The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

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,