The Hollow Queen Read Online Free PDF

welcome in the guildmistress’s bed, but then, Esten had cravings for which even the most cold-blooded of men had reservations. At one time or another, virtually every member of the guild had serviced the guildmistress, often as a rite of initiation, and on many more than one occasion, a poor performance in that regard had led to a quick burial later in the night.
    Apparently Yabrith had been satisfactory, at least.
    The image of Esten’s rotting head, worm-ridden eye sockets and beetles in her hair, stuffed summarily into a small packing crate and wrapped casually in paper, delivered to his doorstep, still haunted the guild scion. Because his dreams were rare, he was spared the thought of it at night. But during the day, when his mind had finished all the calculations and algorithms that kept him routinely alive, when his thoughts had free space, the memory of her face would return, staring at him blindly, hissing at him with a mouth where the tongue had rotted out.
    Avenge me, it whispered.
    Dranth rolled over to free his shoulder of the rock that was bedeviling it on the cold, sandy ground and groaned in his sleep.
    He had tried.
    He had failed.
    But until his last breath, he would continue to prosecute the blood oath.
    Until his last breath.
    Already he had begun to suspect that the furor for revenge was beginning to wane in several of the other guildsmen. While in life Esten had their love and loyalty without question, the cost of his crusade to bring her murderers to tribal justice was adding up to a ledger that was hard to balance.
    But that was because none of them had seen her as he had when he had first become aware of her.
    Dranth, who was old enough to have been her father, potentially her grandfather, had first come upon the little murderous prodigy in a back alley in Yarim when she was only eight years old. He had seen her first from behind, her dark, ragged hair bouncing across her shoulders as she systematically removed the organs of a soldier who had fallen asleep, drunk, between the taverns he had been frequenting earlier that night. She managed to eviscerate him so quickly, so cleanly, that Dranth had stood frozen in nothing less than awe at the sight.
    Then, when she was finished, she wiped her nose with her sleeve and turned to see him watching her.
    And smiled.
    That smile, glittering teeth below eyes as dark as the night sky within a face framed by matching hair, had caused him to silently swear his soul into alien slavery, to vow to protect and promote her for the rest of his life.
    Never even imagining that hers would end so soon, before his.
    She was the only person he had ever loved.
    He had never tired of doing anything Esten needed, unquestioningly answering every demand, undertaking any job, even willingly allowing her to deflower herself upon him at the age of eleven, something that even he found mentally abhorrent but physically irresistible. The image of her young face, still missing some of the adult teeth, staring down from atop him, carefully watching his reaction, was burned uncomfortably into his memory, and it returned now, her eyes narrow in observation, sparkling as she forced him into fondling her in ways she knew made him uncomfortable.
    Even in his sleep, acid rose in his throat at the memory of her insistently putting his hand on her prepubescent nipple, a place that a breast one day would be, guiding him in techniques of stimulation she should never have known so soon. He knew that her physical immaturity could not be allowing her any sexual satisfaction at the things she was making him do. He knew exactly why she demanded them of him.
    Because they made him uncomfortable.
    She had even told him so.
    He had taught her what she wanted to learn, how to use her body to entice and control men, and in turn, she had used that knowledge as a weapon of impressive potency to gain her what she wanted, when her other weapons—a brilliant, quick mind, savage beauty, deadly aim with