The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

Chapter 23
To them?
I pulled back, my gaze locking with Casteel’s. He
nodded, and I rose on shaky legs, looking over the nowsilent
garden. My gaze crept over slender, crystal wind
chimes that hung from delicate branches, and yellow and
white coneflowers as tall as me. My lips parted on a soft
inhale. Nearly a dozen people had gathered inside the
garden—not including the wolven. All of them had lowered
to one knee, their heads bowed. I turned to where Kieran
had stood.
My breath caught. He too kneeled. I stared at his bent
head and then lifted my gaze to see that the Healer, who
hadn’t believed I could help, who had been angry that I was
giving the parents false hope, had bowed, as well, one hand
flat to his chest and the other against the ground. Beyond
him and the iron fence, those who had been in the streets
no longer stood. They kneeled, too, their hands pressed to
their breasts and their palms against the ground.
Curling a hand against my stomach, I turned back to
Casteel. Our gazes met and held as he shifted onto one
knee, placing his right hand over his heart and his left on
the ground.
The gesture…I recognized it. It was a variation of what
the wolven had done when I arrived in Saion’s Cove. But I’d
seen it before, I realized. The Priests and Priestesses would
do it when they first entered the Temples in Solis,
acknowledging that they were in the presence of the gods.
You are a goddess.