Could bring me pleasure.
And I wasn’t about to start thinking about that right now. “I don’t want you to feel as if you have to offer yourself.”
“I don’t offer because I have to.” Kieran squeezed the back of my neck. “I offer because I want to.”
“Really? You sure that’s not the notam? That it’s not your friendship with Casteel?”
“It could be partly because of the notam. And it is because of my friendship with Cas. But it’s also my friendship with you. None of those things are mutually exclusive,” he told me. “I would offer the same to Cas. I would offer the same to anyone I cared about. Just like I know you would for me if I needed that.”
My breath stung. I would offer myself if he needed to feed, and the reminder of how far Kieran and I had come rattled me in an entirely different way. I was pretty sure he hadn’t liked me when we first met. Or, at the very least, I’d annoyed him to no end. But now…？ I blinked back the dampness gathering in my eyes.
Kieran started to frown. “Are you about to cry?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t look that way.”
“Then stop looking, and it won’t.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Poppy.”
A burst of sugary amusement gathered on the tip of my tongue. I glared at him. “This isn’t funny.”
“I know it shouldn’t be.” His lips twitched. “But it kind of is.”
“Shut up,” I griped.
The grin appeared briefly. “We’re on the same page, right? When you need to feed, you’ll come to me?” All traces of humor were gone now. “And you won’t let it get to a point where you’re weakened?”
“We’re on the same page.”
His hold on the back of my neck firmed once more. “What about the regent?”
A few moments passed. “Vonetta. I would make Vonetta the Crown Regent.”
Approval hummed as he let his walls down around him, tasting of buttery cakes. “Good choice.”
I nodded. “You know how to get into Carsodonia, right? I doubt you and Casteel walked through the gates of the Rise.”
He snorted. “No. We went in through the Elysium Peaks.”
My stomach dropped all the way to the tips of my toes. The Peaks were vast—all one could see to the west and south of Carsodonia. And they extended into the Willow Plains. They’d even built the Rise into the— It struck me then. “You all went in through the mines.”
Kieran nodded. “The entrances to the mines are right inside the Rise. The tunnels are guarded, but not like the gates. Of course, that was also how Malik got in there. It was how Casteel and…” His mouth tightened. “That was how Shea got him out of Carsodonia. From there, he ended up on the beaches of the Stroud Sea.”
Shea. There’d been anger before when I thought of her. Now, there was only sadness.
“Can we get out the same way we get in once we find Casteel and my father?”
Kieran nodded. “We could. But, Poppy, it will take time to get out of those mines. Besides the likelihood of them guarding those entrances now, Cas was in them for a while, searching for a way out. He may have made it sound like it took no time, but it did.”
“Gods,” I whispered, heartsick over a past I couldn’t change. “Is there a better way?”
“Besides going through the gates in disguise, no. If we get caught in the mines, we can fight our way out and then disappear into the city far easier than if they discover us at the gates.”
That was true. Carsodonia was a maze of narrow streets and vine-covered alleys that ran through districts and neighborhoods sprawled across rolling hills and valleys.
He took a breath. “I don’t know how to say this other than to just say it. We don’t know what kind of shape Cas will be in, but we know that your father will likely be worse off.”
He didn’t say anything else, but I knew what he meant. We couldn’t free both of them.
“We will still free him,” Kieran said quietly. “Freeing Cas doesn’t end the war. We will have to go back to Carsodonia.”
I nodded, hating the idea of being so close to my father and doing nothing. But he was right. Again.
“It’s a plan, then?” Kieran asked.
“It is.”
I took yet another breath, and it was less painful than all the ones before it because we would find and free Casteel. And I would make sure that any piece of him that he lost was found once more. He would know exactly who he was when I saw him again.