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.”

“Cold? Like the Ascended?”

“In a way, yes,” he said. “It’s why the gods went to sleep. It was the only way they could keep some sense of empathy and compassion. The deities never chose to do that.”

“So even if that were to happen to you,” Kieran began, drawing my gaze to his, “you would have thousands of years before it came time to take a very nice, long nap.”

I started to frown, but what Kieran said slammed into me with the speed and weight of an out-of-control carriage. My heart started racing as I stared at him first and then turned to Casteel. A tingling sensation swept over my skin as my mouth tried. “Am I…am I immortal now?”

Chapter 11

Casteel’s chest rose with a deep breath. “What I know is that I took what was left of the blood in your body. And when I felt your heart stop,” he said, clearing his throat, “I gave you mine. It was my blood that restarted your heart and kept it beating, and it was my blood that fed your body. There isn’t a drop of mortal blood in you.”

My lips parted as I tried to wrap my head around what he was saying—and what it meant.

“And that is not all I know,” he continued, and a fine tremor danced through my body. “You…you don’t feel mortal to me.”

“You don’t feel that way to me either,” Kieran added. “You don’t smell mortal any longer.”

“What…what do I feel like? What do I smell like?” I asked, and Kieran looked like he didn’t want to answer that question. “Do I smell more like death?”

He blinked slowly. “I wish I’d never said that.”

“Do I?” I demanded.

Kieran sighed. “You smell of more power. Absolute. Final. I’ve never smelled anything like it.”

“You don’t feel like an Atlantian or an Ascended,” Casteel said, curling his fingers around my chin and guiding my eyes to his. “I’ve never felt anything like you before. I don’t know if that means you feel like a deity. My parents would know. Maybe even Jasper, but he was very young when he was around any of the deities so I’m not sure about him.”

Before I could demand that he find Jasper immediately, he continued, “And I don’t even know if you will continue to need blood.”

Oh, gods.

“I hadn’t even thought of that.” My newly restarted heart was going to give out on me. Vamprys needed blood—mortal or Atlantian—nearly every day, while an Atlantian could go weeks without feeding. I didn’t know about deities and the gods. Wasn’t sure if they needed blood or not. No one had really specified that, nor had I even thought of it. “Do deities and gods need blood?”

“I don’t think so,” Casteel answered. “But the deities were guarded when it came to their weaknesses and needs. The gods even more so. It’s possible.”

I bet his mother would know. But even if they needed blood, it truly didn’t matter. I was neither of those things.