Kingdom of Ash
: Part 1 – Chapter 7

Morath. The final key was at Morath.

The knowledge hung over Dorian through the night, keeping him from sleep. When he did doze, he awoke with a hand at his neck, grasping for a collar that was not there.

He had to replace some way to go. Some way to reach it.

Since Manon would undoubtedly be unwilling to take him. Even if she’d been the one who’d suggested he might be able to take Aelin’s place to forge the Lock.

The Thirteen had barely escaped Morath—they were in no hurry to return. Not when their task in replaceing the Crochans had become so vital. Not when Erawan might very well sense their arrival before they neared the keep.

Gavin had claimed the path would replace him here, in this camp. But replaceing a way to convince the Thirteen to remain, when instinct and urgency compelled them to move on … that might prove as impossible a task as attaining the third Wyrdkey.

Their camp stirred in the gray light of dawn, and Dorian gave up on sleep. Rising, he found Manon’s bedroll packed, and the witch herself standing with Asterin and Sorrel by their mounts. It was that trio he’d have to convince to remain—somehow.

Already waiting near the mouth of the pass, the other wyverns shifted as they readied for the unbearably cold flight.

Another day, another hunt for a clan of witches who had no desire to be found. And would likely have little desire to join this war.

“We move out in five minutes.” Sorrel’s rocky voice carried across the camp.

Convincing would have to wait, then. Delaying it was.

Within three minutes, the fire was out and weapons were donned, bedrolls bound to saddles and needs seen to before the long day of flying.

Buckling on Damaris, Dorian aimed for Manon, the witch standing with that preternatural stillness. Beautiful, even here in the blasted snow, a shaggy goat pelt slung over her shoulders. As he neared, her eyes met his in a flash of burnt gold.

Asterin gave him a wicked grin. “Morning, Your Majesty.”

Dorian inclined his head. “Where are we wandering today?” He knew the casual words didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“We were just debating it,” Sorrel answered, the Third’s face stony but open.

Behind them, Vesta swore as the buckle on her saddle came undone. Dorian didn’t dare to look, to confirm that the invisible hands of his magic had worked.

“We already searched north of here,” Asterin said. “Let’s keep heading south—make it to the end of the Fangs before we backtrack.”

“They might not even be in the mountains,” Sorrel countered. “We’ve hunted them in the lowlands in decades past.”

Manon listened with a cool, unruffled expression. As she did every morning. Weighing their words, listening to the wind that sang to her.

Imogen’s saddlebag snapped free of its tether. The witch hissed as she dismounted to retie it. How long these little delays could keep them here, he didn’t know. Not indefinitely.

“If we abandon these mountains,” Asterin argued, “then we’ll be far more trackable in the open lands. Both our enemies and the Crochans will spot us before we ever replace them.”

“It’d be warmer,” Sorrel grumbled. “Eyllwe would be a hell of a lot warmer.”

Apparently, even immortal witches with steel in their veins could grow tired of the leeching cold.

But to go so far south, into Eyllwe, when they were still near enough to Morath … Manon seemed to consider that, too. Her eyes dipped to his jacket. To the keys within, as if she could sense their pulsing whisper, their slide against his power. All that lay between Erawan and his dominion over Erilea. To bring them within a hundred miles of Morath … No, she’d never allow it.

Dorian kept his face blandly pleasant, a hand resting on the eye-shaped pommel of Damaris. “This camp has no clues about where they went?”

He knew they hadn’t the faintest notion. Knew it, but waited for their answer anyway, trying not to grip Damaris’s pommel too hard.

“No,” Manon said with a hint of a growl.

Yet Damaris gave no answer beyond a faint warmth in the metal. He didn’t know what he’d expected: some verifying hum of power, a confirming voice in his mind.

Certainly not the unimpressive whisper of heat.

Heat for truth; likely cold for lies. But—at least Gavin had spoken true about the blade. He shouldn’t have doubted it, considering the god Gavin still honored.

Holding his stare with that relentless, predatory focus, Manon gave the order to move out. Northward.

Away from Morath. Dorian opened his mouth, casting for anything to say, do, to delay this departure. Short of snapping a wyvern’s wing, there was nothing—

The witches turned toward the wyverns, where Dorian would ride with one of the sentinels for the next leg of this endless hunt. But Abraxos roared, lunging for Manon with a snap of teeth.

As Manon whirled, Dorian’s magic surged, already lashing at the unseen foe.

A mighty white bear had risen from the snow behind her.

Teeth flashing, it brought down its massive paw. Manon ducked, rolling to the side, and Dorian hurled out a wall of his magic—wind and ice.

The bear was blasted back, hitting the snow with an icy thump. It was instantly up again, racing for Manon. Only Manon.

Half a thought had Dorian flinging invisible hands to halt the beast. Just as it collided with his magic, snow spraying, light flashed.

