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"I think we don’t have any other choice but to hope they can," Aedion said, unslinging his bow fronal, archers down the city walls took up their bows

Scattered ast the the metal contraptions on the wall itself

Morath marched There would be no more delays, no lanced toward the curve of the Florine, the ice sheets glaringly bright in thesun He shut out the dread in his heart They were too desperate, too outnumbered, for him to deny Lysandra the task she’d taken on today

A look over his shoulder had Aedion confir that Bane soldiers had the catapults primed atop the battleic to levitate the enormous blocks of river-stone into place And on the city walls, Fae archers renal

Aedion nocked an arrow into his bow, arathered on the city walls did the sa," Aedion said

CHAPTER 85

Manon and the Thirteen shot into the skies as the Crochan ar toward the sea of black ahead

Forcing the Ironteeth legion to choose: their ancient enemies or their new ones

It was a test, and one Manon had wanted to make early To see how many of the Ironteeth would heed the coht break fro the Thirteen too much to bear And a test, she supposed, for the Matrons and the Heirs who led their legion--would they fall for it? Split their forces to swarm the Ironteeth, or continue their assault on the Crochans?

Higher and higher, Manon and the Thirteen rose, the two ar each other

The Crochans didn’t hesitate as their swords glinted in the sun, pointing toward the oncoainst an eneht back An enemy who could be airborne, smaller and faster, and strike where they eakest: the riders That was the Crochans’ goal--to bring down the riders, not the beasts

But to do so, they’d need to brave the snapping jaws and spiked tails, the poison coating theate around the wyverns, then thearrows, and the trained warriors atop the beasts It would not be easy, and it would not be quick

The Thirteen rose so high that the air becah that Manon could see to the very back of the host, where the horrific, uns’s wyvern flew

A challenge and a promise of a confrontation to come Manon knew, despite the distance, that Iskra hadMatrons Who had replaced the Yellowlegs crone to becorandmother had convinced them not to appoint Iskra or a new one just yet--to clear the way for her own path to queendoht at the altitude, fifty or so wyverns peeled away fro for theging rights that killing the Thirteen would win

Manon s a breath, Manon yanked once on Abraxos’s reins

Her fierce-hearted wyvern flung out his wings as he arched--and plued down, down, down, the Thirteen falling with the ar below

And when the Ironteeth were close enough that Manon could see they were Yellowlegs and Bluebloods, Abraxos banked sharply to one side and a current launched hiht into the heart of them

The Thirteen snapped into forh the Ironteeth

Manon’s bow sang as she fired arrow after arrow

At the first spray of blue blood, so And Abraxos kept flying, ripping apart wing and throat with his tail and teeth

And so it began

Even in the river, the thunder offeet rumbled past Lysandra