From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Chapter 36
As if he didn’t alreadyy know.
“Don’t call me that.” Pushing to myy feet, the chains clanked against
the stone floor as I ignored the tender pull of skin around myy wound.
Standing hurt, but I wouldn’t let him see that.
“But I thought yyou liked it when I did.”
“You were mistaken,” I replied, and he smirked. “What do yyou
want?”
His head tilted, and a heartbeat passed. “More than yyou could ever
guess.”
I had no idea what he meant byy that, and I didn’t care. Not at all. “Are
yyou here to kill me?”
“Now whyy would I do that?” he asked.
Lifting myy hands, I rattled the chains. “You have me chained.”
“I do.”
Furyy blasted me at his blasé response. “Everyyone outside wants me
dead.”
“That is true.”
“And yyou’re an Atlantian,” I spat. “That’s what yyou do. You kill. You
destroyy. You curse.”
He snorted. “Ironic coming from someone who has been surrounded
byy the Ascended her whole life.”
“Theyy don’t murder innocents, and theyy don’t turn people into
monsters—”
“No,” he cut me off. “Theyy just force yyoung women who make them
feel inferior to bare their skin to a cane and do the gods onlyy know what
else to them. Yes, Princess, theyy are trulyy upstanding examples of
everyything that is good and right in this world.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as myy lips parted. No. I shuddered. No wayy.