Read Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2 for Free Online

whispered.
    Her hand steadied his wrist. There came a gentle, painful pressure on the stump. Where his fingers touched the hilt, they tingled like a nettle sting. Then Rix felt a burning pain as though she had poured brandy over his stump and set it alight. His eyes sprang open.
    Glynnie had pressed his severed hand against the stump, and now the pain was running up his arm and down into his fingers. Cold blue flames flickered around the amputation site then, with the most shocking pain Rix had ever experienced, the bones of his severed hand ground against his wrist bones –
and seemed to fuse
.
    He had the good sense not to move, though he could not hold back the agony. It burst out in a bellow that sifted dust down from the roof onto them, like a million tiny drops falling through a sunbeam.
    “
What are you doing to me?”

CHAPTER 2
    Benn let go and scrambled backwards into the dark, out of harm’s way.
    Glynnie went so pale that the freckles stood out down her nose. She swayed backwards as though afraid Rix was going to strike her, but her bloody hands were rock-steady, one on his wrist, the other on his partly rejoined hand.
    “Don’t move!” she said.
    Hope and fear went to war in Rix. The foolish, foolish hope that Glynnie knew what she was doing and could give him his right hand back. And the gut-crawling fear that it would go desperately wrong and would be worse than having a stump on the end of his arm. He clutched the hilt of Maloch so hard that it hurt – and prayed.
    It was impossible to keep still. The pain was a dog mauling his wrist, splintering the bones. Then, out of nowhere, he
felt
his amputated hand as an ice-cold, dangling extremity. He felt the blood oozing sluggishly through each of the collapsed veins, dilating them one by one.
    His hand was no longer cold, no longer grey-blue. A warm pinkness was spreading through it. Red scabs formed in three places across his wrist and slowly extended along the amputation line until they ran most of the way around, though a spot near his wrist bone, and another underneath, still ebbed blood.
    His little finger twitched; pins and needles pricked all over his hand. And then – Rix flexed his index finger, and it
moved
. Tears sprang to his eyes.
    “How did you do that?” he said hoarsely. “Who are you?”
    Glynnie shook her head, slumped onto the other bench and wiped her brow with her forearm, leaving a streak of blood there. “I’m not a healer, nor a magian – just a maidservant.”
    “I don’t understand…”
    Glynnie tilted the metal cup towards him. The bottom was covered with a smear of blood.
    “What’s that for?” said Rix.
    “It’s the cup Tali used to try and heal Tobry. With her healing blood.”
    “But she didn’t heal him. He’s dead.”
    “Maybe shifters can’t be healed,” said Glynnie. “But Tali’s blood can heal ordinary wounds. That’s all I did.”
    “Go on.”
    “I covered both edges of your wrist with the blood left in the cup. It was frozen; I had to warm it in my hands. I pushed your hand and wrist together and held them. That’s all.”
    Rix’s other hand was still clenched tightly around Maloch’s hilt. He let go. “You also used the protective magery of my sword.”
    “
I
didn’t use it,” said Glynnie. “I only put it where it could do you some good.”
    “You gave me back my hand. I can never thank you —”
    “It could get infected,” said Glynnie. “I’ll have to look after it.”
    She stood up, swaying with exhaustion, and Rix realised how much he had taken her for granted. Why should the great Lord Rixium notice a little, freckled maidservant? Palace Ricinus had employed a hundred maids, each as replaceable as every other.
    “Sit down,” he said, reaching up to her. “Rest. Let me wait on you.”
    Her eyes widened; a blotchy flush spread across her cheeks. “You can’t wait on
me
.”
    Glynnie washed the blood off her hands and forearms in the basin niche, then took a rag from her