The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash 3)

“You’re wrong. I stopped,” I said. “Would any of them have stopped? Would your Queen?”

She said nothing.

“I have no desire to kill innocents. I want to help the people of Solis—free them from the Blood Crown. That is what we wanted to do,” I told her. “But they killed my brother and took the one person who means the world to me. I will do anything to get him back. No matter how badly it stains my soul.”

“Then you know how to get him back,” she snapped. “Submit to her and take Atlantia in her name.”

I shook my head.

“So, you won’t do anything for him, then?”

“Because once she has what she wants, she will kill him,” I said. “She will kill me.”

“Then I guess you’re screwed.”

“No. Because I won’t let either of those two things happen,” I said. “I’m going to give her what she wants, but not in the way she thinks.”

Curiosity flickered through the Handmaiden, but then her attention shifted just the slightest to my shoulder.

“Poppy,” Kieran called quietly as several archers on the Rise scrambled into their nests.

Her chest rose with a shallow breath. “She’ll take him to the capital. I don’t know where. No one knows where she keeps her…pets.”

A shiver of rage brushed my skin, stroking the throbbing in my chest, and her lip curled in disgust. It was brief. I wasn’t sure that she was even aware of it, but I saw it.

“But it doesn’t matter,” she continued. “She’ll have every Revenant on hand guarding him. She’ll have him watching over your King,” she told me, and I knew that she spoke of the Prince. “You won’t get near him.” She lowered her bow, her shoulders settling. “Unless you can bring the fire of the gods with you, none of you stands a chance.”

A chill swept through me as I stared at her. Fire of the gods? Her gaze met mine as she took a step back. “I’m sure we will meet again,” she said.

“We will.”

I sat in the wooden chair of the hunting cabin Casteel had brought me to, after he’d saved my life and risked so much in the process, and stared at the bed.

Tawny lay there, her face too pale, her breathing too shallow. I’d tried to heal her. I’d tried once when I went back to the woods. My gift had flared to life then, and the wound had closed, but she didn’t wake. I tried again when we stopped halfway here, after we’d mounted the horses that Hisa had brought. I placed my hands on her too-warm skin as soon as we arrived at the cabin, but she didn’t wake, and those dark veins had spread up her throat.

We’d traveled straight through the Wastelands and had reached the hunting cabin as night descended. We had to stop. Everyone was tired, and Tawny… I didn’t know what was wrong with her or what had pierced her flesh to cause this—for my gift to not do much beyond closing her skin.

The arrow the Handmaiden had held resurfaced. It had been fashioned from shadowstone. The same weapon my mother had had the night the Craven came to the inn. The same kind of weapon the deities had been buried with and the skeleton soldiers had held. I couldn’t remember seeing what kind of weapons the guards had. I’d…I’d obliterated the ones who stood in front of me, but the Handmaiden had said it would put me down for a while. I glanced at Tawny. Could it have been shadowstone? Was that why my gifts had only worked to a certain point?

My gaze lowered to my hand. I turned it palm up and, in the glow of the candlelight, saw the marriage imprint shimmer. I closed my hand, squeezing my eyes shut against the burn.

I hadn’t cried.

I wanted to. I wanted to cry for Ian. I wanted to cry for Lyra. I wanted to cry for Tawny because I feared she’d never open her eyes again. I wanted to cry for Casteel because I knew what he faced, even if I could imagine what he must be thinking or feeling to know that his brother had not only betrayed him but would also become one of his prison keepers.

Anger had grown with each mile we got closer to Atlantia. If we had known the truth about who the Queen really was, we could’ve better prepared. We would’ve known it was impossible for her to be an Ascended. We would’ve known that anything was possible. Instead, we’d gone into the meeting hobbled by lies. No part of me believed for even one second that Eloana hadn’t known the truth. Possibly even Valyn had known. The knowledge they’d withheld could’ve changed everything.

Because it already had.

A soft knock drew me from my thoughts. I rose and stiffly walked to the door.