I stared at him, knowing that I’d seen him fall. I’d watched him die. “I…I don’t—”
A cool nose brushed my arm, and my head whipped to the side. Vibrant blue eyes set in white fur streaked with red met mine. A shudder shook my entire body. “Delano…？”
His springy imprint brushed against my thoughts. Poppy.
Crying out, I threw my arms around the wolven. Casteel let out a rough laugh as I buried my face in Delano’s neck. I didn’t know how he was here, and I couldn’t stop shaking as I held him, soaking in the feel of his soft fur between my fingers and against my cheek. Kieran’s hand moved up and down my back, and I realized then that I was crying—sobbing really—as I held Delano in a near chokehold. He allowed it, though, wiggling his body as close to mine as he could get. He was alive.
“Poppy,” Casteel whispered, gently tugging on my shoulders. “The man’s got to breathe.”
Reluctantly, I let go, but Delano didn’t go very far as Casteel folded his arms around my waist from behind. I felt his head rest on my shoulder as Kieran swept away the tears on my cheeks with featherlight touches. I looked—
My heart stopped again when I saw Emil standing, the destroyed armor gone and the ragged tear in his shirt made by the spear I’d seen go into his chest all the more visible. He was…he stood next to Hisa, who sat on a low wall, her hands hanging limply between her knees as she stared at me.
“How?” I asked, my voice ragged. “How are they alive?”
“You,” Kieran said.
My brows pinched. “What?”
“You,” Casteel repeated, pressing his lips to my cheek. “You brought them back. All of them.”
“Look.” Kieran touched my chin, turning my head to the ground below the Temple.
What I saw floored me.
Soldiers milled about, avoiding the cracks in the ground. Some sat like Naill and Hisa. But all bore leftover traces of battle. Shredded armor. Torn clothing. Dried blood.
“You passed out,” Casteel said, his forehead pressed to my temple. “And that’s when they came back. All of them. Even the damn guards.”
“It was both the craziest and,”—Kieran’s voice caught—“and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“All these little…I don’t know what,” Casteel said, his laugh thick with emotion. “Orbs? Thousands—hundreds of thousands—of them came from the sky. It looked like the stars were falling.”
To speak her name is to bring the stars from the skies…
I stiffened, my head jerking to the Rise where I saw Aurelia and Nithe perched beside Thad. I didn’t see— “Reaver?”
“He took Malec to Iliseeum.”
My heart lurched at the voice I’d heard once before, in Iliseeum. Kieran rocked back, and then I saw Nektas crouched before the altar, his long, black-and-silver-streaked hair falling across bare shoulders and over the distinct pattern of scales in his warm, copper skin.
“How are you wearing pants?” I blurted out.
A silent laugh went through Casteel as he held me tighter. “How, out of everything, is that what you question?”
“If you’d seen Reaver naked as many times as we have,” Kieran muttered, “you’d think that was a valid question, too.”
Nektas’s eyes, with their thin, vertical pupils, fixed on me. “I can manifest clothing if I choose to do so. Reaver is not nearly old enough for that.”
My brows lifted. “He’s not?”
“He may be older than everything you know, but he is still a youngling,” Nektas explained, and my heart twisted, because I thought of his youngling. Jadis. “And to many, he is still Reaver-Butt.”
Reaver-Butt? Casteel stiffened behind me.
“Wait.” Kieran blinked. “What?”
“It was a nickname he liked when he was very young.” Nektas shrugged. “The point is, he’s not powerful enough to manifest clothing.”
I had to let that nickname go for the time being. “I’m sorry about Jadis. I…” I fell silent, wishing there was more to say but knowing there was nothing.
Nektas’s eyes briefly slammed shut, the skin around them tightening. “She has not passed.”
I glanced between Kieran and Casteel. “What? Reaver believed that she had been—” I didn’t want to say killed. “How do you know?”
“I can feel her. She is here, in this realm.” Nektas’s eyes opened to the sky. “I am her father. Reaver would not be able to sense her as I can. She lives.”