Maeve's Daughter ~ Throne of Glass

Chapter 22- Yielding

Holy Gods. Freya had never seen anything like it.

Everything Manon's grandmother had said about the witch towers was true. One blast and and the castle would be rubble. Two more and Orynth would follow it.
The Yielding amplified twenty, thirty times it's usual power.

"I need another wyvern."

Manon rasped.

Her Second was ignoring her, all the Thirteen were, in such evident silent agreement that even Freya, as an outsider could recognise. They all stalked back to their mounts as Manon only stared at them in silent disbelief.

"Live, Manon." Her Second, her cousin, her friend, smiled, eyes bright as she kissed her brow. "Live."

She didn't see the blow coming.
The punch to her gut sent her to her knees but her Thirteen were already in the skies, in formation soaring towards the witch tower: a battering ram.

Freya could only watch as she kept the white witches wyvern from death as she screamed and screamed at,  and for her coven.

But when they Yielded. When the Thirteen yielded completely, unanimously burning with pure light unlike the normal darkness, radiating it as it flowed from their souls, incandescent.
Manon stopped screaming. She sank to her knees onto the cold hard stones of the battlements.
Then she did not move.

~

The dark Fae watched as Manon crossed the plain and fell to her knees in the centre of the empty battlefield where the witch tower had stood, where there was now only blasted earth.

She watched as witches, and royals and Fae and assassins and pirates gathered behind her bearing small white flowers and beautiful pebbles, come to honour the Thirteen. As they covered the blast site, and grew a beautiful garden from a field of blood.

When they had all left, one by one.
Then Freya approached, reaching the queen who had not looked or spoken to anyone, even Glennis who had uttered the words of the broken prophecy,

"When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood— let the land be witness and return home."

She did not speak to the queen, did not insult her dignity by comforting her, or helping her.

She held out her right fist, still covered in wyvern blood, and let it drip thrice onto the ground, making a silent oath to the witches who had Yielded.

Manon watched her, saying nothing.

Then she stood.

~

She felt out of place here.

Despite throwing herself into healing and aiding by night, and fighting by day. Despite the thanks that was reaped upon her for every life she saved, the reverence she received, it was other. Like she was bequeathing them a gift, a charity, but this was not her fight.

She watched respectfully, the vigil being held for one of the lords, Murtaugh, after his death had meant the defeat of the siege tower.

She missed Fenrys. And Aelin, and Rowan. The people she'd found herself trusting and treating like family. But she found herself bonded to people here too, inexplicably to the Witch-Queen. Also to the General-Prince who had constantly sought her counsel in the  war room.

She had however, not bonded, with Lord Darrow. She sensed a good man within him, masked by too much  pride that he could not blame on age, as she had explained when she told him how old she was. He had not enjoyed that.

~

Blood rained over the battlefield, it did not fall into raging Terrasen hope though, for they were not winning.

As Aedion had concluded that very morning before dawn, this would be the final day. No more fire lances remained, supplies and weapons were nearly all gone, and the only defence that remained were the gates.

The western gate of the city shuddered.                       A thunderous boom echoed across the swarms of Valg soldiers that  Freya was killing with brutal efficiency, twisting her sword with lashes of dark power, but  she spared a moment to glance to where soon, soon the gate would yield. Hours if they were lucky.

Their forces were swarming to the gate, she joined the witches who had pulled back, alongside Aedion and Lysandra, gathered not to defend, she realised, but making a last stand.

The western gate buckled, iron screaming.
Freya leant down to speak in Lysandra's ear,
"Your girl, Evangeline. I will get her out."

For Freya would not die here today, killed by Valg, but thousand of good brave people would.

The look the brown-haired woman cannot be conveyed into words, the gratitude immeasurable.

This would be a death worthy of a song, an end worthy of being told around fired for centuries to come.

A horn cleaved through the air, through the battle, through the world.

They all went still.

A roar of defiance echoed throughout the land,    
"I know that sound," Freya grinned.

They appeared then , a line of golden warriors, more and more spreading like a crest over the hill, armoured birds filled the sky above them, stretching into the horizon.

Before them all, riding on the magnificent white Lord of the North, was Aelin.

Aelin had come.

Aedion could not believe it. Aelin had come. It had been enough.

Freya believed it, for she had been dreading for it and hoping for it equally.

For now Aelin of Wildfire, Queen of Terrasen had come, now so too would Maeve and Erawan come.
So it was not enough.

She knew what would be needed.
She just didn't know if she could do it.

***
Eek sorry for not updating ❤️❤️

I know I put loads of Manon stuff in which isn't really essential to Freya's storyline but I just loved her and the Thirteen too much :(

Also the ending is nearly here!!!