“Millicent also spent some time with you.”
“Really?” Another bolt of surprise pierced me. I hadn’t expected to hear that. Millicent was…well, she was a bit odd. She was also my sister.
I had a sister.
Gods, there really hadn’t been time to wrap my head around that.
I drank deeply, thinking about how Millicent had been brought into this world by the same machinations as I had. Did that knowledge bother her? I had no idea. The only thing I really knew about her, other than the fact that she was a Revenant partly due to Casteel’s blood—and gods, that was as messed up as knowing that Isbeth planned for Malik to Ascend me—and her inability to sit in a chair like a normal person.
Well, those things and the fact that she was Malik’s heartmate.
But it wasn’t her I’d heard either. The other voice had been a colder, drier whisper that was…masculine. Familiar.
Casteel touched my cheek with his other hand, pulling me from my thoughts. “You okay?”
Clearing my throat, I nodded and attempted to focus. I’d been in stasis for a long time, and I needed to know what had happened while I was. “How are things with the capital—the kingdom?”
His thumb moved over the top of my hand. “We’ve ensured that things are calm while you’ve been in stasis.”
“How did you do that?” I asked, thinking that couldn’t have been easy.
“We put the capital on lockdown at first,” he explained. “That’s been lifted, but we still have a curfew in place.”
“How has—?” Tiny bumps broke out all over my skin as the breath I took got stuck.
“Poppy?” Cas said, sounding like he was in another chamber even though he sat beside me.
Unease settled in the pit of my stomach like a creeping chill, causing my chest to tighten. My hands shook, spasming open.
Cas lurched forward, catching the glass before it hit the floor. Water sloshed over the rim, splashing off the stone as I jerked to my feet. An unseen weight pressed down on me until I felt like I would fall through the floor, choking me with dread, with the knowledge that…something had changed in the realms.
That something was becomingaware.
Awakening.
CHAPTER 11
POPPY
Trembling, I stood there as the suffocating sense of dread shifted, becoming a pull. A need. A call just as suffocating—
Strong hands clasped my arms, the contact sending a jolt of energy through me and snapping me back into the now. My wide eyes swung up, locking on bright gold ones.
Casteel.
It was him.
His hands.
“Poppy?” He guided me until I was sitting once more. “What’s going on?”
“I…” The tension around my chest loosened.
“Talk to me, sweetheart.”
I jerked back, blinking his features into focus. “Sweetheart?” I whispered, a different feeling sweeping through me. This time, it was one of familiarity, nearly identical to what I’d felt when I saw the tub. “You’ve never called me that before, but…”
Eather pulsed behind his pupils as he stared down at me. “But what?”
