“Morath found you just now,” Manon said coolly. She’d anticipated this reaction. “It will do so again. Whether it is in a few months, or a year, they will find you. And then there will be no hope of beating them.” She kept her hands at her sides, resisting the urge to unsheathe her iron claws. “A host of many kingdoms rallies in Terrasen. Join them.”

“Terrasen didn’t come to our aid five hundred years ago,” another voice said, coming closer. The pretty, brown-haired witch from earlier. Her broom, too, was bound in fine metal—silver to Bronwen’s gold. “I don’t see why we should bother helping them now.”

“I thought you lot were a bunch of self-righteous do-gooders,” Manon crooned. “Surely this would be your sort of thing.”

The young witch bristled, but Glennis held up a withered hand.

It wasn’t enough to stop Bronwen, though, as the witch looked Manon over and snarled, “You are not our queen. We will never fly with you.”

Bronwen and the younger witch stormed away, the gathered Crochan guards parting to let them pass.

Manon found Glennis wincing slightly. “Our family, you will find, has a hotheaded streak.”

Ruthless.

What Manon had done tonight, leading the Ironteeth to this camp … Dorian didn’t have a word for it other than ruthless.

He left Manon and her great-grandmother, the Thirteen looking on, and went in search of the spider.

He found Cyrene where he’d left her, crouched in the shadows of one of the farther tents.

She’d returned to her human form, her dark hair tangled, bundled in a Crochan cloak. As if one of them had taken pity on her. Not realizing the hunger in Cyrene’s eyes wasn’t for the goat stew.

“Where does the shifting come from?” Dorian asked as he paused before her, a hand on Damaris. “Inside you?”

The spider-shifter blinked up at him, then stood. Someone had given her a worn brown tunic, pants, and boots, too. “That was a great feat of magic you performed.” She smiled, revealing sharp little teeth. “What a king it might make you. Unchallenged, unrivaled.”

Dorian didn’t feel like saying he wasn’t entirely sure what manner of king he wished to be, should he live long enough to reclaim his throne. Anyone and anything but his father seemed like a good place to start.

Dorian kept his stance relaxed, even as he asked again, “Where does the shifting come from inside you?”

Cyrene angled her head as if listening to something. “It was strange, mortal king, to find that I had a new place within me with the return of magic. To find that something new had taken root.” Her small hand drifted to her middle, just above her navel. “A little seed of power. I will the shift, think of what I wish to be, and the change starts within here first. Always, the heat comes from here.” The spider settled her stare on him. “If you wish to be something, king-with-no-crown, then be it. That is the secret to the shifting. Be what you wish.”

He avoided the urge to roll his eyes, though Damaris warmed in his grip. Be what you wish—a thing far easier said than done. Especially with the weight of a crown.

Dorian put a hand on his stomach, despite the layers of clothes and cloak. Only toned muscle greeted him. “Is that what you do to summon the change: first think of what you want to become?”

“With limits. I need a clear image within my mind, or else it will not work at all.”

“So you cannot change into something you have not seen.”

“I can invent certain traits—eye color, build, hair—but not the creature itself.” A hideous smile bloomed on her mouth. “Use that lovely magic of yours. Change your pretty eyes,” the spider dared. “Change their color.”

Gods damn him, but he tried. He thought of brown eyes. Pictured Chaol’s bronze eyes, fierce after one of their sparring sessions. Not how they had been before his friend had sailed to the southern continent.

Had Chaol managed to be healed? Had he and Nesryn convinced the khagan to send aid? How would Chaol even learn where he was, what had happened to all of them, when they’d been scattered to the winds?

“You think too much, young king.”

“Better than too little,” he muttered.

Damaris warmed again. He could have sworn it had been in amusement.

Cyrene chuckled. “Do not think of the eye color so much as demand it.”

“How did you learn this without instruction?”

“The power is in me now,” the spider said simply. “I listened to it.”

Dorian let a tendril of his magic snake toward the spider. She tensed. But his magic brushed up against her, gentle and inquisitive as a cat. Raw magic, to be shaped as he desired.

He willed it toward her—willed it to find that seed of power within her. To learn it.

“What are you doing,” the spider breathed, shifting on her feet.

His magic wrapped around her, and he could feel it—each hateful, horrible year of existence.

