Emrys clicked his tongue. “You should pray the gods don’t strike you with lightning for speaking like that.” Luca groaned, rolling his eyes, but Emrys continued his lecture, gesturing at the youth with his teacup. “Those powers ­were gifts given to us by them long ago—­gifts we needed to survive—­and ­were passed down through the generations. Of course they’d be aligned with the elements, and of course they’d be watered down after so long.”

Celaena glanced toward those iron figurines on the mantel. She contemplated mentioning that some believed the gods had also bred with ancient humans and given them magic that way, but . . . that would involve more talking than necessary. She tilted her head to the side. “What do you know about Rowan? How old is he?” The more she learned, the better.

Emrys wrapped his wrinkled hands around his teacup. “He’s one of the few Fae we see around Mistward—­he stops in every now and then to retrieve reports for Maeve, but he keeps to himself. Never stays the night. Occasionally he’ll come with the others like him—­there are six of them who closely serve the Queen as war leaders or spies, you see. They never talk to us, and all we hear are rumors about where they go and what they do. But I’ve known Rowan since I first came ­here. Not that I really know him, mind you. Sometimes he’s gone for years, off serving Her Majesty. And I don’t think anyone knows how old he is. When I was fifteen, the oldest people living ­here had known him since they ­were younglings, so . . . I’d say he’s very old.”

“And mean as an adder,” Luca muttered.

Emrys gave him a warning look. “You’d best mind your tongue.” He glanced toward the doors, as if Rowan would be lurking there. When his gaze fell again on Celaena, it was wary. “I’ll admit that you’re probably in for a good heap of difficulty.”

“He’s a stone-­cold killer and a sadist is what he means,” Luca added. “The meanest of Maeve’s personal cabal of warriors, they say.”

Well, that ­wasn’t a surprise, either. But there ­were five others like him—that was an unpleasant fact. She said quietly, “I can handle him.”

“We’re not allowed to learn the Old Language until we enter Doranelle,” Luca said, “but I heard his tattoo is a list of all the people he’s slaughtered.”

“Hush,” Emrys said.

“It’s not like he ­doesn’t act like it.” Luca frowned again at Celaena. “Maybe you should consider whether Doranelle is worth it, you know? It’s not so bad living ­here.”

She’d already had enough interacting. “I can handle him,” she repeated. Maeve ­couldn’t intend to keep her ­here for years. If that started to seem likely, Celaena would leave. And find another way to stop the king.

Luca opened his mouth but Emrys hushed him again, his gaze falling on Celaena’s scarred hands. “Let her run her own course.”

Luca started chattering about the weather, and Celaena headed to the mountain of dishes. As she washed, she fell into a rhythm, as she’d done while cleaning her weapons aboard that ship.

The kitchen sounds turned muffled as she let herself spiral down, contemplating that horrible realization again and again: she could not remember what it was like to be free.

12

The Blackbeak Clan was the last to fully assemble at the Ferian Gap.

As a result, they got the smallest and farthest rooms in the warren of halls carved into the Omega, the last of the Ruhnn Mountains and the northernmost of the sister-­peaks flanking the snow-­blasted pass.

Across the gap was the Northern Fang, the final peak of the White Fangs, which was currently occupied by the king’s men—­massive brutes who still didn’t know quite what to make of the witches who had stalked in from every direction.

They’d been ­here for a day and Manon had yet to glimpse any sign of the wyverns the king had promised. She’d heard them, even though they ­were ­housed across the pass in the Northern Fang. No matter how deep you got into the Omega’s stone halls, the shrieks and roars vibrated in the stone, the air pulsed with the boom of leathery wings, and the floors hissed with the scrape of talon on rock.

It had been five hundred years since all three Clans had assembled. There had been over twenty thousand of them at one point. Now only three thousand remained, and that was a generous estimate. All that was left of a once-­mighty kingdom.

Still, the halls of the Omega ­were a dangerous place to be. Already she’d had to pull apart Asterin and a Yellowlegs bitch who hadn’t yet learned that Blackbeak sentinels—­especially members of the Thirteen—­didn’t take lightly to being called soft-­hearted.

There had been blue blood splattered on their faces, and though Manon was more than pleased to see that Asterin, beautiful, brash Asterin, had done most of the damage, she’d still had to punish her Second.

Three unblocked blows. One to the gut, so Asterin could feel her own powerlessness; one to the ribs, so she’d consider her actions every time she drew breath; and one to the face, so her broken nose would remind her that the punishment could have been far worse.

Asterin had taken them all without scream or complaint or plea, just as any of the Thirteen would have done.

And this morning, her Second, nose swollen and bruised at the bridge, had given Manon a fierce grin over their miserable breakfast of boiled oats. Had it been another witch, Manon would have dragged her by the neck to the front of the room and made her regret the insolence, but Asterin . . .

Even though Asterin was her cousin, she ­wasn’t a friend. Manon didn’t have friends. None of the witches, especially the Thirteen, had friends. But Asterin had guarded her back for a century, and the grin was a sign that she ­wouldn’t put a dagger in Manon’s spine the next time they ­were knee-­deep in battle.

No, Asterin was just insane enough to wear the broken nose like a badge of honor, and would love her crooked nose for the rest of her not-­so-­immortal life.

The Yellowlegs heir, a haughty bull of a witch named Iskra, had merely given her offending sentinel a warning to keep her mouth shut and sent her down to the infirmary in the belly of the mountain. Fool.

All the coven leaders ­were under orders to keep their sentinels in line—­to suppress the fighting between Clans. Or ­else the three Matrons would come down on them like a hammer. Without punishment, without Iskra making an example of her, the offending witch would keep at it until she got strung up by her toes by the new High Witch of the Yellowlegs Clan.