Delano and Kieran’s rigid posture and quiet watchfulness probably had a lot to do with that. Kieran had stopped me before we entered the chamber, pulling me aside. He’d spoken low, but the words still echoed like thunder as I looked at Tawny. “She doesn’t feel right,” he’d said. “All of us can sense that.”
And he was right.
Tawny didn’t feel right, but it was her. The hair and eyes, the cold skin, and my inability to read her wasn’t who I remembered, but everything else was her. And just because she didn’t feel right, didn’t mean she was wrong somehow. It just meant she had changed.
And I, more than anyone, understood that.
“As soon as I woke, I knew I needed to find you,” Tawny said as she clutched a glass of water. “I think everyone thought I was a bit out of it. Willa, Casteel’s mother,” she said, glancing at Kieran. “I can’t blame them for feeling that way. I was a bit—”
“Hysterical?” Gianna supplied for her.
Tawny cracked a grin. “Yeah, a little. They didn’t want me to leave, but you know I can be pretty insistent when it comes to doing what I want.”
Boy, did I ever.
“Anyway, Gianna actually volunteered to travel with me,” Tawny added.
“She was going to do it with or without someone.” Gianna sat on the arm of the settee. “It was too dangerous to make such a journey alone, especially when no one had any idea where you’d be.”
“Thank you,” I said to her, feeling a little bad about having threatened to feed her to barrats.
Gianna nodded.
“How is it that you woke up?” Kieran asked of Tawny. “Was it something Willa or Eloana was able to do?”
“I…I don’t really know, other than I don’t think I was supposed to—wake up, that is.” Tawny’s hand trembled, sloshing the steaming liquid in her mug. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but I felt like I was dying. I knew I was dying, until I saw Vikter. I think either he or the Fates did something to prevent that.”
“The Fates,” I murmured, almost laughing. “You mean the Arae? You’ve never believed in them.”
“Yeah, well, that has definitely changed,” she admitted, widening her eyes.
My breath snagged again. “How did you see Vikter?”
“I saw him in a dream that wasn’t a dream. I don’t know how else to explain it other than that.” Tawny took a drink. “I remember what happened in Oak Ambler—the pain of being stabbed. And then there was nothing for a long time until there was something. A silvery light. I thought I was entering the Vale until I saw him. Vikter.”
A fine tremor ran through me.
Delano leaned into my legs as Kieran asked, “And how do you know it wasn’t just a dream?”
“He confirmed who you are—that you’re a god—and I knew that. Isbeth had let that slip, but I hadn’t believed her, even though Ian did. And, gods, Poppy, I’m so sorry for what happened to him.”
“Yeah,” I breathed through that burn. “Me, too.”
“What exactly do you know of Isbeth and her plans?” Kieran jumped on that.
“Not much other than she believed Poppy would help her remake the realms,” she said, and I inhaled sharply at hearing those words once more. “And I didn’t understand what that meant. I wasn’t around her that much. I didn’t even truly understand why I was being summoned to Carsodonia other than they said they feared that I would be taken, too, because it was known how close you and I were. That didn’t make sense, but once I got to Wayfair and saw those…Handmaidens and the Revenants,” she added with a shudder, “nothing about the place felt okay. And when Isbeth told me you were her daughter, I thought that she wasn’t in her right mind,” Tawny said with a shake of her head. “But Vikter told me things that I couldn’t have known. Like a story about a god who had awakened long enough to prevent you from being harmed in the Skotos Mountains. He said that your suspicions were correct. That it was Aios who stopped you. He also told me it wasn’t just Nyktos who gave his approval for your marriage. That it was him and the Consort.”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find the words.
“I also approve. Not that anyone asked.” Tawny gave me a quick, teasing grin that was so familiar, it eased something in me. It faded quickly. “Vikter also told me that he—that Casteel was taken?”
The burn in my throat increased. “He was, but I’m going to get him back—”