tricked the body into thinking it was being incinerated.
Manon didn’t take her eyes away from the man spasming on the carpet, tears of blood now leaking from his eyes, his nose, his ears. Quietly she asked the duke, “Why are you torturing him? Is he a rebel spy?”
Now the duke approached Kaltain, peering at her blank, beautiful face. Her eyes were wholly fixed on the young man, enthralled. She spoke again. “No. Just a simple man.” No inflection, no sign of empathy.
“Enough,” the duke said, and the fire vanished from Kaltain’s hand. The young man sagged on the carpet, panting and weeping. The duke pointed to the curtains in the back of the tent, which no doubt concealed a sleeping area. “Lie down.”
Like a doll, like a ghost, Kaltain turned, that midnight gown swirling with her, and stalked toward the heavy red curtains, slipping through them as if she were no more than mist.
The duke walked over to the young man and knelt before him on the ground. The captive lifted his head, blood and tears mingling on his face. But the duke’s eyes met Manon’s as he put his massive hands on either side of his soldier’s face.
And snapped his neck.
The death-crunch shuddered through Manon like the twanging of a harp. Normally, she would have chuckled.
But for a heartbeat she felt warm, sticky blue blood on her hands, felt the hilt of her knife imprinted against her palm as she gripped it hard and slashed it across the throat of that Crochan.
The soldier slumped to the carpet as the duke rose. “What is it that you want, Blackbeak?”
Like the Crochan’s death, this had been a warning. Keep her mouth shut.
But she planned to write to her grandmother. Planned to tell her everything that had happened: this, and that the Yellowlegs coven hadn’t been seen or heard from since entering the chamber beneath the Keep. The Matron would fly down here and start shredding spines.
“I want to know why we have been blocked from the Yellowlegs coven. They are under my jurisdiction, and as such, I have the right to see them.”
“It was successful; that’s all you need to know.”
“You’re to tell your guards immediately to grant me and mine permission to enter.” Indeed, dozens of guards had blocked her path—and short of killing her way through, Manon had no way in.
“You choose to ignore my orders. Why should I follow yours, Wing Leader?”
“You won’t have a gods-damned army to ride those wyverns if you lock them all up for your breeding experiments.”
They were warriors—they were Ironteeth witches. They weren’t chattel to be bred. They weren’t to be experimented upon. Her grandmother would slaughter him.
The duke merely shrugged. “I told you I wanted Blackbeaks. You refused to give them to me.”
“Is this punishment?” The words snapped out of her. The Yellowlegs were still Ironteeth, after all. Still under her command.
“Oh, no. Not at all. But if you disobey my orders again, the next time, it might be.” He cocked his head, and the light gilded his dark eyes. “There are princes, you know—among the Valg. Powerful, cunning princes, capable of splattering people on walls. They’ve been very keen to test themselves against your kind. Perhaps they’ll pay a visit to your barracks. See who survives the night. It’d be a good way to weed out the lesser witches. I have no use for weak soldiers in my armies, even if it decreases your numbers.”
For a moment, there was a roaring silence in her head. A threat.
A threat from this human, this man who had lived but a fraction of her existence, this mortal beast—
Careful, a voice said in her head. Proceed with cunning.
So Manon allowed herself to nod slightly in acquiescence, and asked, “And what of your other … activities? What goes on beneath the mountains circling this valley?”
The duke studied her, and she met his gaze, met every inch of blackness within it. And found something slithering inside that had no place in this world. At last he said, “You do not wish to learn what is being bred and forged under those mountains, Blackbeak. Don’t bother sending your scouts in. They won’t see daylight again. Consider yourself warned.”
The human worm clearly didn’t know precisely how skilled her Shadows were, but she wasn’t about to correct him, not when it could be used to her advantage one day. Yet whatever did go on inside those mountains wasn’t her concern—not with the Yellowlegs and the rest of the legion to