The Second

The Second

Manon's cousin, and the Second of the Thirteen — the one who flies at her Wing Leader's left and says the thing nobody else will. She is gold-haired where Manon is moon-white, and warm in a way Ironteeth witches are not supposed to survive being. Her wyvern is Narene, a sky-blue mare bred for stealth, which suits her: Asterin is the Thirteen's scout as well as its Second, the one sent to look at things first.

What the Matron did to her

Eighty years before the series starts, Asterin fell in love with a mortal hunter and got pregnant — rare enough among witches to be an event. The Blackbeak Matron's punishment took the child and the man both, beat her nearly to death, and branded the word UNCLEAN across her abdomen so she would carry the verdict on her skin for the rest of her very long life. She told no one for eight decades. When Manon finally learns it, the Matron's answer is to declare a blood debt and sentence Asterin to death — and that sentence is the exact thing the Thirteen refuse. They break with the Ironteeth Matrons rather than carry it out. Everything the coven becomes starts with Asterin's scar.

The brand as an argument

Here is the part that makes her extraordinary. In the witch lands, trying to convince five hundred years of Crochan hatred that Manon is worth following, Asterin shows them the brand. She takes the worst thing that was ever done to her — the thing meant to shame her into silence — and uses it as evidence. Proof of what the Matrons do to their own. It is not a confession; it is a closing argument. The witch who was branded UNCLEAN is the one who makes the case that ends the feud.

Chapter 89

At Orynth she leads the Thirteen's final charge on the witch tower. She says goodbye first. Her Second, her cousin, her friend — eyes bright as stars — tells Manon to Live, kisses her brow, whispers it again, and then punches her hard enough to drop her, because that is the only way to stop Manon following her into it. She asks one thing: bring our people home. She goes last. She tackles the Blackbeak Matron — the witch who branded her — to the ground, and Yields. A Yielding is an ebony wave, the Darkness in a witch's soul made visible. Hers comes out as pure white light. Nobody in the book stops to explain that, and nobody reading it needs them to.