Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

Aelin chuckled. Even as she sensed her companions’ shock turning into something red-hot. Manon stepped forward, the sea breeze whipping strands of her white hair over her face, and said to Aelin, “Melisande’s fleet bows to Morath. You might as well be signing an alliance with Erawan, too, if you’re working with this … person.” Ansel’s face drained of color at the iron teeth, the nails. And Aelin remembered the story the assassin-turned-queen had once told her, whispered atop rolling desert sands and beneath a carpet of stars. A childhood friend—eaten alive by an Ironteeth witch. Then Ansel herself, after the slaughter of her family, had been spared when she’d stumbled into an Ironteeth witch’s camp. Aelin said to Manon, “She is not from Melisande. The Wastes are allied with Terrasen.” Aedion started, now sizing up the ships, the woman before them. Manon Blackbeak said in a voice like death, “Who is she to speak for the Wastes?” Oh, gods above. Aelin schooled her face into bland irreverence and gestured between the two women. “Manon Blackbeak, Heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan and now the last Crochan Queen … meet Ansel of Briarcliff, assassin and Queen of the Western Wastes.”