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Cairn shifted the hammer to one hand "This will have to do, I suppose" He ran his other hand down the length of her torso, and she jerked against the chains at the proprietary touch He sently "We started at the feet earlier Let’s go higher this ti breaths that would bring her far away from here From her body

She’d never let them break her Never swear that blood oath

For Terrasen, for her people, who years She owed them this much

Deep, deep, deep she went, as if she could outrun as to colinted in the firelight as it rose over her knee, Cairn’s breath sucking in, anticipation and delighton his face

Fenrys blinked, over and over and over I am here, I a

Or the scream that shattered from her throat

CHAPTER 4

"This camp has been abandoned for months"

Manon turned fro the western edge of the White Fang Mountains Toward the Wastes

Asterin remained crouched over the half-buried re over her shoulders ruffling in the frigid wind Her Second went on, "No one’s been here since early autumn"

Manon had suspected as much The Shadows had spotted the site an hour earlier on their patrol of the terrain ahead, soularities cleverly hidden in the leeward side of the rocky peak The Mother knew Manon herselfsnow from the knees of her leathers Even the thick ainst the brutal cold Hence the

Good for blending into the snow, Edda had clai the dark hair dye she favored wash away these weeks to reveal the moon white of her natural shade Manon’s shade Briar had kept the dye One of theht, the other Shadow had clai through the caer Shadows, but rather the two faces of the es to the Thirteen

Manon blew out a breath, the wind tearing away the hot puff

"They’re out there," Asterin athered by the overhanging boulder that shielded them from the wind

"Three ca abandoned We’re hunting ghosts"

Asterin’s gold hair ripped free of its braid, bloard Toward the hoht very well never see "The camps are proof they’re flesh and blood Ghislaine thinks they ht be from the late-summer hunts"

"They could also be froh Manon knew they weren’t She’d hunted enough Crochans during the past hundred years to spot their style offires, their neat little camps All the Thirteen had And they’d all tracked and killed so s earlier this year on Erawan’s behalf that they knew their habits, too

Asterin’s gold-flecked black eyes fell on that blurred horizon "We’ll find them"

Soon They had to find at least some of the Crochans soon Manon knew they had et out a call for help A call for aid

Time was not on their side It had been nearly two months since that day on the beach in Eyllwe Since she’d learned the terrible cost the Queen of Terrasen must pay to put an end to this ht also pay, if need be

Manon resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder to where the King of Adarlan stood a Vesta by su flame, water, and ice to his cupped palic He set three whorls of the ele around each other, and Vesta arched an impressed brow Manon had seen the way the red-haired sentinel looked at hi on that desire

Manon had given her no such orders, though Hadn’t said anything to the Thirteen about what, exactly, the hu, she wanted to say Sory And as pressed for ti the third and final Wyrdkey had proved futile The two the king carried in his pocket offered no guidance, only their unearthly reek Where Erawan kept it, they had not the faintest inkling To search Morath or any of his other outposts would be suicide