Manon Blackbeak stands guard on a cliff by the Acanthus River while her grandmother, Mother Blackbeak, meets with a large man who calls himself a duke. Manon longs to fly again, remembering the loss of magic ten years earlier that made her ironwood broom useless and left the Ironteeth witches grounded.

Manon surveys the duke’s camp with her coven, the Thirteen, positioned around it. The mortal guards fear the witches, and Manon amuses herself by revealing her iron teeth to one of them. She also notices two prison wagons whose occupants smell wrong to her, alien and unsettling, though she does not investigate further.

After the meeting, Mother Blackbeak leads Manon away from the encampment and orders her to send three members of the Thirteen to summon all Blackbeaks, and any Ironteeth witches they encounter, to the Ferian Gap. Manon recognizes the danger of the place, remembering that the Thirteen barely survived crossing its caves and ravines after magic vanished.

Mother Blackbeak reveals that Baba Yellowlegs has been killed in Rifthold and that the King of Adarlan has invited the Ironteeth clans to the Ferian Gap with an offer. Manon warns that the gathering could be a trap, but Mother Blackbeak says the king has been breeding wyverns there and needs witch riders for an aerial cavalry.

The offer promises that, after serving the king, the witches may keep the wyverns and use them to reclaim the Western Wastes. The prospect thrills Manon because it means the Ironteeth witches might fly again, not on enchanted brooms but on living war beasts.