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.

She had not asked him the questions that seemed to matter the most, letting him think her a foolish girl, blinded by gratitude that he had saved her.

He’d quickly forgotten that though he’d carried her out, she’d saved herself. And he’d accepted her name—her mother’s name—without question. If Vernon was on her trail … It had been a fool’s mistake, but there was no undoing it, not without raising Lorcan’s suspicions.

So she kept her mouth shut, swallowed her questions. Like why he’d been hunting her. Or who his mistress was to command such a powerful warrior—why he wanted to get into Morath, why he kept touching some object beneath his dark jacket. And why he had looked so surprised—though he’d tried to hide it—when she’d mentioned Celaena Sardothien and Aelin Galathynius.

Elide had no doubt the warrior was keeping secrets of his own, and that despite his promise to protect her, the moment he got every answer he needed, that protection would end.

But she still slept soundly these last two nights—thanks to the belly full of meat courtesy of Lorcan’s hunting. He’d scrounged up two rabbits, and when she’d devoured all of hers in minutes, he’d given her half of what was left of his. She hadn’t bothered being polite by refusing.

It was midmorning by the time the light in the forest turned brighter, the air fresher. And then the roaring of mighty waters—the Acanthus.

Lorcan stalked ahead, and Elide could have sworn even the trees leaned away from him as he held up a hand in a silent motion to wait.

She obeyed, lingering in the gloom of the trees, praying he wouldn’t make them return to the tangle of Oakwald, that she wouldn’t be denied this step into the bright, wide-open world…

Lorcan motioned again—to come forward. All was clear.

Elide was silent as she stepped, blinking at the flood of sunshine, from the last line of trees to stand beside Lorcan on a high, rocky riverbank.

The river was enormous, shades of rushing gray and brown—the last of the ice melt from the mountains. So wide and wild that she knew she could not swim it, and that the crossing had to be somewhere else. But past the river, as if the water were a boundary between two worlds…

Hills and meadows of high emerald grasses swayed on the other side of the Acanthus, like a hissing sea under a cloudless blue sky, stretching away forever to the horizon.

“I can’t remember,” she murmured, the words barely audible over the roaring song of the river, “the last time I saw…” In Perranth, locked in that tower, she’d only had a view of the city, perhaps the lake if the day was clear enough. Then she’d been in that prison wagon, then in Morath, where it was only mountains and ash and armies. And during the flight with Manon and Abraxos, she had been too lost in terror and grief to notice anything at all. But now … She could not remember the last time she’d seen sunlight dancing on a meadow, or little brown birds bobbing and swooping on the warm breeze over it.

“The road is about a mile upriver,” Lorcan said, his dark eyes unmoved by the Acanthus or the rippling grasses beyond. “If you want your plan to work, now would be the time to prepare.”

She cut him a glance. “You need the most work.” A flick of black brows. Elide clarified, “If this ruse is to succeed, you at least need to … pretend to be human.”