Each—

His mouth dried out. Bile surged in his throat at the scent his magic detected. He’d never forget that scent, that vileness. He’d bear the mark on his throat forever as proof.

Valg. The spider, somehow, was Valg. And not possessed, but born.

He kept his face neutral. Uninterested. Even as his magic located that glowing, beautiful bit of magic.

Stolen magic. As the Valg stole all things.

Took everything they wanted.

His blood became a dull, pounding roar in his ears.

Dorian studied her tiny frame, her ordinary face. “You’ve been rather quiet regarding the quest for revenge that sent you hunting across the continent.”

Cyrene’s dark eyes turned to depthless pits. “Oh, I have not forgotten that. Not at all.”

Damaris remained warm. Waiting.

He let his magic wrap soothing hands around the seed of power trapped within the black hell inside the spider.

He didn’t care to know why and how the stygian spiders were Valg. How they’d come here. Why they’d lingered.

They fed off dreams and life and joy. Delighted in it.

The seed of shape-shifting power flickered in his hands, as if grateful for a kind touch. A human touch.

This. His father had allowed these sorts of creatures to grow, to rule. Sorscha had been slaughtered by these things, their cruelty.

“I can make a bargain with you, you know,” Cyrene whispered. “When the time comes, I will make sure you are spared.”

Damaris went colder than ice.

Dorian met her stare. Withdrew his magic, and could have sworn that seed of shape-shifting power trapped within her reached for him. Tried to beg him not to go.

He smiled at the spider. She smiled back.

And then he struck.

Invisible hands wrapped around her neck and twisted. Right as his magic plunged into her navel, into where the stolen seed of human magic resided, and wrapped around it.

He held on, a baby bird in his hands, as the spider died. Studied the magic, every facet of it, before it seemed to sigh in relief and fade into the wind, free at last.

Cyrene slumped to the ground, eyes unseeing.

Half a thought and Dorian had her incinerated. No one came to inquire after the stench that rose from her ashes. The black stain that lingered beneath them.

Valg. Perhaps a ticket for him into Morath, and yet he found himself staring at that dark stain on the half-thawed earth.

He let go of Damaris, the blade reluctantly quieting.

He’d find his way into Morath. Once he mastered the shifting.

The spider and all her kind could burn in hell.

Dorian’s heart was still racing when he found himself an hour later lying in a tent not even tall enough to stand in, on one of two bedrolls.

Manon entered the tent just as he toed off his boots and hauled the heavy wool blankets over him. They smelled of horses and hay, and might very well have been snatched from a stable, but he didn’t care. It was warm and better than nothing.

Manon surveyed the tight space, the second bedroll and blanket. “Thirteen is an uneven number,” she said by way of explanation. “I’ve always had a tent to myself.”

“Sorry to ruin that for you.”

She cut him a drily amused glance before seating herself on the bedroll and unlacing her boots. But her fingers halted as her nostrils flared.

Slowly, she looked over her shoulder at him. “What did you do.”

Dorian held her stare. “You did what you had to today,” he said simply. “I did as well.” He didn’t bother trying to touch Damaris where it lay nearby.

She sniffed him again. “You killed the spider.” No judgment in her face, just raw curiosity.

“She was a threat,” he admitted. And a Valg piece of shit.

Wariness now flooded her eyes. “She could have killed you.”

He gave her a half smile. “No, she couldn’t have.”

Manon assessed him again, and he withstood it. “You have nothing to say about my own … choices?”

“My friends are fighting and likely being killed in the North,” Dorian said. “We don’t have the time to spend weeks winning the Crochans over.”

There it was, the brutal truth. To gain some degree of welcome here, they’d had to cross that line. Perhaps such callous decisions were part of wearing a crown.

He’d keep her secret—so long as she wished it hidden.

“No self-righteous speeches?”

“This is war,” he said simply. “We’re past that sort of thing.”

And it wouldn’t matter, would it, when his eternal soul would be the asking price to staunch so much of the slaughter? He’d already had it wrecked enough. If crossing line after line would spare any others from harm, he’d do it. He didn’t know what manner of king that made him.

Manon hummed, deeming that an acceptable answer. “You know about court intrigue and scheming,” she said, deft fingers again flying over the laces and hooks of the boots. “How would you … play this, as you called it earlier? My situation with the Crochans.”