Page 147 of Deadly Maiden

The king unlocks my manacles and lets them drop, which makes them jerk on the hooks. My tunic was caught up above the strings on the hooks and he lifts it higher, baring me there. I curse and grit my teeth as he carefully, methodically, removes each hook.

“Blood is such a pretty thing,” he murmurs, drawing a finger up my side and over the punctures as he stands. “Don’t make me need to paint you with more of yours.”

He returns to his position, leaving me to acclimatize to the rush of my magik blossoming. The pain shrinks to nothing. Mind spinning, I am consumed by the power rushing into each and every cell of my body. My pulse intensifies—lub-dub, lub-dub.

Ruelle’s eyes flash to me, as if she, too, hears the pulsing of my blood.

Once more, I am a necromancer.

I roll my shoulders, rub each wrist, then smile and rise to my feet. “Thank you. There is a problem or two, of course.”

They wait for me to continue while Ruelle’s ball of blood magic throbs and spins.

Half-turning, I gesture at the top of the sarcophagus. It lies propped at an angle against the other side of Jennae’s casket, so that it will not slide away and smash. It’s been levered off the casket holding her body.

Under this central monument to the king’s daughter, I sense her flesh, paused in its moment of death, not decaying, notmoving onward. Her ghost is in here, hovering, unaware of the consequences of this ridiculous show.

Icy air curls about the dislodged sarcophagus. Chains lie in a tangle over her effigy. Those would have been used to winch the stone lid off the casket.

“You used ice magik to preserve her flesh?”

“Yes. Just do what you need to do.” The king regards me sternly, rests his hand on his sword hilt. “Before Kroll loses his mind and uses the axe.”

As if to emphasize his threat, the iron axe rotates one way, rotates back. Kroll shrugs, as if the axe movement is nothing to do with him.

“Even if I knew how to raise a corpse, and she is that—dead. Even if…I could not restore her to normal life. She would be undead. She would lack the mind of your daughter.” This does sadden me.IfI could restore anyone, it would be Asher.

As if prompted by my thought, which he may indeed have felt, a hand appears at the lip of the casket, lifting it open an inch. Cold fog pours from the crack, sending licks of creamy mist spilling across the floor.

Too soon!

The queen gasps.

Asher shoves aside the light casket lid and emerges from his hiding place—somewhere impossible for any fae to survive. The perfect bedroom for an undead. He raises his darkthing-edged sword and jumps out, faster than I’ve seen him move before.

“Asher!” I yell with my arm thrust at him, using his real name to distract the others, to make them pause. I expect him to throw the sword to me so I can kill Kroll. It is why he was hidden there—to bring the sword.

Asher’s name has its expected effect. They all gasp and focus on this remnant of a dead man, the brother to the king of Orencia.

I must be swift.

Except Asher does not throw the blade to me.

He leaps at Kroll. And mayhem breaks loose.

Unsummoned, Anathema materializes from the shadows and skitters across the wall to attack the largest threat he can see—the queen and her red ball of magik.

Ruelle tosses strands at Anathema, as if as an afterthought, caging him to the wall with bars of glistening blood. She morphs the remaining ball into two slim blood-scimitars—and is now doubly armed.

Kroll flips the axe upward, catches it by the haft, and swings at Asher, slicing him almost in half at the waist.

Fuck.That shatters me as if my own blood has been spilled.

Though dealt a lethal wound—for a normal fae—and already toppling, Asher, my undead hero, carves a terrible path through Kroll. The sword slices from shoulder to groin and Kroll screams and collapses. The pieces of Asher barely stay together as he strikes at the iron chains held between Rorsyd’s straining arms.

Iron chain meet hardened steel sword.

The chains part with a clanging, gratingcrack, then slide and unravel until they swing freely from the ceiling.

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