I shook my head.
A faint smile crossed his lips. “Penellaphe is a…good friend of my mother’s.”
I frowned. “Penellaphe is a goddess.”
“Yes.” He tucked an unruly wave behind my ear. “She is.”
I stared up at him, confused. The Queen had named me.
“And your nickname? Poppy? That’s because of your grandmother, too.” He laughed then, the sound rough under his breath. “Well, it’s more so due to my father. I overheard him once comparing my mother’s…temperament to that of a poppy.” A drier laugh left him then. “Unsurprisingly, it became her favorite flower.”
“I don’t understand, Papa. How could her temperament be that of a flower?”
“Well, you see, this kind of poppy is not like the ones that grow here,” he shared.“They’re found in the far east.”
“How far in the east?”
“Far, far east, Poppy-flower.”
“Oh.” I played with the strap on his shoulder. “I thought the Queen named me.”
He shifted, and a heavy breath left him as he glanced at the heavy, wooden doors. He grew quiet. A current seemed to run through him, a charge of static like Ian and I got sometimes after rubbing our hands on a carpet to shock each other. It had happened before, often after speaking with the Queen.
“Papa?”
He focused on me. “I want you to remember this. She didn’t choose your name.” His lips thinned, and I thought I saw a flicker of the pretty silver light behind his pupils. “You were not named by the Queen. You were named in honor oftheQueen.”
I wanted to ask why she would lie. I didn’t think she would. But I didn’t ask. Papa didn’t seem to like the Queen anymore.
But he started speaking again, telling me a story about how he and his brother used to play with giant, winged beasts. Ashe spoke of watching them fly high above, my eyes grew heavy, and I snuggled into Papa.
“He’s here. And he’s not the only one,” I heard Momma say. The sound of her voice roused me, the tone tight and strained. I pried an eye open to see her bending to whisper in Papa’s ear. All I heard was, “…she must’ve sent him.”
Papa muttered a bad word and then let out a long breath. He gently lifted me from his chest. “Stay with your momma, baby.” Papa touched my cheeks. “Stay with her and find your brother. I’ll be back for you soon.”
Momma took my hand and helped me hop down from Papa’s lap. I watched him stand and turn, then followed his gaze. A man stood by the door, staring out from the crack between the two panels.
Papa cradled the back of my head. “Do…you see him?”
The man, whose hair reminded me of the beaches of the Stroud Sea, nodded. “He knows you’re here.”
“He knows she’s here,” Papa said.
“Either way, he’s leading them here,” the man said. “If they get in here…”
“We won’t let that happen,” Papa said, reaching for the hilt of his sword. “They can’t have her. We can’t let that happen.”
“No,” the man agreed softly, looking over his shoulder at me with strange blue eyes. He then tugged the hood of his cloak up. “I won’t.”
“Come, Poppy.” Momma pulled on my hand—
Everything fragmented around me as I cried out, falling into darkness filled with cold, aching whispers.
CASTEEL
“She needs to wake.”
Blocking the doorway to the chamber, I forced myself to remain calm and collected before I did something some would consider most unfortunate.
