“It’s not silly. It does exist.”
A slight frown pulled at my lips. His voice sounded off. I couldn’t explain it exactly, but it made me wonder if he’d seen someone and had fallen in love with them after just one conversation. I thought of how he’d admitted to being in love before.
The center of my chest burned.
“Is that why you were at the Red Pearl? Looking for love?”
“I don’t think someone goes looking for love there.”
“You never know what you’ll find there.” He was quiet for a moment. “What did you find, Poppy?”
His question was so soft, it was almost…seductive. “Life.”
“Life?”
I closed my eyes again. “I just want to experience things before my Ascension.” Before whatever happened during the Ascension. “There’s so much I haven’t experienced. You know that. I didn’t go there looking for anything in particular. I just wanted to experience—”
“Life,” he answered. “I get it.”
“Do you? Really?” I didn’t think even Tawny got it.
“I do. Everyone around you can do basically whatever they want, but you’re shackled by archaic rules.”
“Are you saying that the word of the gods is archaic?”
“You said it, not me.”
My nose wrinkled. “I’ve never understood why it is the way it is.” I opened my eyes. “All because of the way I was born.”
“The gods chose you before you were even born.” He felt closer, like if we weren’t wrapped up, I’d feel his breath on the back of my neck. “All because you were ‘born in the shroud of the gods, protected even inside the womb, veiled from birth.’”
“Yes,” I whispered, opening my eyes. “Sometimes, I wish…I wish I was…”
“What?”
Someone different. Someone other than the Maiden. Thinking it was one thing. Saying it out loud was another. I’d come close to admitting it to Vikter, but that was as close as I would let myself get with those words.
It was far past time to switch gears. “Never mind. And I don’t sleep well. That’s another reason why I was at the Pearl.”
“Nightmares?”
“Sometimes. Other times, my head doesn’t…go quiet. It replays things over and over,” I said, the shivering easing a little.
“What is your mind so loud about?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard. No one other than maybe Tawny—not even Vikter—had ever asked me that. Ian would’ve if he were still near. “Lately, it’s been the Ascension.”
“I imagine you’re excited to meet the gods.”
I snorted like a piglet. “Far from it. It actually terrifies—” I sucked in a sharp breath, shocked that I had so willingly admitted that out loud.
“It’s okay,” he said, seeming to sense my disbelief. “I don’t know much about the Ascension and the gods, but I’d be terrified to meet them.”
“You?” Disbelief compounded on top of itself. “Terrified?”
“Believe it or not, some things do scare me. The secrecy around the actual ritual of the Ascension is one of them. You were right that day when you were with the Priestess. It is so similar to what the Craven do, but what is done to stop aging—stop sickness for what has to be an eternity in the eyes of a mortal?”
My stomach shifted with unease. “It’s the gods—their Blessing. They make themselves seen during the Ascension. To even look upon them changes you,” I explained, but my words sounded uncomfortably hollow.
“They must be a sight to behold.” While I sounded empty, he sounded as dry as a whole swath of the Wastelands. “I’m surprised.”
“About?”
“You.” His chest touched my back again when he took a deep breath. “You’re just not what I expected.”
I wasn’t.
Most would look forward to meeting the gods, to possibly becoming an Ascended. Ian did, just like Tawny, and all the Ladies and Lords in Wait, but not me or my mother, and that made us different. Not in a unique way. Not in a special way. But in a way that made it…difficult to be who we were, even if our reasons were vastly different.
I shook my head. “I should be asleep. So should you.”
“The sun will be up sooner than we realize, but you’re not going to sleep anytime soon. You’re as tense as a bowstring.”