Vonetta glanced up as I sat beside her. She offered me a flask, but I shook my head. I’d apologized to her and to Kieran, but I felt like I needed to do it again. I opened my mouth.

“Don’t,” she cut me off. “I know what you’re going to say. It’s not necessary. I understand. We all understand.”

There were several murmurs of agreement from around the fire. My gaze briefly met Hisa’s and then Delano’s and finally Naill’s. “He’s still alive,” I said roughly. “She won’t kill him. Not when she thinks she can use him to control me—control Atlantia.”

They nodded, but I sensed relief. They had needed to hear that. I’d needed to say that. “Does anyone know anything about shadowstone? That was what the Handmaiden had.”

“I heard what she said,” Kieran said.

“Do you think that could be what’s causing Tawny’s injuries?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Hisa dragged a hand over her head. “She’s mortal. I’ve never seen a mortal wounded by shadowstone before. A lot of Healers in Evaemon and some of the older Elders may have seen something like this.”

I thought of Willa and then her diary, and the next breath I took hurt.

“What is the plan?” Emil asked as Vonetta handed him the flask. He took a drink.

We hadn’t really spoken on the ride away from Oak Ambler. Not about anything, but I had done a lot of thinking—about what Isbeth had said, what even the Duchess had claimed in Spessa’s End, and what the Handmaiden had told me.

Even though I’d refused Isbeth, she believed that everything was falling into place. She had the Prince and now the King of Atlantia. She had found a way to control me, and in her mind, she therefore controlled Atlantia. Just like Duchess Teerman had claimed, I would succeed where the Queen had failed.

But they were wrong.

I looked down at my hands—at the marriage imprint. You always had the power in you. That was something I had also thought about. I now knew where I’d first heard it. The silvery-blonde I’d seen when I had been so close to dying. That is what she had said to me.

You always had the power in you.

And it was what Nyktos had said. A part of me wondered if the woman I’d seen was his Consort. That, in her sleep, she’d reached out to me, to either warn or help me. It would make sense that she would.

After all, I was her granddaughter, if she was who I believed.

My fingers curled into my palms. The center of my chest hummed with power—the eather of the King of Gods. The kind that should’ve been powerful enough to destroy whatever the hell Isbeth believed she was. But I hadn’t been prepared. I hadn’t fought like a god because I did not believe I was one.

But Casteel had, hadn’t he? Did he ever really believe I was a deity?