She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart.

The winds shifted, and Abraxos rode them, rising higher into the sky, the darkened kingdom below passing by in a blur.Changing winds—a changing world.Perhaps a changing Thirteen, too. And herself.She didn't know what to make of it,But Manon hoped they'd all survive it.She hoped.

This witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars.

Wrong kind of witch." - Manon Blackbeak

But anyone with witch-blood in their veins was worth keeping an eye on.Or Thirteen.

The straw-coated floor crunched beneath her boots, a cool breeze sweeping in from where the roof had been ripped half off thanks to Sorrel's bull. To keep the wyverns from feeling less caged—and so Abraxos could watch the stars, as he liked to do.

But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.