“It was written that the gods could sense it, too, whenever it was used,” Kieran said. “It felt like a seismic shift to them.”

I thought over everything they’d said. “It’s weird, though. When I ease someone’s pain, I think happy thoughts—good ones. And then…” I rolled my eyes as I sighed. “Then I projected those feelings into the person.”

Casteel grinned at me.

“I guess it’s not that much different.”

He shook his head. “You think you can do it again?”

My stomach tumbled a bit. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to—”

“You should,” he said, his jaw hardening as he held my gaze. “If you are ever in a situation like that again, any situation where you cannot physically defend yourself, do not hesitate. Listen to that instinct. Let it guide you. It will not steer you wrong, Poppy. It will keep you alive, and that is all that matters.”

“I agree with everything Cas just said,” Kieran chimed in. “But I know you can use those powers. That you know how. You were going to do it back at the ruins before you saw Jansen, but you stopped yourself.” His gaze searched mine. “You stopped yourself and said that you weren’t a monster.”

An unnatural stillness came from the other side of me. “Why?” Casteel demanded. “Why would you say something like that?”

Kieran was right. I knew how to use the eather. All I had to do was picture it in my mind. The knowledge existed like some ancient instinct.

“Poppy,” Casteel said, his tone gentler. “Talk to me. Talk to us.”

“I…” I wasn’t sure where to begin. My thoughts were still so damn scattered. I looked between the two of them. “Did you go into the crypts?”

“We did,” Casteel confirmed. “Briefly.”

“Then you saw the deities chained there, left to die?” Their fate still made me sick to my stomach. “I was kept with them. I don’t know for how long. A couple of days? Alastir and Jansen said that the deities had become dangerous.” I told them the story, repeating what Jansen and Alastir had told me about the children of the gods. “They said that I too would be dangerous. That I was a threat to Atlantia, and that was why they were…doing what they were. Were the deities really that violent?”

Kieran’s gaze touched Casteel’s over my head as he said, “The deities were gone by the time we were born.”

“But?” I persisted.

“But I’ve heard they could be prone to acts of anger and violence. They could be unpredictable,” Casteel stated carefully, and I tensed. “They weren’t always like that, though. And not all of them were. But it had nothing to do with their blood. It was their age.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Casteel exhaled heavily. “You think an Atlantian’s lifespan is unthinkable, but a deity is like a god. They are immortal. Instead of living two and three thousand years, they lived double and triple that,” he said, and my heart stuttered. “Living that long would make anyone apathetic or bored, impatient and intolerant. They…simply grew too old and became cold.”