were a good spy, you would know how to do it without breaking the wax.”
“If I were a good spy,” Elide breathed, “I could also read.”
A bit of truth to temper the witch’s distrust.
The witch blinked, and then sniffed, as if trying to detect a lie. “You speak well for a mortal, and your uncle is a lord. Yet you cannot read?”
Elide nodded. More than the leg, more than the drudgery, it was that miserable shortcoming that hounded her. Her nurse, Finnula, couldn’t read—but Finnula had been the one to teach her how to take note of things, to listen, and to think. During the long days when they’d had nothing to do but needlepoint, her nurse had taught her to mark the little details—each stitch—while also never losing sight of the larger image. There will come a day when I am gone, Elide, and you will need to have every weapon in your arsenal sharp and ready to strike.
Neither of them had thought that Elide might be the one who left first. But she would not look back, not even for Finnula, once she ran. And when she found that new life, that new place … she would never gaze northward, to Terrasen, and wonder, either.
She kept her eyes on the ground. “I—I know basic letters, but my lessons stopped when I was eight.”
“At your uncle’s behest, I assume.” The witch paused, rotating the envelope and showing the jumble of letters to her, tapping on them with an iron nail. “This says ‘Manon Blackbeak.’ You see anything like this again, bring it to me.”
Elide bowed her head. Meek, submissive—just the way these witches liked their humans. “Of-of course.”
“And why don’t you stop pretending to be a stammering, cowering wretch while you’re at it.”
Elide kept her head bent low enough that her hair hopefully covered any glimmer of surprise. “I’ve tried to be pleasing—”
“I smelled your human fingers all over my map. It was careful, cunning work, not to put one thing out of order, not to touch anything but the map … Thinking of escaping after all?”
“Of course not, mistress.” Oh, gods. She was so, so dead.
“Look at me.”
Elide obeyed. The witch hissed, and Elide flinched as she shoved Elide’s hair out of her eyes. A few strands fell to the ground, sliced off by the iron nails. “I don’t know what game you’re playing—if you’re a spy, if you’re a thief, if you’re just looking out for yourself. But do not pretend that you are some meek, pathetic little girl when I can see that vicious mind working behind your eyes.”
Elide didn’t dare drop the mask.
“Was it your mother or father who was related to Vernon?”
Strange question—but Elide had known for a while she would do anything, say anything, to stay alive and unharmed. “My father was Vernon’s elder brother,” she said.
“And where did your mother come from?”
She didn’t give that old grief an inch of room in her heart. “She was low-born. A laundress.”
“Where did she come from?”
Why did it matter? The golden eyes were fixed on her, unyielding. “Her family was originally from Rosamel, in the northwest of Terrasen.”
“I know where it is.” Elide kept her shoulders bowed, waiting. “Get out.”
Hiding her relief, Elide opened her mouth to make her good-byes, when another roar set the stones vibrating. She couldn’t conceal her flinch.
“It’s just Abraxos,” Manon said, a hint of a smile forming on her cruel mouth, a bit of light gleaming in those golden eyes. Her mount must make her happy, then—if witches could be happy. “He’s hungry.”
Elide’s mouth went dry.
At the sound of his name, a massive triangular head, scarred badly around one eye, poked into the aerie.
Elide’s knees wobbled, but the witch went right up to the beast and placed her iron-tipped hands on his snout. “You swine,” the witch said. “You need the whole mountain to know you’re hungry?”
The wyvern huffed into her hands, his giant teeth—oh, gods, some of them were iron—so close to Manon’s arms. One bite, and the Wing Leader would be dead. One bite, and yet—
The wyvern’s eyes lifted and met Elide’s. Not looked at, but met, as if …
Elide kept perfectly still, even though every instinct was roaring at her to run for the stairs. The wyvern nudged past Manon, the floor shuddering beneath him, and sniffed in Elide’s direction. Then those giant, depthless eyes moved down—to her legs. No, to the chain.
There were so many scars all over him—so many brutal lines. She did not think