#that ‘live Manon’ kills me every time because until the very end Asterin was guiding her

[pergaminaa]

I dunno why but in my brain Asterin is always taller than Manon. Manon is like 5’7 (same height as Aelin) but Asterin? She’s probably 5’10 or 5’11 she just has this tall energy. And also I think it’s because of what she represents to Manon? She’s her light, her lifeline, her support. Asterin is someone Manon can lean on and she will never let her down. She’s always there to support her, to guide her, to call her out when she’s fucking up and also— she’s always there to protect her.

Fuck, I’m going to cry now. But yes Asterin is definitely taller than Manon this is all I’m saying here.

[feyre-archerons-scrapbook]

The Declaration of a Crochan Queen

Following on from my Dorian Havilliard ficlet from a couple of days ago - The Confession of a Reluctant King - here is Manon Blackbeak’s confessional, looking back on her life from her point of view. This is a companion piece, so it works quite nicely read after his.

Once again, feedback is greatly appreciated.

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When you’ve lived as long as I have, the world starts to look very grey. Except when I go hunting, then it’s bathed in red.

Every man, woman, and child becomes nothing more than a shadow, a spectre for whom I feel nothing but pity. They live short, feeble lives; tending fields or baking bread day in, day out for a few coins, only to grow old and wither away. Countless cemeteries have welcomed human after human to their final resting place in the 116 years I have been alive. Whether I have a heart or not, it’s difficult to care when you think of it like that.

And I suppose that’s the real question; do I have a heart? I was raised by a cold, unfeeling grandmother - leader of the Blackbeak witch clan - who took me from my dead mother’s arms and raised me to believe that we Ironteeth have neither need nor use for a beating heart. We are beyond death and we are above the living. What’s the use in having a heart when you feel nothing for anyone? Muscle and bone and blood, that is all they are…all they ever were.

A vessel for feasting and for fun.

And what fun I have had. Human men who were always so bold, so…aggressive in their attitude towards me when they saw just an ordinary young woman, would become obedient and oh so eager to please when they had iron teeth pressed against their throats, iron nails brushing against their thighs. Some might be shocked at how many men were willing to do anything for the thrill of being with a witch.  

So, without the Wastes to call home, the Thirteen and I found ourselves wandering the lands of Erilea in search of Crochan blood, and entertainment. That was life, that was normalcy for me. My fellow witches were company, but I could’ve managed alone. I was used to that.

Perhaps not in a literal sense, as I hadn’t spent all that much time by myself since I was a witchling, but I certainly felt like I didn’t need anyone’s help or companionship. And besides, if I was ever bored, all I’d have to do was bat my lashes at any man frequenting the nearest tavern and we’d both have a night of fun. Maybe it wouldn’t end so well for them, but let’s not nit-pick.

In the end, though, it all comes back to that question of heart. From the moment I was born I was told that we witches do not feel; whether that be happiness, sadness, guilt, remorse…love. Nothing. We are creatures designed for the sole purpose of killing. And it never dawned on me that this might not be true, even as I derived pleasure from the deaths of my enemies, from the feel of a man between my legs. I simply continued on my well-worn path, thinking nothing of it.

But my grandmother lied. She lied about everything. She said we didn’t feel love, but Asterin was proof that we could feel it, that we could feel hope and happiness and despair and grief. She fell in love with a man, and fell pregnant. And our grandmother cut the stillborn baby out of her and burned it. Then, she carved the word ‘unclean’ across my cousin’s belly. Cold, cruel, vicious bitch!

Unclean? The only one who was unclean was Mother Blackbeak; unclean in her husk of a heart, filthy with the blood and tears of witches who were told nothing but lies, lies, lies for centuries. Witches who believed every word that fell from that bitch’s lips, and if they didn’t believe, they were punished.

And mother, were they punished.

That was always one of my tasks, as heir to the Blackbeak clan; doling out punishments for the smallest of things. A broken nose or a few lashings were common sentences. A scratch of my iron nails across the throat, to remind them how perilously close they were to death at any time. And I followed, unquestioning, for years. So many years. And whenever Asterin would challenge me, call me out, I would punish her. Whenever she dared to speak out against our grandmother – the one who mutilated her, destroyed her – I would punish her again.

On and on and on. You see, I’ve lived a life of circles. Of never-ending torment and hardness of heart, and I never even noticed. Not until I found Perrington standing on the edge of one of those circles, not until they started using witches for their breeding, not until I handed them the witches. Not until Elide Lochan went down to that basement and saw the horrors they were creating.

My grandmother was complicit, of course, willing to let our fellow witches – our sisters – be used as incubators of evil and then tossed aside. She had so much selfishness and so much hatred within her that she didn’t care who or what she destroyed along the way.

