Lady Yrene Westfall, formerly Yrene Towers, had counted the supplies about six times now. Every boat was full of them, yet Princess Hasar’s ship, the personal escort to the Healer on High, held the most vital mix of tonics and salves. Many had been crafted prior to sailing from Antica, but Yrene and the other healers who had accompanied the army had spent long hours concocting them as best they could on board.

In the dim hold, Yrene steadied her feet against the rocking of the waves and closed the lid on the crate of salve tins, jotting down the number on the piece of paper she’d brought with her.

“The same number as two days ago,” an old voice clucked from the stairs. Hafiza, the Healer on High, sat on the wooden steps, hands resting atop the heavy wool skirt covering her skinny knees. “What do you worry will happen to them, Yrene?”

Yrene flicked her braid over a shoulder. “I wanted to make sure I’d counted right.”

“Again.”

Yrene pocketed the piece of parchment and swept up her fur-lined cloak from where she’d tossed it over a crate. “When we’re on the battlefields, keeping stock of our supplies—”

“Will be vital, yes, but also impossible. When we’re on the battlefields, girl, you’ll be lucky if you can even find one of these tins amid the chaos.”

“That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”

The Healer on High offered her a sympathetic sigh. “People will die, Yrene. In horrible, painful ways, they will die, and even you and I will not be able to save them.”

Yrene swallowed. “I know that.” If they did not hurry, did not make landfall soon and discover where the khagan’s army would march, how many more would perish?

The ancient woman’s knowing look didn’t fade. Always, from the first moment Yrene had laid eyes on Hafiza, she had emanated this calm, this reassurance. The thought of the Healer on High on those bloody battlefields made Yrene’s stomach churn. Even if this sort of thing was precisely why they had come, why they trained in the first place.

But that was without the matter of the Valg, squatting in human hosts like parasites. Valg who would kill them immediately if they knew what the healers planned to do.

What Yrene planned to do to any Valg who crossed her path.

“The salves are made, Yrene.” Hafiza groaned as she rose from her perch on the steps and adjusted the lapels of her thick woolen jacket—cut and embroidered in the style of the Darghan riders. A gift from the last visit the Healer on High had made to the steppes, when she’d taken Yrene along with her. “They are counted. There are no more supplies with which to make them, not until we reach land and can see what might be used there.”

Yrene clutched her cloak to her chest. “I need to be doing something.”

The Healer on High patted the railing. “You will, Yrene. Soon enough, you will.”

Hafiza ascended the stairs with that, leaving Yrene in the hold amid the stacks of crates.

She didn’t tell the Healer on High that she wasn’t entirely sure how much longer she’d be a help—not yet. Hadn’t whispered a word of that doubt to anyone, even Chaol.

Yrene’s hand drifted across her abdomen and lingered.

CHAPTER 7

Morath. The final key was at Morath.

The knowledge hung over Dorian through the night, keeping him from sleep. When he did doze, he awoke with a hand at his neck, grasping for a collar that was not there.

He had to find some way to go. Some way to reach it.

Since Manon would undoubtedly be unwilling to take him. Even if she’d been the one who’d suggested he might be able to take Aelin’s place to forge the Lock.

The Thirteen had barely escaped Morath—they were in no hurry to return. Not when their task in finding the Crochans had become so vital. Not when Erawan might very well sense their arrival before they neared the keep.

Gavin had claimed the path would find him here, in this camp. But finding a way to convince the Thirteen to remain, when instinct and urgency compelled them to move on … that might prove as impossible a task as attaining the third Wyrdkey.

Their camp stirred in the gray light of dawn, and Dorian gave up on sleep. Rising, he found Manon’s bedroll packed, and the witch herself standing with Asterin and Sorrel by their mounts. It was that trio he’d have to convince to remain—somehow.

Already waiting near the mouth of the pass, the other wyverns shifted as they readied for the unbearably cold flight.

Another day, another hunt for a clan of witches who had no desire to be found. And would likely have little desire to join this war.

“We move out in five minutes.” Sorrel’s rocky voice carried across the camp.

Convincing would have to wait, then. Delaying it was.

Within three minutes, the fire was out and weapons were donned, bedrolls bound to saddles and needs seen to before the long day of flying.

Buckling on Damaris, Dorian aimed for Manon, the witch standing with that preternatural stillness. Beautiful, even here in the blasted snow, a shaggy goat pelt slung over her shoulders. As he neared, her eyes met his in a flash of burnt gold.

Asterin gave him a wicked grin. “Morning, Your Majesty.”

Dorian inclined his head. “Where are we wandering today?” He knew the casual words didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“We were just debating it,” Sorrel answered, the Third’s face stony but open.

