I had inspiration to write this after that revelation about Manon's family in Empire of Storms. SPOILERS FOR EOS.
Sorry if I've missed anything; I don't know much about the Crochan culture. So I don't know if they would use ironwood brooms or not.
Disclaimer: I don't own Throne of Glass, it was brought into the world by the wonderful Sarah J. Maas. The characters, world, and almost all the dialogue towards the end belong to her, and her alone.
As Rhiannon Crochan, the last full-blooded descendant of the Crochan Queens, lay motionless on the table in the torture chamber with her half-sister's wicked grandmother leaning over her, snapping her iron teeth, she thought of her father.
Her father, her gentle, calm, forceful father, who had doted on her as a child when her mother had died, who had gotten one of his female Crochan witch friends to perform the ceremony of bestowing her with their crimson cloaks after her first bleeding, who had disappeared for a decade when she was old enough to fend for herself. She'd been so scared for him, and felt like her heart - that solid, beating muscle it was rumoured her wicked counterparts, the Ironteeth, didn't have - had become a thousand times lighter when he reappeared, complimented her on her immortal beauty, and seized her in his arms and spun her round. She'd laughed, overjoyed, but listened to him solemnly when he told her where he'd been.
When he'd told her he had met, and fallen in love with, an Ironteeth witch - the heir of the Blackbeak clan, no less.
She'd raved at him, for his stupidity, so much so that one of the young witches outside had come in to ask if something was wrong. They'd dismissed her worries quickly and efficiently, assuring her that everything was fine, but Rhiannon wasn't done seething. Far from it.
He was her father. He was supposed to be the sensible one, the experienced one, the prince who never let himself be swayed, never did anything remotely harmful to the people he and his bloodline were sworn to protect. And now he'd run off to court someone, without telling a soul, and had lost his fragile, priceless heart to a Blackbeak bitch who would sooner tear it out of his chest and lick his royal blood off of her gods-damned iron nails than in anyway reciprocate his affections. Who would sooner watch the life drain out of his earth coloured eyes - identical to Rhiannon's own - after she'd carved out his stomach, than so much as think about sharing his bed.
She'd been wrong to think that; at least partly. She'd been wrong to think that the woman he'd fallen for didn't want to give him everything she could, or that she didn't love him just as fiercely in return, and didn't want to somehow secure some sort of peace negotiation between their kinds. But she hadn't been wrong to think that if it was anyone but this woman, they would have ripped out her father's throat.
She didn't want to imagine what could have happened if it wasn't her. It was bad enough being in hiding as both mortals and Ironteeth alike wanted to hunt her into extinction; she didn't need to lose her father as well.
So she quieted her cries of protest when she heard this, and consented to listening to the rest of her father's harrowing tale, of how somehow the two of them had gone from predator and prey to two star-crossed lovers, like in the Fae laments that had still haunted the land in those better times.
The Blackbeak heir had become pregnant, her father told her with glowing eyes. She had become pregnant with his child. The Blackbeak heir (for Rhiannon, half-sibling or no, refused to call her sworn enemy by her name, afraid to even attempt to replicate the syllables as they fell from her father's lips with a reverent sigh she hadn't seen the likes of since her mother died) was going to have a gods-damned baby, and they were going to name her Manon. And her father had sent the witch back to her clan, because he knew they would never kill a witchling, regardless of their lineage. Witchlings were precious, sacred things, and were protected by the whole coven. The Blackbeaks would raise the child as just another one of their own, but the mother would stop her ears from being poisoned with their hate. She would whisper the truth to her: that they were not born without hearts, that she loved her, and that to kill or hate a Crochan would be just as great a crime as killing or hating another Blackbeak.
They'd had it all planned out; her father and the Blackbeak bitch were going to forge their daughter, the witch descended from veterans from both sides of a war that ripped the land apart, into a child of peace. A child that could change the world.
But it all went wrong. Of course it all went to hell.
Because her half-sister's grandmother - the Matron of the Blackbeaks, and one of the three High Witches of the Ironteeth clans - found out about the plot. And damned them all.
She would forge her granddaughter, the daughter of her greatest enemy, not into a child of peace, but a child of war, was what she swore that day back when she'd still had her immortal beauty. She'd sworn to spit in the face of all the Crochan royals by taking one of their own and forcing - no, training - her to slaughter her own kind. She would teach her not to feel mercy, or love; she would teach her not to feel anything.
And Rhiannon knew. She knew first hand, because she had been with her father, out of sight and safe, when that bitch had ripped into him with her nails and drunk his blue blood. He'd begged her not to say anything, and she obeyed, if only because she was frozen with horror at the scene in front of her.
