Warmaidens
Contents (35)
Also by Kelly Coon
Gravemaidens
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Kelly Coon
Cover art and design by Sammy Yuen
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9780525647867 (hc) — ISBN 9780525647898 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9780525647874
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Contents
Cover
Also by Kelly Coon
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my beautiful boys, Brady, Kaden, and Brennan.
Listen to your heart—and your mom.
THE DEAD COULD rise on this kind of night.
In some ways, they already had.
The cool air nipped at my shoulders as I knelt in the dirt, encircled by an elite group of warriors called the Koru who protected the queen. Torchlight reflected off their copper scorpion helmets. The scars they wore on their bodies like badges of honor. It flickered in their eyes when they looked at me, the healer who had saved them all.
After more than a moon of restless illness, they’d risen from their sickbeds one after another. When I’d witnessed the life in them, their muscles regaining strength as they fastened into their greaves and plated tunics to return to their duties, I’d cried like a baby.
If only my father had been alive to see it. He would have been so proud that I’d healed them, and that the queen was honoring me this night in recognition, though he would have scolded me for running myself ragged to get here. But that’s what you did when you were a healer doing everything in her power to be the best she could be.