The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

My...Coralena had been different, hadn’t she? She’d
been a Handmaiden—one of those Revenant things—but
she had taken Ian and I away from Isbeth. She’d loved
Leopold. I remembered how they’d looked at each other. I
thought of the look on this Handmaiden’s face when she’d
been summoned to prove what a Revenant was—the wave
of hopeless desperation and then the feeling of surrender.
Emotions I had been painfully well-acquainted with. And I
thought of how Prince Malik had behaved when Isbeth had
called her forth. He’d stepped forward and then seemed to
stop himself. I wondered how many times she’d been used
for show and tell, and then I decided I didn’t care.
It took every ounce of my self-control, but I pulled the
energy back to me. The static charge of power faded from
the air around me. The wind eased, and the trees stopped
groaning behind me. “Where is she taking him?” I
demanded, taking a step forward. The Handmaiden’s eyes
narrowed. “If you’re thinking about firing the arrow, you’d
better aim true,” I warned. “I don’t need eather to fight you.
I imagine that regrowing sliced limbs and a head is quite the
painful process.”
Her lips twisted in a brittle, thin smile. “Don’t worry. I
will strike true.”
I returned her grin. “Tell me where they are taking him.
If you don’t, you’d better kill me when you take me down
because I will come back. And I will kill you.”
“Do you really think that is a threat? That I fear dying?
After doing it as many times as I have?” She laughed, and
the sound was as crumbling as the grimace of a smile. “I
welcome the final death.”
“Do you welcome the death of the people you seek to
protect right now?” I challenged, ignoring the spike of
empathy I felt for her. “Because if you don’t fear your end,
then maybe you’ll fear theirs.”
Her nostrils flared. “You all are no better than them.”