That gods-damned Matron taunted her father about everything he'd hoped and stood for. She'd ripped into his stomach with her nails, and watched him bleed out as she inspected the sapphire liquid clinging to her nails like frost. Then she'd talked.
And Rhiannon had to stifle a scream.
The Blackbeak heir had given birth, in the end. After months of her mother - no, Matron; Ironteeth counted clan loyalty above blood ties - endlessly interrogating her on the identity of the father, the bitch had given birth. The Blackbeak Matron told the tale with relish, how her daughter had screamed and screamed as young Manon came roaring out of her, her screams of pain echoing across the Oakwald treetops. How in the midst of labour, she'd asked her daughter, one last time, who the sire was, and the woman, in her pain, had confessed.
She'd confessed that her lover - not ex-lover, for they were still partners - was a rare born Crochan Prince. She confessed that he'd shown her that she did have a heart, because she stole it. He'd taught her that her mother was a liar, and a manipulator, and that she didn't deserve her loyalty for another second. She confessed that they had hoped their child - the only witchling ever born with mixed blood - was be the key to peace. They hoped that she would guide both their peoples back to the long deserted Witch Kingdom, and break the curse.
The Matron laughed, a dark gleeful laugh, as she spoke of her daughter's weakness, and how, exhausted from labour, she hadn't been able to fight back as the Matron pronounced her granddaughter her heir, and slit the witchling's mother's throat right in front of her, though the child was too young to realise it at the time.
And lastly, the Matron described her granddaughter's eyes: not speckled with the precious gold flakes their kind coveted, but comprised of them, like two burnished copper coins. She mused aloud, whilst her granddaughter's father bled out at her feet, whether it was by chance, or a product of her mixed bloodline.
And finally, when the Crochan Prince took his final shuddering breath, the Matron had watched disinterestedly as he keeled over and lay there, eyes blank and unseeing. As a final insult, she spat on the cooling corpse, and walked away to where her ironwood broom awaited.
Rhiannon had just sat there, for what seemed like hours. She couldn't find the will to move.
Now, looking up at that same hateful face, she knew it was her end. This was that moment all over again; with the Blackbeak Matron in control and speaking whatever words could destroy her victim, like a predator who enjoyed watching her prey wriggle on a hook.
The woman's face had suffered wrinkles at the expense of magic disappearing, and her inky hair, darker than the darkness that awaited her, was streaked with silver, but it was still the same face. Still the same scene, to be repeated over and over again.
Her fingers hurt from where the bitch broken them. Her teeth hurt from where the bitch had broken them. Her face hurt, her limbs hurt, her head hurt - the bitch had broken her. Irreparably and irrevocably.
She closed her eyes. She was going to die. She would never make her father proud.
"You know I'm curious," the Matron was saying now. Rhiannon opened her eyes to listen. "Why would a pretty Crochan witch such as yourself want to venture into the heart of the Irontooth stronghold, when you could be far, far away from here? It would certainly be a wiser choice." She lifted Rhiannon's right hand, inspecting the broken fingers there, bent in grotesque ways that sickened the Crochan to even look at. Her grip on the knife tightened. "Answer me." She growled.
The knife angled towards her little finger.
"No!" Rhiannon cried. She would never make her father proud she would never make her father proud she would never make her father proud. She had to live. "Please." Her voice cracked, and she swallowed briefly, desperately, trying to get some moisture to her long shrivelled throat. "I came here to spy on Manon Blackbeak."
The Matron stopped, and dropped Rhiannon's hand. It collided with her stomach, lacerated with wounds, and Rhiannon didn't even have the strength to wince as more of the blue blood seeped onto the stone torture table. "Oh?"
Rhiannon nodded furiously, and whimpered when the action aggravated the wounds on her collarbone. She waited for her head to clear before continuing. "She's the lost daughter of our dead prince - the prince you killed. She's - she's my half-sister."
The Matron was completely still now. "Oh?" She repeated, dark eyes glimmering. "Indeed."
I have to live. Would the Matron spare her on that knowledge?
"What's your name, girl?" The Matron inquired.
"Rhiannon," she gasped out, almost sobbing with relief. Mercy. The gods-damned bitch was giving her mercy. "After-"
"The last Crochan Queen; I know, I know." The Matron waved an irritable hand. "It's not that hard to guess." A pause, then the Matron's smile, as lethal and blinding as sun off of a dagger as it slid home. "Well then, Rhiannon Crochan," she cooed. "I think it's time to meet your sister, isn't it?"
Rhiannon didn't even have time to realise her mistake before the darkness embraced her.
The thing that bothered her the most wasn't the rows and rows of Ironteeth - blatant killers - but the applause. Applause, for something as monstrous as War Games.
