Empire of Storms
Page 38

“I am a Blackbeak,” Manon rasped, blood choking her words.
Her grandmother took a step, smiling as she crooned, “You are a Crochan. The last of their royal bloodline with the death of your sister at your own hand. You are a Crochan Queen.”
Absolute silence from the witches gathered.
Her grandmother reached for her. “And you’re going to die like one by the time I’m finished with you.”
Manon didn’t let her grandmother’s nails touch her.
A boom sounded nearby.
Manon used the strength she’d gathered in her arms, her legs, to hurl herself onto the stone ledge of the balcony.
And roll off it into the open air.
 
 
Air and rock and wind and blood—
Manon slammed into a warm, leathery hide, screaming as pain from her wounds blacked out her vision.
Above, somewhere far away, her grandmother was shrieking orders—
Manon dug her nails into the leathery hide, burying her claws deep. Beneath her, a bark of discomfort she recognized. Abraxos.
But she held firm, and he embraced the pain as he banked to the side, swerving out of Morath’s shadow—
She felt them around her.
Manon managed to open her eyes, flicking the clear lid against the wind into place.
Edda and Briar, her Shadows, were now flanking her. She knew they’d been there, waiting in the shadows with their wyverns, had heard every one of those damning last words. “The others have flown ahead. We were sent to retrieve you,” Edda, the eldest of the sisters, shouted over the roar of the wind. “Your wound—”
“It’s shallow,” Manon snapped, forcing the pain aside to focus on the task at hand. She was on Abraxos’s neck, the saddle a few feet behind her. One by one, every breath an agony, she released her nails from his skin and slid toward the saddle. He evened out his flight, offering smooth air to buckle herself into the harness.
Blood leaked from the gouges in her belly—soon the saddle was slick with it.
Behind them, several roars set the mountains trembling.
“We can’t let them get to the others,” Manon managed to say.
Briar, black hair streaming behind her, swept in closer. “Six Yellowlegs on our tail. From Iskra’s personal coven. Closing in fast.”
With a score to settle, they’d no doubt been given free rein to slaughter them.
Manon surveyed the peaks and ravines of the mountains around them.
“Two apiece,” she ordered. The Shadows’ black wyverns were enormous—skilled at stealth, but devastating in a fight. “Edda, you drive two to the west; Briar, you slam the other two to the east. Leave the last two to me.”
No sign of the rest of the Thirteen in the gray clouds or mountains.
Good—they had gotten away. It was enough.
“You kill them, then you find the others,” Manon ordered, an arm draped over her wound.
“But, Wing Leader—”
The title almost sapped her will. But Manon barked, “That’s an order.”
The Shadows bowed their heads. Then, as if sharing one mind, one heart, they banked to either direction, peeling away from Manon like petals in the wind.
Bloodhounds on a scent, four Yellowlegs split from their group to deal with each Shadow.
The two in the center flew faster, harder, spreading apart to close in on Manon. Her vision blurred.
Not a good sign—not a good sign at all.
She breathed to Abraxos, “Let’s make it a final stand worthy of song.”
He bellowed in answer.
The Yellowlegs swept near enough for Manon to count their weapons. A battle cry shattered from the one to her right.
Manon dug her left heel into Abraxos’s side.
Like a shooting star, he blasted down toward the peaks of the ashy mountains. The Yellowlegs dove with them.
Manon aimed for a ravine running through the spine of the mountain range, her vision flashing black and white and foggy. A chill crept into her bones.
The walls of the ravine closed around them like the maw of a mighty beast, and she pulled on the reins once.
Abraxos flung out his wings and coasted along the side of the ravine before catching a current and leveling out, flapping like hell through the heart of the crevasse, pillars of stone jutting from the floor like lances.
The Yellowlegs, too ensnared in their bloodlust, their wyverns too large and bulky, balked at the ravine—at the sharp turn—
A boom and a screech, and the whole ravine shuddered.
Manon swallowed her bark of agony to peer behind. One of the wyverns had panicked, too big for the space, and slammed into a stone column. Broken bone and blood rained down.
But the other wyvern had managed to bank, and now sailed toward them, wings so wide they nearly grazed either side of the ravine.
Manon panted through her bloody teeth, “Fly, Abraxos.”
And her gentle, warrior-hearted mount flew.
Manon focused on keeping to the saddle, on keeping the arm pressed against her wound to hold the blood in, keep that lethal cold away. She’d gotten enough injuries to know her grandmother had struck deep and true.
The ravine swerved right, and Abraxos took the turn with expert skill. She prayed for the boom and roar of the pursuing wyvern to hit the walls, but none came.
But Manon knew these deadly canyons. She’d flown this path countless times on the endless, inane patrols these months. The Yellowlegs, sequestered in the Ferian Gap, did not.
“To the very end, Abraxos,” she said. His roar was his only confirmation.
One shot. She’d have one shot. Then she could gladly die, knowing the Thirteen wouldn’t be pursued. Not today, at least.
Turn after turn, Abraxos hurtled through the ravine, snapping his own tail against the rock to send debris flying into the Yellowlegs sentinel.
The rider dodged the rocks, her wyvern bobbing on the wind. Closer—Manon needed her closer. She tugged on Abraxos’s reins, and he checked his speed.
Turn after turn after turn, black rock flashing by, blurring like her own fading vision.
The Yellowlegs was near enough to throw a dagger.
Manon looked over a shoulder with her failing eyesight in time to see her do just that.
Not one dagger—but two, metal gleaming in the dim canyon light.
Manon braced herself for the impact of metal in flesh and bone.
Abraxos took the final turn as the sentinel hurled her daggers at Manon. A towering, impenetrable wall of black stone arose, mere feet away.
But Abraxos soared up, catching the updraft and sailing out of the heart of the ravine, so close Manon could touch the dead-end wall.
The two daggers struck the rock where Manon had been moments before.
And the Yellowlegs sentinel, on her bulky, heavy wyvern, did as well.
Rock groaned as wyvern and rider splattered against it. And fell to the ravine floor.
Panting, her breath a wet, bloody rasp, Manon patted Abraxos’s side. Even the motion was feeble. “Good,” she managed to say.
Mountains became small again. Oakwald spread before her. Trees—the cover of trees might hide her … “Oak … ,” she rasped.
Manon didn’t finish the command before the Darkness swept in to claim her.
 
 
19

Elide Lochan kept quiet during the two days she and Lorcan trekked through the eastern edges of Oakwald, heading for the plains beyond.