Glennis Crochan · The full story
The flame and the crown
Manon was raised from the cradle to murder Crochans. The ancient Crochan who turns out to be her own blood doesn't run from her — she crowns her.
THE WITCH WHO DIDN'T ATTACK
The Thirteen came as the ancestral enemy. She walked out to meet them anyway.
When Manon, the Thirteen and Dorian reach a concealed Crochan camp of some seventy-five witches, the ancient Glennis does not raise a blade — she comes out personally, defuses the hostility between the Ironteeth and her red-cloaked Crochans, and leads them in. For two peoples who have hunted each other for five hundred years, that is nearly unthinkable. Beneath the wrinkled face and long white hair is the steel the Crochans have survived on: later, when the three Ironteeth Matrons find the camp, this frail-looking elder takes up a sword and demands to know what they want, ready to fight at her age.
THE BLOOD SHE REVEALS
The White Demon was half-Crochan the whole time, and here is the proof.
Glennis tells Manon what the Blackbeak Matron buried for a century: they are kin. Glennis is great-grandmother to Manon through Tristan Crochan — the rare-born male Crochan who loved the Blackbeak witch Lothian and fathered Manon. The girl raised as the perfect Ironteeth killer, the one the Crochans named the White Demon and marked kill-on-sight, is Crochan by blood on her father's side. For a reader who has watched Manon grieve everything the Blackbeaks made her into, Glennis is the living answer to the question underneath it all: there was another family, it was hers, and it had been out there the whole time.
THE FLAME NEVER LET OUT
Her whole line is built around a fire no one is allowed to extinguish.
Glennis keeps a Crochan hearth-fire in a glass globe — a flame taken from Brannon Galathynius's own eternal fire, gifted to the first Crochan Queen. It is so sacred that when the Witch-City fell, Glennis's mother smuggled it out of the burning as she carried the last queen's newborn granddaughter to safety, saving the royal flame and the royal line in a single flight. From it comes the Flame of War: only a Crochan queen may light it, and it passes hearth to hearth, village to village, until every scattered witch answers the call. She teaches Manon the whole of it, because she already knows who will be lighting it.
THE CROWN SHE GAVE AWAY
Offered the throne of her own people, she put it on an Ironteeth killer's head instead.
When Manon decapitates the Yellowlegs Matron and recovers Rhiannon Crochan's crown of stars — stolen a lifetime ago from the last queen's corpse — she tries to give it to Glennis, the true elder of the royal line. Glennis smiles and crowns Manon instead, naming her Queen of Witches and uniting Ironteeth and Crochan under one girl. Then, at dawn, she presses the new queen to choose the witches' future, and Manon lights the Flame of War from Brannon's fire. House by house, the Crochans answer and fly north to Orynth. The grandmother's last act is to hand her grief-shaped great-granddaughter a whole people to save.
The flame and the crown
She is the family Manon was raised to hate — and the one who hands her a throne instead of a grave.
The kept flame
She guards an eternal Crochan hearth-fire in a glass globe, taken from Brannon's own eternal fire.
Carried from the burning
Her mother smuggled that flame out of the sacking Witch-City, alongside the last queen's newborn granddaughter.
Welcoming the enemy
She meets Manon, the Thirteen and Dorian openly at the hidden camp, defusing centuries of hostility.
Kin revealed
She tells Manon they are blood: great-grandmother through Tristan Crochan, Manon's father.
The White Demon, half-Crochan
The girl raised to hunt Crochans is Crochan herself — the truth the Blackbeaks hid for a century.
The Flame of War
She teaches Manon how a Crochan queen lights the flame that summons every scattered witch to muster.
Counsel for Dorian
She advises Dorian to release his past to master his shapeshifting, and he takes a raven's form.
The Matrons find them
Smelling the threat, she warns Manon to run, then takes up a sword to face the three Ironteeth Matrons herself.
The crown of stars
Manon recovers Rhiannon Crochan's stolen crown and offers it to Glennis, the rightful elder.
She crowns Manon
Glennis declines and crowns Manon instead, naming her Queen of Witches and uniting the two clans.
The muster
She presses Manon to choose; Manon lights the Flame of War from Brannon's fire at dawn.
House by house
The flame passes hearth to hearth and the Crochans answer, flying north to Orynth.
What she kept
A fire and a crown, both older than the war.
- The eternal hearth-fireA Crochan flame in a glass globe, taken from Brannon Galathynius's own eternal fire. Her mother carried it out of the burning Witch-City beside the last queen's infant heir — flame and bloodline saved together.
- The crown of starsRhiannon Crochan's crown, stolen from the last queen's corpse by Baba Yellowlegs and won back by Manon. Offered to Glennis, who used it to crown Manon Queen of Witches.
We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put Manon on a shirt without knowing which way the iron teeth snap — so we keep the notes here where everyone can use them. The pages are fan-made, not official; the licensed designs are in the shop.
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