Kingdom of Ash
Page 147

“You’re hurt,” Aedion growled.
Lysandra ignored him as the witches stalked over, so much blood and gore on all of them.
She asked Manon, “Will Abraxos live?”
A shallow nod, the Witch-Queen’s golden eyes dull.
Lysandra didn’t have it in her for relief. Not with the news she’d flown back so desperately to deliver. She swallowed the bile in her throat, then pointed to the battlefield. To its dark, misty heart. “They have the witch tower up again. It’s moving this way. I just saw it myself. The witches have gathered atop it.”
Absolute silence.
And as if in answer, the tower erupted.
Not toward them, but skyward. A flash of light, a boom louder than thunder, and then a portion of the sky became empty.
Where Ironteeth, rebels and the faithful alike, had been fighting, where Crochans had been weaving between them, there was nothing.
Just ash.
Lysandra’s voice broke as the tower continued moving. A straight, unbreakable line toward Orynth. “They mean to blast apart the city.”
Hands and arms coated in Abraxos’s blood, Manon stared at the battlefield. Stared at where all those witches, Ironteeth and Crochan fighting for either army, had just … vanished.
Everything her grandmother had claimed about the witch towers was true.
And it was not Kaltain and her shadowfire that fueled that blast of destruction, but Ironteeth witches.
Young Ironteeth witches who offered themselves up. Who made the Yielding as they leaped into the mirror-lined pit within the tower.
An ordinary Yielding might take out twenty, thirty witches around her. Maybe more, if she was older and more powerful.
But a Yielding amplified by the power of those witch mirrors … One blast, and the castle looming above them would be rubble. Another blast, maybe two, and Orynth would follow it.
Ironteeth swarmed the tower, a vicious wall keeping the Crochans and rebel Ironteeth out.
A few Crochans indeed tried to break through those defenses.
Their red-clad bodies fell to the earth in pieces.
Petrah, now within the confines of her coven, even made a run for the tower. To rip it down.
They were beaten back by a swarm of Ironteeth.
The tower advanced. Closer and closer.
It would be within range soon. Another few minutes, and that tower would be close enough for its blast to reach the castle. To wipe away this army, this remnant of resistance, forever.
There would be no survivors. No second chances.
Manon turned to Asterin and said quietly, “I need another wyvern.”
Her Second only stared at her.
Manon repeated, “I need another wyvern.”
Abraxos was in no shape to fly. Wouldn’t be for hours or days.
Aedion Ashryver rasped, “No one is getting through that wall of Ironteeth.”
Manon bared her teeth. “I am.” She pointed at the shape-shifter. “You can carry me.”
Aedion snarled, “No.”
But Lysandra shook her head, sorrow and despair in her green eyes. “I can’t—the magic is drained. If I had an hour—”
“We have five minutes,” Manon snapped. She whirled to the Thirteen. “We have trained for this. To break apart enemy ranks. We can get through them. Take apart that tower.”
But they all looked at one another. Like they’d had some unspoken conversation and agreement.
The Thirteen stalked toward their own mounts. Sorrel clasped Manon’s shoulder as she passed, then climbed onto her wyvern’s back. Leaving Asterin before Manon.
Her Second, her cousin, her friend, smiled, eyes bright as stars. “Live, Manon.”
Manon blinked.
Asterin smiled wider, kissed Manon’s brow, and whispered again, “Live.”
Manon didn’t see the blow coming.
The punch to her gut, so hard and precise that it knocked the wind from her. Sent her to her knees.
She was struggling to get a breath down, to get up, when Asterin reached Narene and mounted the blue mare, gathering the reins. “Bring our people home, Manon.”
Manon knew then. What they were going to do.
Her legs failed her, her body failed her, as she tried to get to her feet. As she rasped, “No.”
But Asterin and the Thirteen were already in the skies.
Already in formation, that battering ram that had served them so well. Spearing toward the battlefield. Toward the approaching witch tower.
Manon clawed her way to the battlement ledge, and hauled herself to her feet. Leaned against the stones, panting, trying to get air into her lungs so she might find some way to get airborne, find some Crochan and steal her broom—
But there were no witches here. No brooms to be found. Abraxos remained unconscious.
Manon was distantly aware of the shifter and Prince Aedion coming up beside her, Lord Ren with them. Distantly aware of the silence that fell over the castle, the city, the walls.
As all of them watched that witch tower approach, their doom gathering within it.
As the Thirteen raced for it, raced against the wind and death itself.
A wall of Ironteeth rose up before the tower, blocking their path.
A hundred against twelve.
Inside the witch tower, close enough now that Manon could see through the open archway of the uppermost level, a young witch in black robes stepped toward the hollowed interior.
Stepped toward where Manon’s grandmother stood, gesturing to the pit below.
The Thirteen neared the enemy in their path and did not falter.
Manon dug her fingers into the stones so hard her iron nails cracked. Began shaking her head, something in her chest fracturing completely.
Fracturing as the Thirteen slammed into the Ironteeth blockade.
The maneuver was perfect. More flawless than any they’d done. A lethal phalanx that speared through the enemy’s ranks. Aiming right for the tower.
Seconds. They had seconds until that young witch summoned the power and unleashed the Yielding in a blast of blackness.
The Thirteen punched through the Ironteeth, spreading wide, pushing them to the side.
Clearing a path right to the tower as Asterin swept in from the back, aiming for the uppermost level.
Imogen went down first.
Then Lin.
And Ghislaine, her wyvern swarmed by their enemy.
Then Thea and Kaya, together, as they had always been.
Then the green-eyed demon twins, laughing as they went. Then the Shadows, Edda and Briar, arrows still firing. Still finding their marks.
Then Vesta, roaring her defiance to the skies.
And then Sorrel. Sorrel, who held the way open for Asterin, a solid wall for Manon’s Second as she soared in. A wall against whom the waves of Ironteeth broke and broke.
The young witch inside the tower began glowing black, steps from the pit.
Beside Manon, Lysandra and Aedion wrapped their arms around each other. Ready for the end heartbeats away.
And then Asterin was there. Asterin was barreling toward that open stretch of air, for the tower itself, bought with the lives of the Thirteen. With their final stand.
Manon could only watch, watch and watch and watch, shaking her head as if she could undo it, as Asterin removed her leathers, the shirt beneath.
As Asterin rose in the saddle, freed of the buckles, a dagger in hand as her wyvern aimed straight for the tower.
Manon’s grandmother turned then. Away from the pit, the acolyte about to leap inside and destroy them all.
Asterin hurled her dagger.
The blade flew true.
It plunged into the acolyte’s back, sending the witch sprawling to the stones. A foot away from the drop to the pit.
Asterin drew the twin swords from the sheaths at her hips and slammed her wyvern into the side of the tower. The crack of bone on rock echoed across the world.
But Asterin was already leaping. Already arching through the air, swords raised, wyvern tumbling away beneath, Narene’s body broken on impact.
Manon began screaming then.
Screaming, endless and wordless, as that thing in her chest, as her heart, shattered.
As Asterin landed in the witch tower’s open archway, swords swinging at the witches who rushed to kill her. They might as well have been blades of grass. Might as well have been mist, for how easily Asterin cut them down, one after another, driving forward, toward the Matron who had branded the letters on stark display across Asterin’s abdomen.