From her position just inside the mess hall, flanked by three Yellowlegs brutes and hidden by most of the crowd, Rhiannon could just see the celebrating witches shoving down tankards of ale and baring their metal teeth at any human man who came too close. She shuddered - her head still pounded from where the Matron had knocked her out with a rock - but then her attention was caught by a flash of white, and she squinted, her eye lenses adjusting to focus on the scene.
A breathtakingly beautiful witch with a ribbon of moonlight coloured hair sat amongst a group of about twelve witches. The way they all looked towards her, the way the two closest to her, a witch with sun-bright hair, and another with a solemn face, kept glancing around warily like they were meant to protect her, betrayed that she was in charge. The blonde witch, hair half-bound in an unruly braid, seized the leader's tankard before she could, and took a deep chug of it. She breathed in, then on an exhale spoke a few clipped words to her charge. The leader's face lost its irritated sheen, and she nodded in acknowledgement.
Odd, Rhiannon couldn't help but think. Odd, that one could find that type of loyalty and devotion amongst the Ironteeth ranks.
Then the blonde witch was gesturing the ivory-haired one towards the front of the room, where the three Matrons stood - to where Rhiannon stood. Her heart started beating faster.
The white-haired witch stood motionless before the Matrons, two fingers pressed to her brow in a gesture of respect. A gesture of discipline. Of obedience. Of brutality.
Everything these bitches valued. Rhiannon stifled a sneer, sure that it would hurt like hell with her broken teeth.
"Welcome, Wing Leader," the Blackbeak Matron said, and a deafening cheer drowned out Rhiannon's growl. Even the Yellowlegs sentinels whose grip was cutting off the blood supply to her wrists raised the roof, though without much enthusiasm, looking at the witch with disdain and almost outright hatred. Only the Wing Leader herself and the twelve witches she'd been sitting amongst remained silent, in a cool, detached manner that terrified Rhiannon more than the rest of the hall did combined.
"What gift can we give you, what crown can we bestow, to honour what you shall do for us?" The Blackbeak Matron mused. "You have a fine blade, a fearsome coven," the blonde witch and the others who'd remained silent all smirked, "what more could we give you that you do not possess?"
A fine blade, a fearsome coven. . . It all clicked. The white hair, the colour of the Spidersilk that glimmered on the ruined wings of her wyvern; this Irontooth witch - the Wing Leader - was the White Demon; the witch at the top of their lists for who to kill on sight.
Rhiannon's blood chilled.
The Wing Leader bowed her head. "There is nothing I wish for, save the honour you have already given me."
The Blackbeak Matron laughed then, and as the laugh faded she said slyly, "How about a new cloak?"
Rhiannon instinctively drew her scarlet cloak around her tighter. The Yellowlegs sentinels sneered at her, grinning at her obvious fear. It was clear she hadn't been the only one to figure out what that gods-damned Matron was planning.
The Wing Leader straightened up then, and Rhiannon had a good look at her eyes. They were a burnt gold; the colour of sunset glinting off water.
The breath was knocked out of Rhiannon. Eyes not flecked with the gold shards their kind coveted, but completely comprised of them, like two burnished copper coins.
This was her sister. The Wing Leader of the Ironteeth clans was Rhiannon's half-sister, the one they'd been searching for since that day of bloodshed one hundred and sixteen years ago. This was Manon Blackbeak, the most fearsome coven leader, the White Demon - and the one they were going to order to kill Rhiannon.
She could only imagine the savage glee in that rutting Matron's face.
But there was hesitation in Manon's face. There was hesitation, and Rhiannon's heart leaped at the thought that maybe this killer knew when to stop. Maybe her father's blood hadn't been wasted after all, so diluted it was powerless against the blood of that Blackbeak bitch.
"That one is looking rather shabby," Manon's grandmother continued, then people were pushing Rhiannon forward, and she was stumbling, and everything was hurting, and now she was close enough to walk over and touch her sister if she wanted to, if a thousand nails wouldn't slit her throat before she could. She almost missed the next sentence. "So here is our gift to you, Wing Leader: a replacement."
Then the people pushing Manon had broken through the crowd, and there were sickening gasps of hunger as the entirety of the Irontooth population took her in, practically salivating at the sight. She was forced to her knees in front of her half-sister, who surveyed her coolly. There was no hint of remorse or regret in her face, but nor was there hunger.
"A gift," the Matron was saying. "Worthy of my granddaughter." Rhiannon almost flinched; it was like a verbal slap. Her granddaughter. Manon was hers. She would never belong to the Crochans. "End her life and take her new cloak."
