Chapter 5

Dorian stared at him for a long moment, cocking his head to the side. Chaol must have

looked as miserable as he felt, because the prince's voice was almost gentle as he said,

"Why did you really send her to Wendlyn?"

Agony punched through him, raw and razor-edged. But as much as he yearned to tell

the prince about Celaena, as much as he wanted to unload all his secrets so it would fill the

hole in his core, he couldn't. So he just said, "I sent her to do what needs to be done," and strode back down the hall. Dorian didn't call after him.Manon pulled her bloodred cloak tightly around herself and pressed into the shadows of

the closet, listening to the three men who had broken into her cottage.

She'd tasted the rising fear and rage on the wind all day and had spent the afternoon

preparing. She'd been sitting on the thatched roof of the whitewashed cottage when she

spotted their torches bobbing over the high grasses of the field. None of the villagers had

tried to stop the three men—though none had joined them, either.

A Crochan witch had come to their little green valley in the north of Fenharrow, they'd

said. In the weeks that she'd been living amongst them, carving out a miserable existence,

she'd been waiting for this night. It was the same at every village she'd lived in or visited.

She held her breath, keeping still as a deer as one of the men—a tall, bearded farmer

with hands the size of dinner plates—stepped into her bedroom. Even from the closet, she

could smell the ale on his breath—and the bloodlust. Oh, the villagers knew exactly what

they planned to do with the witch who sold potions and charms from her back door, and

who could predict the sex of a babe before it was due. She was surprised it had taken these

men so long to work up the nerve to come here, to torment and then destroy what petrified

them.

The farmer stopped in the middle of the room. "We know you're here," he coaxed,

even as he stepped toward the bed, scanning every inch of the room. "We just want to talk.

Some of the townsfolk are spooked, you see—more scared of you than you are of them, I

bet."

She knew better than to listen, especially as a dagger glinted behind his back while he

peered under the bed. Always the same, at every backwater town and uptight mortal

village.

As the man straightened, Manon slipped from the closet and into the darkness behind

the bedroom door.

Muffled clinking and thudding told her enough about what the other two men were

doing: not just looking for her, but stealing whatever they wanted. There wasn't much to

take; the cottage had already been furnished when she'd arrived, and all her belongings,

by training and instinct, were in a sack in the corner of the closet she'd just vacated. Take

nothing with you, leave nothing behind.

"We just want to talk, witch." The man turned from the bed, finally noticing the closet.

He smiled—in triumph, in anticipation.

With gentle fingers, Manon eased the bedroom door shut, so quietly the man didn't

notice as he headed for the closet. She'd oiled the hinges on every door in this house.

His massive hand gripped the closet doorknob, dagger now angled at his side. "Come out, little Crochan," he crooner. Silent as death, Manon slid up behind him. The fool didn't even know she was there

until she brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered, "Wrong kind of witch."

The man whirled, slamming into the closet door. He raised the dagger between them,

his chest heaving. Manon merely smiled, her silver-white hair glinting in the moonlight.

He noticed the shut door then, drawing in breath to shout. But Manon smiled broader,

and a row of dagger-sharp iron teeth pushed from the slits high in her gums, snapping

down like armor. The man started, hitting the door behind him again, eyes so wide that

white shone all around them. His dagger clattered on the floorboards.

And then, just to really make him soil his pants, she flicked her wrists in the air

between them. The iron claws shot over her nails in a stinging, gleaming flash.

The man began whispering a plea to his soft-hearted gods as Manon let him back

toward the lone window. Let him think he stood a chance while she stalked toward him,

still smiling. The man didn't even scream before she ripped out his throat.

When she was done with him, she slipped through the bedroom door. The two men

were still looting, still believing that all of this belonged to her. It had merely been an

abandoned house—its previous owners dead or smart enough to leave this festering place.

The second man also didn't get the chance to scream before she gutted him with two

swipes of her iron nails. But the third farmer came looking for his companions. And when

he beheld her standing there, one hand twisted in his friend's insides, the other holding

him to her as she used her iron teeth to tear out his throat, he ran.

The common, watery taste of the man, laced with violence and fear, coated her tongue,

and she spat onto the wooden floorboards. But Manon didn't bother wiping away the

blood slipping down her chin as she gave the remaining farmer a head start into the field

of towering winter grass, so high that it was well over their heads.

She counted to ten, because she wanted to hunt, and had been that way since she tore

through her mother's womb and came roaring and bloody into this world.

Because she was Manon Blackbeak, heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan, and she had

been here for weeks, pretending to be a Crochan witch in the hope that it would flush out

the real ones.

They were still out there, the self-righteous, insufferable Crochans, hiding as healers

and wise-women. Her first, glorious kill had been a Crochan, no more than sixteen—the

same age as Manon at the time. The dark-haired girl had been wearing the bloodred cloak

that all Crochans were gifted upon their first bleeding—and the only good it had done was

mark her as prey.

After Manon left the Crochan's corpse in that snow-blasted mountain pass, she'd taken

the cloak as a trophy—and still wore it, over a hundred years later. No other Ironteeth

witch could have done it—because no other Ironteeth witch would have dared incur the

wrath of the three Matrons by wearing their eternal enemy's color. But from the day

Manon stalked into Blackbeak Keep wearing the cloak and holding that Crochan heart in a

box—a gift for her grandmother—it had been her sacred duty to hunt them down, one byone, until there were none left.