The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash 3)

Chapter 30

I was moving before I realized it, coming to stand in front of Vonetta. “Did you—?” I stopped myself, willing my heart to slow. I had no idea if Vonetta had traveled here by horse or in her wolven form. Either way, I knew she hadn’t stopped. A thread of weariness clung to her. I reached for her, clasping her hands. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she stated. “You?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, feeling as if my heart were about to come out of my chest. “Did you see him?”

There was a moment of hesitation before she nodded, and every part of my being zeroed in on that second. “You spoke to him? Did he look okay?” I asked as Casteel placed a hand on my shoulder. “Did he look happy?”

Her throat worked on a swallow as she sent a quick glance over my shoulder to Casteel. “I don’t know if he was happy, but he was there and appeared in good health.”

Of course—how would she know if he was happy? And, seriously, I doubted it was a warm introduction between the two. I opened my mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “And he was…he was Ascended?”

“He showed at night.” Vonetta turned her hands, grasping mine as she exhaled roughly. “He was…” She tried again. “We can sense the vampry. He was Ascended.”

No.

Even though I should’ve known better—should’ve expected this—who I was at my very core rebelled against what she said as a shudder worked its way through me.

Casteel slid his hand across my upper chest, curling his arm around me from behind as he bowed his head to mine. “Poppy,” he whispered.

No.

My chest tightened as sorrow sank its claws so deeply into me, I could taste the bitterness in my throat. I knew better. Casteel had told me that he believed Ian had Ascended. This shouldn’t be news to me, but a part of me had hoped…had prayed that Ian hadn’t. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it confirmed we either shared one parent—our nameless birth mother—or possibly none at all. I didn’t care about that because he was still my brother. I’d just wanted him to be like me, to have Ascended into something else. Or that he simply hadn’t become a vampry. Then I wouldn’t have to make that choice I’d just spoken to Queen Eloana about.

“I’m sorry,” Vonetta whispered.

The back of my throat burned as I closed my eyes. Images of Ian and me flashed rapidly behind my lids—us collecting shells along the glistening beaches of the Stroud Sea, him older and sitting with me in my bare room in Masadonia, telling me stories of tiny creatures with gossamer wings who lived in the trees. Ian hugging me goodbye before he left for the capital—

And all of that was gone now? Replaced by something that preyed upon others?

Anger and grief rushed through me like a river swelling over its banks. Off in the distance, I heard a wolven’s mournful howl—

Vonetta dropped my hands as another keening wail tore through the air, closer this time. The anger inside me grew. My skin began to hum. That cellular need from earlier, when I realized what could have been done to my birth parents, returned. I wanted to utterly and completely destroy something. I wanted to see those armies that Queen Eloana had spoken of unleashed. I wanted to watch them crest the Skotos Mountains and descend upon Solis, sweeping across the lands, burning everything down. I wanted to be there, beside them—

“Poppy.” Kieran’s voice sounded wrong, scratchy and full of rocks as he touched my arm and then my cheek.

Casteel’s arm tightened around me as he pressed his front to my back. “It’s okay.” He folded his other arm around my waist. “It’s all right. Just take a deep breath,” he ordered quietly. “You’re calling the wolven.” A pause. “And you’re starting to glow.”

It took a moment for Casteel’s voice to reach me, for his words to make sense. The wolven…they were reacting to me—to the rage seeping into my every pore. My heart tripped over itself as the need for retribution gnawed at my insides. That feeling—that power it invoked…it terrified me.

I did what Casteel had ordered, forcing myself to take a deep breath and breathe through the way it scalded my throat and lungs. I didn’t want that, to see anything burn. I just wanted my brother, and I wanted the Ascended unable to do this to another person.

The deep breaths cleared the blood-drenched fog from my thoughts. As clarity arrived, so did the realization that there was still a chance that Ian wasn’t completely lost. He was likely only two years into his Ascension, and they trusted him to travel from Carsodonia to Spessa’s End? That had to mean something. That who he was before the Ascension hadn’t been completely erased. The Ascended could control their bloodlust. They could also refuse to feed from those who were unwilling. Ian could be one of them. He could’ve maintained control. There was still hope.