“It’s not?” One side of his lips curved up, and his dimple appeared in his cheek.

That stupid, stupid dimple.

“I don’t understand. How did I go from trying to eat Kieran, to eating you, to this? I mean, I feel emotion. I feel normal. That’s not how a recently made vampry feels, right? Or is it because I fed from you?” My heart thumped heavily. “Does my skin feel cold to you? Do I have fangs?” I vaguely remembered hearing one of them say that I didn’t, but I reached for my mouth anyway, just to be sure.

Casteel caught my hand, pulling it away from my face. “You don’t have fangs, Poppy. And your eyes… They are still the color of an Atlantian spring. Newly turned vamprys cannot get enough blood, no matter how much they feed. I know. I’ve seen them in the hours and days after they’re turned,” he told me, and I hated that he had experienced any of that. “You would be going at my throat right now if you were a vampry. You wouldn’t feel warm and soft in my arms or around my cock,” he said, and I flushed a hot pink. “You didn’t Ascend.”

“But that doesn’t…” My gaze traveled past the bed to the doors. Sunlight. The Ascended could be in indirect sunlight without injury. But direct sunlight?

Totally different story.

I moved before I even realized what I was doing, launching myself out of Casteel’s lap. I must’ve caught him off guard because he reached for me, but I slipped past his grip. Or maybe I was just that fast. I didn’t know.

“Poppy!” Casteel shouted as I reached the door. “Don’t you dare—”

Gripping the handle, I threw the door open. Cold air poured in as I stepped out onto a small porch. Sunlight streamed in, drenching the cracked stone of the floor with cool light. I stretched out an arm as Casteel’s curse blistered my ears. Light fell over my fingers and then my hand.

Casteel wrapped an arm around my waist, hauling me back against his chest. “Godsdamnit, Poppy.”

I stared at my hand, at my skin, and waited for it to do something terrifying. “Nothing’s happening.”

“Thank the gods,” he growled, squeezing me tightly. “But I might be having a heart attack.”

My brows pinched. “Can Atlantians have heart attacks?”

“No.”

“Then you’re fine,” I replied, biting down on my lip as I became aware of the dampness between my thighs.

His forehead pressed against the side of my head. “That’s debatable. I feel like my heart is about to come out of my chest at the moment.”

A rough, huffing noise came, drawing my gaze up to the thick line of half-dead trees. It had sounded an awful lot like a laugh. For a moment, I forgot all about what I’d been doing. My eyes narrowed on the bare, corpse-like branches hanging low and sweeping the ground. A pure white wolven crouched among the trees.