The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash 3)

All I could taste was bitter, heavy cream. Sorrow and concern. I started toward the door. “What happened?” I asked as Casteel looked over his shoulder at me.

“A man is here to see you,” Delano answered, and Casteel’s head snapped back to the fair-haired wolven.

“For what reason?” Casteel demanded as I joined them.

“Their child has been injured in a carriage accident,” he told us. “She’s extremely—”

“Where is she?” My stomach dropped as I stepped forward.

“In the city. It’s her father who’s here,” Delano began, his gaze darting between Casteel and me. “But the girl—”

At once, the talk of the Crown, the Unseen, and everything else fell to the wayside. There was no thinking about what I could do to help. I brushed past him, my heart thumping. I’d seen the results of carriage accidents in both Masadonia and Carsodonia. They almost always ended tragically for tiny bodies, and I’d never been allowed to step in and ease their pain or fright.

“Dammit, Poppy.” A door slammed behind Casteel as he entered the hall.

“Don’t try to stop me,” I tossed over my shoulder.

“I wasn’t planning to.” He and Delano easily caught up with me. “I just don’t think you should go rushing out there when the Unseen just tried to kill you last night.”

I looked over at Delano as I kept walking. “Did the parents or the child have a face?”

His brows knitted at what definitely sounded like a weird question. “Yes.”

“Then they’re obviously not Gyrms.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the Unseen, or change the fact that you should proceed with at least a measure of caution,” Casteel countered. “Which, I know, you are not on friendly terms with.”

I sent him a dark look.

He ignored it as we rounded a bend in the hall. “Is it just the father?”

“Yes,” Delano answered. “He appears very desperate.”

“Gods,” Casteel muttered. “I shouldn’t be surprised that they learned of her abilities. There have been arrivals from Spessa’s End over the last couple of days.”

None of that mattered. “Has anyone sent for a Healer?”

“Yes.” Delano’s sadness thickened, and my heart skipped. “The Healer is actually with the child and mother now. The father said the Healer told them there’s nothing to be done—”

Grasping the skirt of my gown, I took off running. Casteel cursed, but he didn’t stop me as I ran down the never-ending hall, vaguely aware that I didn’t think I had ever run this fast before. I rushed out into the warm, sunny air and started for the doors at the end of the breezeway.

Casteel caught my elbow. “This way will be quicker,” he told me, guiding me out from between the pillars and onto a walkway crowded by bushy shrubs covered in tiny starbursts of yellow.

The moment we entered the courtyard, and before I could even see anyone beyond the walls, the raw and nearly out-of-control panic radiating from the man standing near a horse slammed into me.

“Harlan,” Casteel called. “Bring me Setti.”

“Already on it,” the young man responded, leading the horse out as the man turned to us.

I sucked in a sharp breath. The entire front of his shirt and breeches were stained red. That much blood…

“Please.” The man started toward us and then jerked to a stop. At first, I thought it was the sudden presence of several wolven that seemed to appear out of nowhere, but the man started to bow.

“There is no need for that.” Casteel stopped him, his grip slipping to my hand as I let go of my gown. “Your child is injured?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The man’s eyes—Atlantian eyes—bounced between us as Kieran stepped out of the front doors of the home, his hand on the hilt of his sword. With one look, he picked up his pace, entering the stables. “My little girl. Marji. She was right beside us,” he told us, his voice cracking. “We told her to wait, but she…she just took off, and we didn’t see the carriage. We didn’t see her do it until it was too late. The Healer says that nothing can be done, but she still breathes, and we heard—” Wild, dilated eyes flicked to me as Harlan brought Setti forward. “We heard about what you did in Spessa’s End. If you could help my little girl… Please? I beg of you.”

“There’s no need to beg,” I told him, heart twisting as his grief tore through me. “I can try to help her.”

“Thank you,” the man’s words came out with a rush of air. “Thank you.”

“Where is she?” Casteel asked as he took Setti’s reins.

As the man answered, I gripped the saddle and hoisted myself up without getting my legs tangled in the gown. No one reacted to how I was able to seat myself on Setti as Casteel swung up behind me, and Kieran joined us, already astride his horse. No one spoke as we left the courtyard, following the man onto the tree-lined road. We rode down the hill fast, accompanied by the wolven and Delano, who had shifted and was now a blur of white loping over rocks and darting between trees and then structures and horses.