He knew that light. A shifter.

But it was not Lysandra who emerged from the bear’s perfectly camouflaged hide.

No, the thing that came out of the bear was made of nightmares.

A spider. A great, stygian spider, big as a horse and black as night.

Its many eyes narrowed on Manon, pincers clicking, as it hissed, “Blackbeak.”

The stygian spider had found her, somehow. After all these months, after the thousands of leagues Manon had traveled over sky and earth and sea, the spider from whom she’d stolen the silk to reinforce Abraxos’s wings had found her.

But the spider had not anticipated the Thirteen. Or the power of the King of Adarlan.

Manon drew Wind-Cleaver as Dorian held the spider in place with his magic, the king showing little signs of strain. Powerful—he grew more powerful each day.

The Thirteen closed ranks, weapons gleaming in the blinding sun and snow, the wyverns forming a wall of leathery hides and claws behind them.

Manon stalked a few steps closer to those twitching pincers. “You’re a long way from the Ruhnns, sister.”

The spider hissed. “You were not so very hard to replace, despite it.”

“You know this beast?” Asterin asked, prowling to Manon’s side.

Manon’s mouth curled in a cruel smile. “She donated the Spidersilk for Abraxos’s wings.”

The spider snarled. “You stole my silk, and shoved me and my weavers off a cliff—”

“How is it that you can shape-shift?” Dorian asked, still pinning the spider in place as he approached Manon’s other side, one hand gripping the hilt of his ancient sword. “The legends make no mention of that.” Curiosity indeed brightened on his face. She supposed the white line through his golden skin on his throat was proof that he’d dealt with far worse. And supposed that whatever bond lay between them was also proof he had little fear of pain or death.

A good trait for a witch, yes. But in a mortal? It would likely wind up getting him killed.

Perhaps it was not a lack of fear, but rather a lack of … of whatever mortals deemed vital to their souls. Ripped from him by his father. And that Valg demon.

The spider seethed. “I took two decades from a young merchant’s life in exchange for my silk. The gift of his shifting flowed through his life force—some of it, at least.” All those eyes narrowed on Manon. “He willingly paid the price.”

“Kill her, and be done with it,” Asterin murmured.

The spider recoiled as much as the king’s invisible leash would allow. “I had no idea our sisters had become so cowardly, if they now require magic to skewer us like pigs.”

Manon lifted Wind-Cleaver, contemplating where between the spider’s many eyes to plunge the blade. “Shall we see if you squeal like one when I do?”

“Coward,” the spider spat. “Release me, and we’ll end this the old way.”

Manon debated it. Then shrugged. “I shall keep this painless. Consider that my debt owed to you.” Sucking in a breath, Manon readied for the blow—

“Wait.” The spider breathed the word. “Wait.”

“From insults to pleading,” Asterin murmured. “Who is spineless now?”

The spider ignored the Second, her depthless eyes devouring Manon, then Dorian. “Do you know what moves in the South? What horrors gather?”

“Old news,” Vesta said, snorting.

“How do you think I found you?” the spider asked. Manon stilled. “So many possessions left at Morath. Your scents all over them.”

If the spider had found them here that easily, they had to move out. Now.

The spider hissed, “Shall I tell you what I spied a mere fifty miles south of here? Who I saw, Blackbeak?” Manon stiffened. “Crochans,” the spider said, then sighed deeply. Hungrily.

Manon blinked. Just once. The Thirteen had gone equally still. Asterin asked, “You’ve seen the Crochans?”

The spider’s massive head bobbed in a nod before she sighed again. “The Crochans always tasted of what I imagine summer wine to be like. What chocolate, as you call it, would taste like.”

“Where,” Manon demanded.

The spider named the location—vague and unfamiliar. “I will show you where,” she said. “I will guide you.”

“It could be a trap,” Sorrel said.

“It’s not,” Dorian said, his hand still on the hilt of his sword. Manon studied the clarity of his eyes, the squared shoulders. The pitiless face, yet inquisitive angle to his head. “Let’s see if her information holds true—and decide her fate afterward.”

Manon blurted, “What.” The Thirteen shifted at the denied kill.

Dorian jerked his chin to the shuddering spider. “Don’t kill her. Not yet. There’s more she might know beyond the Crochans’ whereabouts.”

The spider hissed, “I do not need a boy’s mercy—”

“It is a king’s mercy you receive,” Dorian said coldly, “and I’d suggest being quiet long enough to receive it.” Rarely, so rarely did Manon hear that voice from him, the tone that sent a thrill through her blood and bones. A king’s voice.

But he was not her king. He was not the coven leader of the Thirteen. “We let her live and she’ll sell us to the highest bidder.”

