Curling a hand against my stomach, I turned back to Casteel. Our gazes met and held as he shifted onto one knee, placing his right hand over his heart and his left on the ground.

The gesture…I recognized it. It was a variation of what the wolven had done when I arrived in Saion’s Cove. But I’d seen it before, I realized. The Priests and Priestesses would do it when they first entered the Temples in Solis, acknowledging that they were in the presence of the gods.

You are a goddess.

My heart tripped over itself as I stared at Casteel. I wasn’t a…

I couldn’t even force my brain to finish that thought because I had no idea what I was. No one did. And as my gaze fell to where the little girl was still held tightly by her mother and now her father, as well, I…I couldn’t disregard that possibility, even as impossible as it seemed.

“Momma.” The girl’s voice drew my gaze. She had wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck as her father held them, kissing the top of his daughter’s head and then the mother’s. “I was dreaming.”

“You were?” The mother’s eyes were squeezed shut, but tears streaked her cheeks.

“There was a lady, Momma.” The little girl snuggled closer to her mother. “She had…” Her words were muffled, but what she said next was clear. “She said I-I always had the power in me…”

You always had the power in you…

Those words were oddly familiar. It felt like I had heard them before, but I couldn’t place them or remember who’d spoken them.

Casteel rose, and in a daze, I watched him walk toward me, his steps full of fluid grace. If someone said he was a god, I wouldn’t question it for a second.

He stopped in front of me, and my chaotic senses fixed on him. The breath I took was full of spice and smoke, warming my blood. “Poppy,” he said, his tone full of heat. His thumb slid over the scar on my cheek. “Your eyes are as bright as the moon.”

I blinked. “Are they still that way?”

His grin spread, and one dimple hinted at making an appearance. “Yes.”

I didn’t know what was said to the others, but I did know that he spoke to them with the calm confidence of someone who’d spent their entire life in a place of authority. All I was aware of was him steering me around people, past the man who’d been in such a panic but now just rested on his knees, staring up at me as his lips moved, forming words over and over. Thank you.

The wolven were once again beside us as we left the garden. The people on the cobblestone sidewalk and in the street were still there. They had risen and stood as if transfixed, and they all seemed to share the same bubbling, sparking emotion. Excitement and awe as they watched Casteel and I—watched me.