It was up to Manon now, Rhiannon decided. If her sister decided not to kill a defenceless Crochan, then that would be the only thing that would give her enough hope to keep living after this, knowing that she wasn't related to a monster. But if Manon slit her throat. . . Well, she'd rather die than call that bitch her sister.
She could see the intelligence in Manon's eyes, the glint that said she understood there was a challenge in her grandmother's words - though what challenge Rhiannon didn't know. But the White Demon drew her dagger anyway, and that bright-haired witch - her Second, she was beginning to realise - stepped closer.
A moment passed. Two. Rhiannon began to hope.
"At your leisure, Manon," the Matron cooed, and Rhiannon's heart sank as she saw the light in Manon's eyes fade. She would not turn this down; would not defy her grandmother.
Discipline. Obedience. Brutality. That was all she was.
So, wanting to go out fighting, Rhiannon lifted her chin and chuckled. "Manon Blackbeak," she said, though her voice cracked and her throat ached. "I know you."
She'd unnerved her sister, she knew. But the grip on the dagger remained tight, and the sense of purpose remained steadfast. Neither witch flinched at the shout, "Kill the bitch!" Manon only raised her brows - but did not act.
So Rhiannon continued. "You know what we call you?" She asked, and a sting and a hot rush of blood as her lip split when she smiled. She closed her eyes, suddenly not wanting to feel those eyes - those heirlooms of two great and mighty races - roving over her face. "We call you the White Demon. You're on our list - the list of all you monsters to kill on sight if we ever run into you. And you. . ." She opened her eyes, and grinned, that last minute bravado seizing her. "You are at the top of that list. For all that you have done."
"It's an honour," her half-sister replied. But the monotone voice was like the pounding of the sea; meaningless, required, unstoppable. She was saying it because she had to.
Not because she wanted to.
"Cut out her tongue!" Someone in the audience shouted. Even Manon's Second hissed to end her.
Manon flipped the dagger. And Rhiannon laughed, no longer caring as blood spilled down her. She'd resigned herself to die.
At least she would see her father again.
So Rhiannon held Manon's unwavering stare, and said, "Look all you want. Look at what they did to me, you sisters." She spat the word. "How it must pain them to know they couldn't break me in the end." She paused, and Manon remained silent. "Do you know what this is, Manon Blackbeak?" She asked. "Because I do. I heard them say what you did during your Games."
Oh, such hope she'd had, such foolish hope that maybe her sister was ready to understand that she was not heartless. But maybe she might still understand. Her words weren't intended to make her sister spare her, oh no; she accepted her death. They were meant to latch themselves onto Manon's mind and maybe one day - one day - lead her down the right path.
"This," she raised her voice, for the world to hear, "is a reminder. My death - my murder at your hands, is a reminder. Not to them," she breathed, and then she saw the flicker of indecision in Manon's eyes. "But to you. A reminder of what they made you to be. They made you this way.
"You want to know the grand Crochan secret?" She couldn't have stopped talking now, even if she wanted to. "Our great truth that we keep from you, that we guard with our lives? It is not where we hide, or how to break the curse. You have known all this time how to break it - you have known for five hundred years that your salvation lies in your hands alone. No, our greatest secret is that we pity you."
Silence in the room. Not even Manon's Second sneered at her. But no one moved.
"We pity you, each and every one of you. For what you do to your children. They are not born evil. But you force them to kill and hurt and hate until there is nothing left inside of them - of you. That is why you are here tonight, Manon. Because of the threat you pose to the monster you call grandmother. The threat you posed when you chose mercy and saved your rival's life." She gasped, and was almost pleased that the words unlocked something in her, as tears flowed freely down her cheeks. At least she could cry one last time; she had not done so in so long. "They have made you into monsters. Made, Manon. And we feel sorry for you."
"Enough." The Matron barked at last. Rhiannon closed her eyes. She'd said what had needed to be said. And her sister hadn't bought it. There had been indecision, but no sense of resolve.
She would continue being a monster, and nothing or no one could change that.
Rhiannon tilted her head up one last time, and drank in the sight of her sister, strong and powerful and fiercer than anyone she'd ever encountered. She thought longingly of what could have happened in another life, where they would fly together on ironwood brooms and laugh and live and love together. She longed for that life.
Perhaps, when she died, that was where she would go.
"Do it," she whispered, and she knew Manon understood it was a plea.
She was glad of how fast it happened. She barely had time to let her thoughts stray to her lost parents, who she would soon greet, before Manon yanked her head back by her hair and slashed her throat.
And as she sank onto to floor, choking on her own blood, she let the darkness embrace her. There was nothing she could do in this world anyway.
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