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.”
Dorian rested a hand under his head. “The problem is that they hold all the cards. You need them far more than they need you. The only card you have to play is your heritage—and that they seem to have rejected, even with the skirmish. So how do we make it vital for them? How do you prove that they need their last living queen, the last of the Crochan bloodline?” He contemplated it. “There is also the prospect of peace between your peoples, but you …” He winced. “You’re no longer recognized as Heir. Any bargaining you might have as a Blackbeak would be on behalf of only you and the Thirteen, not the rest of the Ironteeth. It wouldn’t be a true peace treaty.”
Manon finished with her boots and lay back on her bedroll, sliding the blanket over her as she stared up at the tent’s low ceiling. “Did they teach you these things in your glass castle?”
“Yes.” Before he’d shattered that castle into shards and dust.
Manon turned on her side, propping her head with a hand, her white hair spilling from its braid to frame her face. “You can’t use that magic of yours to simply … compel them, can you?”
Dorian huffed a laugh. “Not that I know of.”
“Maeve wormed her way into Prince Rowan’s mind to convince him to take a false mate.”
“I don’t even know what Maeve’s power is,” Dorian said, cringing. What the Fae Queen had done to Rowan, what she was now doing to the Queen of Terrasen … “And I’m not entirely certain I want to start experimenting on potential allies.”
Manon sighed through her nose. “My training did not include these things.”
He wasn’t surprised. “You want my honest opinion?” Her golden eyes pinned him to the spot as she gave a curt nod. “Find the thing they need, and use it to your advantage. What would prompt them to rally behind you, to see you as their Crochan Queen? Fighting in battle tonight won some degree of trust, but not immediate acceptance. Perhaps Glennis might know.”
“I’d have to risk asking her.”
“You don’t trust her.”
“Why should I?”
“She’s your great-grandmother. And didn’t order you executed on sight.”
“My grandmother didn’t until the end, either.” No emotion passed over her face, but her fingers dug into her scalp at her words.
So Dorian said, “Aelin needed Captain Rolfe and his people shaken out of centuries of hiding in order to rally the Mycenian fleet. She learned they would only return to Terrasen when a sea dragon reappeared at last, one of their long-lost allies on the waves. So she engineered it to happen: provoked a small Valg fleet to attack Skull’s Bay while it lay mostly defenseless, and then used the battle to showcase the sea dragon that arrived to aid them, summoned from air and magic.”
“The shifter,” Manon said. Dorian nodded. “And the Mycenians bought it?”
“Absolutely,” Dorian drawled. “Aelin learned what the Mycenians needed in order to be convinced to join her cause. What sort of thing might the Crochans require to do the same?”
Manon lay back onto her bedroll, as graceful as a dancer. She toyed with the end of her braid, the red strip there. “I’ll ask Ghislaine in the morning.”
“I don’t think Ghislaine is going to know.”
Those gold eyes slid to his. “You truly believe I should ask Glennis?”
“I do. And I think she will help you.”
“Why bother?”
He wondered if the Thirteen could ever see it—that hint of self-loathing that sometimes flickered across her face. “Her mother willingly abandoned her city, her people, her queen in their last hours so she might preserve the royal bloodline. Your bloodline. I think she told you that story tonight so you might realize she will do the same as well.”
“Why not say it outright, then?”
“Because, in case you didn’t notice, you’re not exactly a popular person in this camp, despite your ploy with the Ironteeth. Glennis knows how to play the game. You just need to catch up with her. Find out why they’re even here, then plan your next move.”
Her mouth tightened, then relaxed. “Your tutors taught you well, princeling.”
“Being raised by a demon-infested tyrant did have its benefits, it seems.” His words rang flat, even as an edge sharpened inside him.
Her gaze drifted to his throat, to the pale line across it. He could almost feel her stare like a phantom touch.
“You still hate him.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Am I not supposed to?”
Her moon-white hair gleamed in the dim light. “You told me he was human. Deep down, he’d remained human, and tried to protect you as best he could. Yet you hate him.”
“You’ll forgive me if I find his methods of protecting me to be unpalatable.”
“But it was the demon, not the man, who killed your healer.”
Dorian clenched his jaw. “It makes no difference.”
“Doesn’t it?” Manon frowned. “Most can barely withstand a few months of Valg infestation. You barely withstood it.” He tried not to flinch at the blunt words. “Yet he held on for decades.”
He held her stare. “If you’re trying to cast my father as some sort of noble hero, you’re wasting your breath.” He debated ending it there, but he asked, “If someone told you that your grandmother was secretly good, that she hadn’t wanted to murder your parents and so many others, that she’d been forced to make you kill your own sister, would you find it so easy to believe? To forgive her?”
Manon glanced down at her abdomen—at the scar hidden beneath her leathers. He braced himself for the answer. But she only said, “I’m tired of talking.”
Good. So was he.
“Is there something you’d rather do instead, witchling?” His voice turned rough, and he knew she could hear his heartbeat as it began hammering.
Her only answer was to slide over him, strands of her hair falling around them in a curtain. “I said I don’t want to talk,” she breathed, and lowered her mouth to his neck. Dragged her teeth over it, right through that white line where the collar had been.