Manon didn’t know. And she couldn’t ask her grandmother, not without looking unsure or incapable of following orders. “I’ll figure it out.”
“But you’re not going to give a Blackbeak Coven over to him for this—this breeding.”
“I don’t know.” Maybe it wouldn’t be bad—to join their bloodline with the Valg. Maybe it’d make their forces stronger. Maybe the Valg would know how to break the Crochan curse.
Asterin grabbed her by the elbow, nails digging in. Manon blinked at the touch, at the outright demand in it. Never before had Asterin even come close to—
“You cannot allow this to happen,” Asterin said.
“I’ve had enough of orders for one day. You give me another, and you’ll find your tongue on the floor.”
Asterin’s face went splotchy. “Witchlings are sacred—sacred, Manon. We do not give them away, not even to other Clans.”
It was true. Witchlings were so rare, and all of them female, as a gift from the Three-Faced Goddess. They were sacred from the moment the mother showed the first signs of pregnancy to when they came of age at sixteen. To harm a pregnant witch, to harm her unborn witchling or her daughter, was a breach of code so profound that there was no amount of suffering that could be inflicted upon the perpetrator to match the heinousness of the crime. Manon herself had participated in the long, long executions twice now, and the punishment had never seemed enough.
Human children didn’t count—human children were as good as veal to some of the Clans. Especially the Yellowlegs. But witchlings … there was no greater pride than to bear a witch-child for your Clan; and no greater shame than to lose one.
Asterin said, “What coven would you pick?”
“I haven’t decided.” Perhaps she’d pick a lesser coven—just in case—before allowing a more powerful one to join with the Valg. Maybe the demons would give their dying race the shot of vitality they had so desperately needed for the past few decades. Centuries.
“And if they object?”
Manon hit the stairs to her personal tower. “The only person who objects to anything these days, Asterin, is you.”
“It’s not right—”
Manon sliced out with a hand, tearing through the fabric and skin right above Asterin’s breasts. “I’m replacing you with Sorrel.”
Asterin didn’t touch the blood pooling down her tunic.
Manon began walking again. “I warned you the other day to stand down, and since you’ve chosen to ignore me, I have no use for you in those meetings, or at my back.” Never—not once in the past hundred years—had she changed their rankings. “As of right now, you are Third. Should you prove yourself to possess a shred of control, I’ll reconsider.”
“Lady,” Asterin said softly.
Manon pointed to the stairs behind. “You get to be the one to tell the others. Now.”
“Manon,” Asterin said, a plea in her voice that Manon had never heard before.
Manon kept walking, her red cloak stifling in the stairwell. She did not particularly care to hear what Asterin had to say—not when her grandmother had made it clear that any step out of line, any disobedience, would earn them all a brutal and swift execution. The cloak around her would never allow her to forget it.
“I’ll see you at the aerie in an hour,” Manon said, not bothering to look back as she entered her tower.
And smelled a human inside.
The young servant knelt before the fireplace, a brush and dustpan in her hands. She was trembling only slightly, but the tang of her fear had already coated the room. She’d likely been panicked from the moment she’d set foot inside the chamber.
The girl ducked her head, her sheet of midnight hair sliding over her pale face—but not before Manon caught the flash of assessment in her dark eyes.
“What are you doing in here?” Manon said flatly, her iron nails clicking against each other—just to see what the girl would do.
“C-c-cleaning,” the girl stammered—too brokenly, too perfectly. Subservient, docile, and terrified, exactly the way the witches preferred. Only the scent of fear was real.
Manon retracted her iron teeth.
The servant eased to her feet, wincing in pain. She shifted enough that the threadbare, homespun skirts of her dress swayed, revealing a thick chain between her ankles. The right ankle was mangled, her foot twisted on its side, glossy with scar tissue.
Manon hid her predator’s smile. “Why would they give me a cripple for a servant?”