But there comes a time in a life like mine when something strong, resistant and unwilling to move finally gives way. Like a dam holding back a ferocious river, eventually it’s going to collapse under the sheer weight of pressure building up behind it.  

That moment came when Asterin was sentenced to death, when I exercised my right to perform the execution. Bring my body back to the cabin. I’ll never forget those words she said to me, as I stood over her with Wind-cleaver grasped in my hand. She was ready to die, and in a strange way I envied her. She could go to her grave knowing that she had experienced love, a life outside of our order and our code, away from Mother Blackbeak and her cruelty. She had known love, in mind, body, and spirit, and she wouldn’t regret a damn thing.

Then a memory flashed across my vision. A memory of a man staring at me in a forest clearing, possessed by the darkest magic, but fighting, pushing, screaming against it. Dorian Havilliard, crown prince of Adarlan, son of the conqueror of these lands.

You looked at me with such intensity in those sapphire eyes, the dark strands of your hair obscuring your face. I’ll never forget it. No one had ever looked at me like that before, like they saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. ‘Hello, witchling’, you said, and the ice around my heart melted just a little. See, after all those years of believing what that bitch had told me, I realised that perhaps I did have a heart, because I immediately felt it tether itself to yours. When you spoke to me, when you told me how you’d never been with a witch before, I felt my body quake. But we witches do not feel, we do not care.

So I let you go. Even as I felt repulsed by that ring of shiny black around your neck squeezing the life out of you. Even as I wanted to run to you and prise it off with my iron nails, I turned and walked away. The events that followed left me in debt to Aelin Galathynius, but my body and soul knew what I needed to do, to help her, to help you. Even as I pretended not to know how completely your magic had coated my skin, had sunk beneath it, I was falling for you, Dorian.

When Erawan gave us the order to take Rifthold, to capture you - the new King of Adarlan - I couldn’t let it happen. I didn’t care what became of everyone else, every other citizen of that damned place, but I needed you to be safe. And so, when I saw that Yellowlegs witch about to kill you, I made a choice. The choice that put Asterin on the executioner’s block. A choice I would gladly make again.

And Asterin…I loved her so much, and it took me a century to realise this. I loved her as my cousin, my sister, my friend. And I couldn’t let her die. So as Mother Blackbeak screamed at me to end her, to do the thing she had been desperate to do since branding her, I brought Wind-cleaver up over my head, I told Asterin to run, and I brought the blade down on my grandmother.

At that moment I didn’t particularly care if I lived or died. I had had enough. You were alive, and Asterin was alive. I had done all I needed to do. We fought, and that’s when she told me I was a Crochan…a queen. My father had loved me, had come looking for me. My grandmother had slaughtered him. Despair. Anger. Hatred. I felt everything. I was bombarded with emotions, relentless, all-consuming emotions. I wanted her dead. But her ages, her experience…I couldn’t withstand it, and I thought I would end my days there, wrapped in my cloak drenched in Crochan blood.

But somehow I survived, and I escaped…barely.

Eventually, with most of my blood spilled across the continent, with my wyvern as my saviour and my guide, I found myself drifting to the bottom of the ocean. I don’t know if I imagined the sound of your voice calling my name, ordering those around you not to kill me, but it echoed in my head as I hit the water, my last breath surely not too far away…

And then you saved my life.

Oh, Dorian.

I am unsure of how this is supposed to work.

I had never felt true desire for a person before, a desperate need to touch and be touched. When you came to my cabin, my hands bound in chains to protect your friends from the iron-toothed witch in their midst, my heart didn’t know what to do. Frozen over for so long, denied its own existence, suddenly it was pounding, alive. A heart thawed by the sapphire-eyed king with ice dripping from his fingers.

You teased me, and you knew just what you were doing to me. I acted as if you were a plaything I was allowing to be in charge for a change, but I meant every word I said. Every damned word. I wanted to surrender to you, completely and utterly. I wanted to give you every last drop of me; mind, body, and spirit.

And it was glorious. I had never felt so treasured, so worshipped. I immediately understood why Asterin had fought against the bleakness for so long. I craved your touch, I needed to hear your whispered words against my neck. I was hooked.

I have spent nearly a century making human men beg for everything…for me, for my bare flesh… or for their lives. But I would never make you beg for anything.

Never will I make you feel trapped, or scared, or like you want to run away. I would never make you beg for me, because I am yours in every imaginable way, Dorian Havilliard.

Until you came into my life all I saw in this world was grey and red; existence and blood. When I laid eyes on you, I suddenly saw sapphire and gold; beauty and mystery...longing. So, my beloved princeling, as we stand side-by-side on that cliff, looking out over the world terrified and longing for peace, I will take your hand, and I will kiss your lips, because my heart yearns for you…because I love you.