Page 12 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Rage

Rage. There are many people who live their whole lives without experiencing true rage. No person evades anger, jealousy, pride, grief—but to know true, undiluted rage? That is different. It eats you.

Anya couldn’t feel her body: it had vanished, and in its place was pure burning fury.

She was like a bear escaped from the pit, like a lion let out of a small service lift: five feet tall and all of it claws.

She dimly recognized that she was scratching at the people holding her, tearing at their clothes; that she was being led out of the hall by firm hands; that there was chaos, the brush of people rushing past her in a corridor, whispers.

The next thing she was fully conscious of was her bedroom: she was sitting on the bed, panting like she’d run around the world itself, with Madam Elena standing over her, stern and anxious.

“My father is innocent,” she gasped. “He is innocent!” Her father, so funny and kind and so gentle in hand and voice, couldn’t kill any living thing. Back in the forest he refused to so much as brush a joro from its web. “He could never, never kill!” she said.

Madam Elena made soothing noises. “I have an old dryad cure for sleep,” she said. She took a little bundle of dried somulent leaves from her pocket and wrapped a scarf around her own mouth and nose.

Leaves from the somulent tree bring instant sleep. Madam Elena set fire to the bundle and held the leaves under Anya’s nose. The smoke was sweet. It made her suddenly, dizzyingly exhausted. Her last sight was of the royal gaganas, flocking through the smoke to land on her bed.