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Back Queen of Ruin Save as PDF
Chapters (49)
  1. COVER
  2. DEDICATION
  3. MAP
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE
  33. THIRTY
  34. THIRTY-ONE
  35. THIRTY-TWO
  36. THIRTY-THREE
  37. THIRTY-FOUR
  38. THIRTY-FIVE
  39. THIRTY-SIX
  40. THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. THIRTY-EIGHT
  42. THIRTY-NINE
  43. FORTY
  44. FORTY-ONE
  45. FORTY-TWO
  46. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  47. DISCOVER MORE
  48. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  49. PRAISE FOR

It was good that Nomi and Malachi had left. Maybe they’d find Dante, maybe they’d get here in time to save a few girls. Malachi would take all of this, all of Asa’s power from him. There was a certain faint comfort in knowing Malachi was alive, while Asa assumed he was not.

“I killed my father’s best friend.” Anika’s voice had lost its hard edge. “He wanted to marry me, even though I was seventeen and he was forty-five. He wanted me to bring my younger sisters with me as my maids. But I always knew what he really wanted them for. The night before the wedding, he came into my room. He didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want him at all.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “My father didn’t protect me. He didn’t say the death was an accident, or hide the body. He told the magistrate about me. I wish I’d killed him too. I wish I’d taken my sisters and my mother and fled. I might have made it. I don’t know where they are now or what happened to them.”

So many lost sisters. So many broken families.

“I never had a family,” Ember said gruffly. “Only Oracle.”

Serina remembered what Ember had asked her before they left Mount Ruin, about whether she’d be able to find Oracle when she died. The memory cut straight through Serina’s heart, the burning metal of an arrow. She hated the thought of Ember dying tomorrow, still holding on to that fear.

“You and Oracle will always have each other,” Serina said, her voice thick with tears. “When all the battles are over, you’ll be together. You’ll be free. Wherever you want, with no one forcing you to fight, no one driving you apart. Do you… do you know where you’d want to go?”

Ember tightened her bound wrists around her knees and stared at the ground. “I love the ocean. Sometimes Oracle and I would sit on the beach for hours, talking. Not about our sad pasts, or the horrors of the next fight. We’d stare at the water and talk about where we’d go, what we’d do, if we could go anywhere. If we could do anything.”

Serina was really crying now. “You’re going to get the chance, Ember. I know it. You’re going to see everything, be everything. All those dreams, you’ll dream them forever. You and Oracle. You’ll be together. I know it.”

Val’s breath hitched. She turned her head into his chest and closed her eyes. It was her hope for them too, that in death she and Val might find each other again.