Behind them, Vesta swore as the buckle on her saddle came undone. Dorian didn’t dare to look, to confirm that the invisible hands of his magic had worked.

“We already searched north of here,” Asterin said. “Let’s keep heading south—make it to the end of the Fangs before we backtrack.”

“They might not even be in the mountains,” Sorrel countered. “We’ve hunted them in the lowlands in decades past.”

Manon listened with a cool, unruffled expression. As she did every morning. Weighing their words, listening to the wind that sang to her.

Imogen’s saddlebag snapped free of its tether. The witch hissed as she dismounted to retie it. How long these little delays could keep them here, he didn’t know. Not indefinitely.

“If we abandon these mountains,” Asterin argued, “then we’ll be far more trackable in the open lands. Both our enemies and the Crochans will spot us before we ever find them.”

“It’d be warmer,” Sorrel grumbled. “Eyllwe would be a hell of a lot warmer.”

Apparently, even immortal witches with steel in their veins could grow tired of the leeching cold.

But to go so far south, into Eyllwe, when they were still near enough to Morath … Manon seemed to consider that, too. Her eyes dipped to his jacket. To the keys within, as if she could sense their pulsing whisper, their slide against his power. All that lay between Erawan and his dominion over Erilea. To bring them within a hundred miles of Morath … No, she’d never allow it.

Dorian kept his face blandly pleasant, a hand resting on the eye-shaped pommel of Damaris. “This camp has no clues about where they went?”

He knew they hadn’t the faintest notion. Knew it, but waited for their answer anyway, trying not to grip Damaris’s pommel too hard.

“No,” Manon said with a hint of a growl.

Yet Damaris gave no answer beyond a faint warmth in the metal. He didn’t know what he’d expected: some verifying hum of power, a confirming voice in his mind.

Certainly not the unimpressive whisper of heat.

Heat for truth; likely cold for lies. But—at least Gavin had spoken true about the blade. He shouldn’t have doubted it, considering the god Gavin still honored.

Holding his stare with that relentless, predatory focus, Manon gave the order to move out. Northward.

Away from Morath. Dorian opened his mouth, casting for anything to say, do, to delay this departure. Short of snapping a wyvern’s wing, there was nothing—

The witches turned toward the wyverns, where Dorian would ride with one of the sentinels for the next leg of this endless hunt. But Abraxos roared, lunging for Manon with a snap of teeth.

As Manon whirled, Dorian’s magic surged, already lashing at the unseen foe.

A mighty white bear had risen from the snow behind her.

Teeth flashing, it brought down its massive paw. Manon ducked, rolling to the side, and Dorian hurled out a wall of his magic—wind and ice.

The bear was blasted back, hitting the snow with an icy thump. It was instantly up again, racing for Manon. Only Manon.

Half a thought had Dorian flinging invisible hands to halt the beast. Just as it collided with his magic, snow spraying, light flashed.

He knew that light. A shifter.

But it was not Lysandra who emerged from the bear’s perfectly camouflaged hide.

No, the thing that came out of the bear was made of nightmares.

A spider. A great, stygian spider, big as a horse and black as night.

Its many eyes narrowed on Manon, pincers clicking, as it hissed, “Blackbeak.”

The stygian spider had found her, somehow. After all these months, after the thousands of leagues Manon had traveled over sky and earth and sea, the spider from whom she’d stolen the silk to reinforce Abraxos’s wings had found her.

But the spider had not anticipated the Thirteen. Or the power of the King of Adarlan.

Manon drew Wind-Cleaver as Dorian held the spider in place with his magic, the king showing little signs of strain. Powerful—he grew more powerful each day.

The Thirteen closed ranks, weapons gleaming in the blinding sun and snow, the wyverns forming a wall of leathery hides and claws behind them.

Manon stalked a few steps closer to those twitching pincers. “You’re a long way from the Ruhnns, sister.”

The spider hissed. “You were not so very hard to find, despite it.”

“You know this beast?” Asterin asked, prowling to Manon’s side.

Manon’s mouth curled in a cruel smile. “She donated the Spidersilk for Abraxos’s wings.”

The spider snarled. “You stole my silk, and shoved me and my weavers off a cliff—”

“How is it that you can shape-shift?” Dorian asked, still pinning the spider in place as he approached Manon’s other side, one hand gripping the hilt of his ancient sword. “The legends make no mention of that.” Curiosity indeed brightened on his face. She supposed the white line through his golden skin on his throat was proof that he’d dealt with far worse. And supposed that whatever bond lay between them was also proof he had little fear of pain or death.