Page 34 of Boundless

“I stole,” said the golem. “I stole from my chief.”

“Stolewhat?”

A heartbeat of silence. The golem smiled. “Flowers.”

Well, fuck.Not what I expected at all.

“What do you mean,flowers?” Betty asked, and she was right to be confused. I’d told her that golems dealt in flowers, and that they could basically manipulate plants, which was all thatIknew about them, too. But I doubted one could get banished for stealing flowers…could they?

“Flowers. A very rare kind of flowers. Stole them and I got caught. My chief banished me that same night.”

I looked at her.Reallylooked at her, and every instinct in me insisted that she was telling the truth.

Which wasn’t saying much because she was a Verenthian no matter how she spoke and what she wore. She was a Verenthian, andtheywere master manipulators. They could fool you without breaking a sweat.

“You don’t look like you regret it,” I said in wonder. There was no remorse and not even the slightest bit ofsadnessanywhere on her that I noticed.

“I never said I did,” she told me.

“Do you?”

“Not even a little bit.” And now I wanted to knowwhyshe’d stolen flowers she knew she would get banished for and still didn’t regret it.

Fucking hell, my curiosity was an insatiable beast.

Then Betty hi-fived her. “You’re pretty cool, Pink.”

“I think I like that name,” she said with a nod, but she was still looking at me. “Your turn.”

“I was banished by the Midnight King because he didn’t have the heart to kill me.” The was the truth. Notallof it, not even close, but it was the truth, and she could tell.

“You’re joking, right?” she said. “TheMidnight Kingdidn’t have the heart to kill you?”

“Yes.”

Laughter, and she wasn’t even trying to stop herself. This timeIwas the one looking around the forest to make sure nobody was close. As far as I could see, we were alone.

Arez eventually stopped laughing, and said, “Did the Midnight King change in recent years or something?”

My blood turned ice-cold. “Why?”

But even before I could begin to ask myself a million questions, she said, “Because the man who sat on the Midnight throne whenIleft Verenthia was one of the most ruthless kings in the history of the realm. He would have taken great pleasure in killing you. They used to say he killed his first wife because she refused to obey him blindly. Made her drink the Iyandra, forced it down her throat.”

My skin crawled and I most definitely believed everything she said about Rune’s father, but… “What’s Iyandra?” Pretty sure I hadn’t heard that word before, either.

“Iyandra. You know,the end.The drink,” said Arez.

The end?I shook my head. “I have no clue what that is.”

Now she was shocked. “Are you serious? It’sthe end.Thedeathof fae. The drink they drink when they want to die—you know, Iyandra!”

Fuck me sideways.

“What the hell? They drink a drinkto die?” This from Betty, and she was definitely just as surprised as I was.

“Duh.Fae are immortal. How did you think they died?”

“I…didn’t.” It had never once crossed my mind to imagine it—I just thought they were killed or something. Fucking hell, I thought they were all murdered.