The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

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