Of the Thirteen · Second to Fall
Lin
She had a full name and she would fight anyone who used it. That, a post outside Manon's door, and going second — the books gave her three things and she made all three of them count.
Of the Thirteen. Gold through her black eyes, so the Valg could not reach her. Second of the coven to Yield.
On sight
What she looks like
- Hair
- Black.
- Skin
- Olive.
- Eyes
- Black, flecked with gold.
- Teeth & nails
- Iron, retractable — dagger-sharp, snapping down from the gums like armour when needed.
- Inner eyelid
- A clear lid that slides across the eye in flight.
Her palette
- black
- gold
- olive
- iron
Not Linnea
Linnea is the name on the record and Lin is the name she answers to, and the distance between the two is enforced physically — she goes after anyone who reaches for the long version. It is very nearly the only preference the books hand her, and it is a good one. A witch inside a coven of thirteen, inside a clan of thousands, inside a host being assembled to serve a demon king, drawing exactly one hard line about the one thing that was actually hers.
At the door
Asterin posts Lin and Vesta outside Manon's room for the night, and that sentence is doing more work than it looks like it is. The Second picks who stands between the Wing Leader and the dark, in a fortress packed with witches who would be delighted to inherit that rank. She picks Lin. The same temper that makes her impossible about her own name is precisely the qualification for the job.
The gold in her eyes
Gold flecks through black eyes, the trait the Blackbeaks prize over every other, and what it actually buys her is immunity — the Valg cannot get inside her. So Lin is upright at Morath while Faline is on the floor being sick and Ghislaine, who could recite the Valg's entire history, is screaming. She did nothing to earn it. It is eye colour. The Valg sorted the Thirteen into the ones they could reach and the ones they could not, and Lin drew the long straw and then had to stand there and watch her sisters lose.
Second
Imogen went first at the tower. Lin went straight after her — second of the twelve, with the entire rest of the coven still behind her and nothing yet on the ground to suggest that any of it was going to be enough. Ten more followed. Whatever else the books withheld from her, they gave her the second-hardest place in that line and they wrote her name into it.
Her people
The coven.
Swipe to meet them all
The ones they faced.
The ones they faced
Two we never forgave. One in the sky, one in our own blood.
Swipe to meet them all
What she loves
Born for the sky.
Lin loves the things that come with a wyvern under you and twelve sisters in the air beside you.
The formation
Thirteen riders, one shape in the sky. She knows her place in it without looking.
The coven
The sisters who fly close enough to catch her if the wind ever wins.
The hunt
Iron teeth, a target, and no particular mercy. The usual.
Manon out front
The Wing Leader breaks the wind first. Lin has never doubted where to follow.
The Thirteen
Lin is a sentinel of the Thirteen, and the Thirteen are the softness five hundred years of war never managed to breed out of the Blackbeaks. They are her coven, her formation, and — at Orynth — her ending, when the Thirteen yielded their own life-force to break Erawan's host and only the Wing Leader walked away. Everything Lin loved, she loved in iron, in the air, with her sisters.
Of the Thirteen
Three facts on the record, and she made all of them hers.
-
Posted at Manon's door
Asterin sets Lin and Vesta on the night watch outside the Wing Leader's room — the coven's plainest statement about who is trusted with Manon's back.
-
The gold in her eyes
Gold flecks through black leave her untouchable by the Valg, standing upright at Morath while witches without it go down around her.
-
The Yielding
Second of the coven to go at the witch tower, straight after Imogen, with ten more still to follow her into it.
The File
- OF
- The Thirteen
- TWIN
- Faline (sister-pair)
- EYES
- Black, flecked with gold
- THEREFORE
- Immune to Valg possession
- POSTED
- At Manon's door, with Vesta
- DIED
- SECOND of the Thirteen, in the Yielding
Her power
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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