Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)

by Sarah J. Maas

Manon unfastened the brooch clasping the cloak at her shoulders. She weighed the thick bolt of red fabric in her hands. A few easy swipes of her nails had her clutching a long, thin strip of the cloak. A few more motions had her tying it around the end of her braid, the red stark against the moon white of her hair. Manon stepped out of the shadows behind the foremast and peered over the edge of the ship. No one commented when she dumped her half sister’s cloak into the sea. The wind carried it a few feet over the waves before it fluttered like a dying leaf to land atop the swells. A pool of blood—that’s how it looked from the distance as the tide carried it out, out, out into the ocean. She found the King of Adarlan and Queen of Terrasen waiting at the railing of the main deck, their companions climbing into the awaiting longboat bobbing on the waves. She met eyes of sapphire, then those of turquoise and gold. She knew they’d seen it. Perhaps not understood what the cloak had meant, but … understood the gesture for what it was. Manon flicked her iron teeth and nails back into their slits as she approached them. Aelin Galathynius said quietly, “You never stop seeing their faces.” It was only when they were rowing for the shore, spindrift soaking them, that Manon realized the queen hadn’t meant the Thirteen. And Manon wondered if Aelin, too, had watched that cloak floating out to sea and thought it looked like spilled blood.