strength the G.o.ddess could summon in this land.
Then Aelin was upon Manon Blackbeak, and the witch lifted hate-filled eyes to her. Aelin hauled off stone after stone from her body, the island beneath them buckling.
“You’re too good a fighter to kill,” Aelin breathed, hooking an arm under Manon’s shoulders and hauling her up. The rock swayed to the left—but held. Oh, G.o.ds. “If I die because of you, I’ll beat the s.h.i.t out of you in h.e.l.l.”
She could have sworn the witch let out a broken laugh as she got to her feet, nearly a dead weight in Aelin’s arms.
“You—should let me die,” Manon rasped as they limped over the rubble.
“I know, I know,” Aelin panted, her sliced arm aching with the weight of the witch it supported. They hurried over the second bridge, the temple rock swaying to the right—stretching the bridge behind them tightly over the drop and the shining river far, far below.
Aelin tugged at the witch, gritting her teeth, and Manon stumbled into a staggering run. Aedion remained between the posts across the ravine, an arm still extended toward her—while his other lifted his sword high, ready for the Wing Leader’s arrival. The rock behind them groaned.
Halfway—nothing but a death-plunge waiting for them. Manon coughed blue blood onto the wooden slats. Aelin snapped, “What the h.e.l.l good are your beasts if they can’t save you from this kind of thing?”
The island veered back in the other direction, and the bridge went taut—oh, s.h.i.t—s.h.i.t, it was going to snap. Faster they ran, until she could see Aedion’s straining fingers and the whites of his eyes.
The rock cracked, so loudly it deafened her. Then came the tug and stretch of the bridge as the island began to crumble into dust, sliding to the side—
Aelin lunged the last few steps, gripping Manon’s red cloak as the chains of the bridge snapped. The wooden slats dropped out from beneath them, but they were already leaping.
Aelin let out a grunt as she slammed into Aedion. She whirled to see Chaol grabbing Manon and hauling her over the lip of the ravine, her cloak torn and covered in dust, fluttering in the wind.
When Aelin looked past the witch, the temple was gone.
Manon gasped for air, concentrating on her breathing, on the cloudless sky above her.
The humans left her lying between the stone bridge posts. The queen hadn’t even bothered to say good-bye. She’d just dashed for the injured Fae warrior, his name like a prayer on her lips.
Rowan.
Manon had looked up in time to see the queen fall to her knees before the injured warrior in the gra.s.s, demanding answers from the brown-haired man—Chaol—who pressed a hand to the arrow wound in Rowan’s shoulder to stanch the bleeding. The queen’s shoulders were shaking.
Fireheart, the Fae warrior murmured. Manon would have watched—would have, had she not coughed blood onto the bright gra.s.s and blacked out.
When she awoke, they were gone.
Only minutes had pa.s.sed—because then there were booming wings, and Abraxos’s roar. And there were Asterin and Sorrel, rushing for her before their wyverns had fully landed.
The Queen of Terrasen had saved her life. Manon didn’t know what to make of it.
For she now owed her enemy a life debt.
And she had just learned how thoroughly her grandmother and the King of Adarlan intended to destroy them.
61
The trek back through Oakwald was the longest journey of Aelin’s miserable life. Nesryn had removed the arrow from Rowan’s shoulder, and Aedion had found some herbs to chew and shove into the open wound to stanch the bleeding.
But Rowan still sagged against Chaol and Aedion as they hurried through the forest.
Nowhere to go. She had nowhere to take an injured Fae male in the capital city, in this entire s.h.i.t-hole kingdom.
Lysandra was pale and shaking, but she’d squared her shoulders and offered to help carry Rowan when one of them tired. None of them accepted. When Chaol at last asked Nesryn to take over, Aelin glimpsed the blood soaking his tunic and hands—Rowan’s blood—and nearly vomited.