“I knew I had to. If not, he would forever pose a risk to not only Atlantia but also to the family I was trying to build. I knew him.” She looked over her shoulder as she took another drink. Her lips peeled back, revealing the tips of her fangs. “He would have sought revenge for what I’d done. So, I hunted him down, deep within Solis, and entombed him.”

“You...you used the bone chains?” I asked.

She gave a curt nod. “It is extremely difficult to kill a deity. Some would say impossible without the aid of another or a god,” she said, and I remembered what Alastir had said about Malec. That he had killed many of the other deities.

Not only was my…father prone to chaotic violence and was a habitual adulterer, he was also apparently a murderer.

But that was if he was my father. And that was something Queen Eloana had yet to explain.

“That was some four hundred years ago.” She faced us, holding the glass to her breasts. “It would’ve taken more than half of those years for him to become weak enough to die, but he would’ve been dead by the time you were born.”

Casteel’s brows furrowed as he looked over at me and then back to his mother and then his father. “Then how is Malec Poppy’s father?”

“Maybe you’re wrong,” Kieran suggested. “Maybe Malec isn’t her father.”

King Valyn shook his head. “There are no other deities. Malec killed the last of them when he ruled. But it’s not just that.” His gaze flicked to me. “You do look like him. Too much to be a child several generations removed.”

I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say.

“And what you did for that child yesterday?” his mother said. “From what we’ve heard, she was too far gone to be healed. Malec could do the same.”

“But he rarely did?” I said, repeating what Alastir had said.

She nodded. “He did when he was younger and less embittered and bored with life and death.” She took another drink, and I noticed her glass was nearly empty. “He actually saved my life. That’s how we met.” Her throat worked on a swallow as I glanced at Casteel, unsure if he had known that. “No other deity could do that. Only those who carried the blood of Nyktos. And there was only ever Malec. And he was Nyktos’s grandchild. That was why he was so powerful. That partially explains why you are so powerful, as Nyktos would be your great-grandfather.”

“Besides that, Malec was the oldest deity.” Casteel’s father sat forward, rubbing his palm on his right knee. “The rest were the children of great-grandchildren, born of the gods.”

Which meant that if Casteel and I had children, they would be…they would be like the deities who once ruled Atlantia. Perhaps a little less powerful due to Casteel’s elemental bloodline, but still…powerful.

I couldn’t even think about that at the moment. “But Nyktos had two children,” I said, remembering the painting of the large, gray cats. “They only had one child between the two of them?”