Dorian’s sapphire eyes churned, the hand on his sword tightening. Manon tensed at that contemplative, cold stare. The hint of the calculating predator beneath the king’s handsome face. He only said to the spider, “You mastered shape-shifting in a matter of months, it seems.”

A path would replace him here, Gavin had said.

A path into Morath. Not a physical road, not a course of travel, but this.

The unholy terror remained quiet for a beat before she said, “Our gifts are strange and hungry things. We feed not just on your life, but your powers, too, if you possess them. Once magic was freed, I learned to wield the abilities the shape-shifter had transferred to me.”

Damaris warmed in his hand. Truth. Every word the spider had spoken had been truth. And this … A way into Morath—as something else entirely. In another’s skin.

Perhaps a human slave, like Elide Lochan. Someone whose presence would go unmarked.

His raw power had lent itself to every other form of magic, able to move between flame and ice and healing. To shape-shift … might he learn it, too?

Dorian only asked the spider, “Do you have a name?”

“A king without his crown asks for a lowly spider’s name,” she murmured, her depthless eyes setting on him. “You cannot pronounce it in your tongue, but you may call me Cyrene.”

Manon ground her teeth. “It doesn’t matter what we call you, as you’ll be dead soon.”

But Dorian cut her a sidelong glance. “The Ruhnns are a part of my kingdom. As such, Cyrene is one of my subjects. I think that gives me the right to decide whether she lives or dies.”

“You are both at the mercy of my coven,” Manon snarled. “Step aside.”

Dorian gave her a slight smile. “Am I?” A wind colder than the mountain air filled the pass.

He could kill them all. Whether by choking the air from them or snapping their necks. He could kill them all, and the wyverns included. The knowledge carved out another hollow within him. Another empty spot. Had it ever troubled his father, or Aelin, to bear such power? “Bring her with us—question her more thoroughly at the next camp.”

Manon snapped, “You plan to bring that with us?”

In answer, the spider shifted, donning the form of a pale-skinned, dark-haired woman. Small and unremarkable, save for those unnerving black eyes. Not pretty, but with a deadly, ancient sort of allure that even a new hide couldn’t conceal. And utterly naked. She shivered, rubbing her hands down her thin arms. “Shall this form suffice to travel lightly?”

Manon ignored the spider. “And when she shifts in the night to rip us apart?”

Dorian only inclined his head, ice dancing at his fingertips. “She won’t.”

Cyrene sucked in a breath. “A rare gift of magic.” Her stare turned ravenous as she took in Dorian. “For a rare king.”

Dorian only frowned with distaste.

Manon glanced to Asterin. Her Second’s eyes were wary, her mouth a tight line. Sorrel, a few feet behind, glowered at the spider, but her hand had dropped from her sword.

The Thirteen, on some unspoken signal, peeled away to their wyverns. Only Cyrene watched them, those horrible, soulless eyes blinking every now and then as her teeth began to clack.

Manon angled her head at him. “You’re … different today.”

He shrugged. “If you want someone to warm your bed who cowers at your every word and obeys every command, look elsewhere.”

Her stare drifted to the pale band around his throat. “I’m still not convinced, princeling,” she hissed, “that I shouldn’t just kill her.”

“And what would it take, witchling, to convince you?” He didn’t bother to hide the sensual promise in his words, nor their edge.

A muscle flickered in Manon’s jaw. Things from legends—that’s who surrounded him. The witches, the spider … He might as well have been a character in one of the books he’d lent Aelin last fall. Though none of them had ever endured such a yawning pit inside them.

Scowling at her bare feet in the snow, Cyrene’s hands twitched at her sides, an echo of the pincers she’d borne moments before.

Dorian tried not to shudder. Suicide to sneak into Morath—once he learned what he needed from this thing.

The weight of Manon’s gaze fell upon him again, and Dorian didn’t balk from it. Didn’t balk from Manon’s words as she said, “If you replace so little value in your existence that it compels you to trust this thing, then by all means, bring her along.” A challenge to look not toward Morath or the spider, but inward. She saw exactly what gnawed on his empty chest, if only because a similar beast gnawed on her own. “We’ll replace out soon enough whether she spoke true about the Crochans.”

The spider had. Damaris had warmed in his hand when Cyrene had spoken.

And when they found the Crochans, when the Thirteen were distracted, he’d learn what he needed from the spider, too.

Manon turned to the Thirteen, the witches thrumming with impatience. “We fly now. We can reach the Crochans by nightfall.”

“And what then?” Asterin asked. The only one of them who had permission to do so.

Manon stalked for Abraxos, and Dorian followed, tossing Cyrene a spare cloak as his magic tugged her with him. “And then we make our move,” Manon hedged. And for once, she did not meet anyone’s stare. Didn’t do anything but gaze southward.

The witch was keeping secrets, too. But were hers as dire as his?