Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 231436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1157(@200wpm)___ 926(@250wpm)___ 771(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1157(@200wpm)___ 926(@250wpm)___ 771(@300wpm)
After they assemble their team to head to Oak Ambler and set off on the ship, Casteel helps Poppy with her seasickness by distracting her in the most deliciously carnal way possible while reading from my journal—it’s a particularly wonderful passage.
Casteel admits to Poppy that when the Blood Crown held him as their prisoner, he’d often forget himself and feel like a thing as opposed to a person. He tells her that Kieran is the only one who knows the depths of what he went through. He reveals that being called “Cas” or “Hawke” was sometimes all it took for him to remember that he wasn’t a thing.
No wonder he was so full of wonder the first time she called him that.
As their journey continues, he and Poppy come upon a large cat in a cage, and he marvels at how much it looks like the cave cats of old they believed to be extinct. He hates that he has to tell Poppy that they cannot set him free. Still, he promises to include him in their deal with the Blood Queen. When Poppy inquires whether the cat could be Malec, he tells her that Malec wasn’t that kind of deity and couldn’t take that form.
When the Queen and her people confront them, Casteel is horrified to find his brother Malik at Ileana’s side and asks him what she’s done. When Malik reveals that the Queen wanted Poppy to marry him and remarks that he was to be her Ascension…of the flesh, Kieran has to hold Casteel back.
He further learns that Alastir told Ileana about the ultimatum they planned to give and learns that she would rather see the whole kingdom burn than hand over even a single acre. When he hears Ileana’s counteroffer, he tells her that she’s out of her mind.
Seems war is inevitable.
As Ileana reveals more, Casteel struggles to accept what he’s being told: that Ileana is actually Isbeth, that Isbeth is Poppy’s mother, that Malec is a god, that Isbeth is a god because Malec Ascended her…
I didn’t believe most of it myself.
Then he tells Isbeth they don’t agree to her terms, which ultimately results in Isbeth having Poppy’s brother killed and causing a skirmish to break out.
During the battle, Cas catches Poppy as she’s being choked by Isbeth’s magic and orders everyone to stand down. He tells Isbeth that she can have whatever she wants and offers himself up, saying it’s the only way for her to control Poppy.
Malik takes him to the dungeon and shackles him with shadowstone around his ankles and throat.
As the days pass, Handmaidens randomly swarm the cell to take blood from him. He’s able to take many of them out, resulting in them shortening his chains, but he also learns something invaluable: not all the Queen’s Handmaidens are Revenants—one actually stayed dead after he took her out.
A few hours after a bloodletting, five Handmaidens enter his cell, followed by Isbitch, as I’ve come to love to call her after hearing it in a vision. She reveals some things that lead him to realize that Isbeth is a demis, and he learns more about how they’re created.
He’s enraged when they tell him he hasn’t earned the right to see his brother, but it thrills him when he learns what Poppy did to King Jalara and that she knows where Malec is and threatened to kill the god.
Isbeth intuits that Casteel’s only interest in Poppy is her power, which doesn’t surprise him. But when the Blood Queen keeps talking and reveals that she doesn’t want Atlantia, she wants to remake the realms, and believes Poppy is destined to help her do it…that does shock him.
They leave him alone for a while until Callum comes and stabs Casteel with a shadowstone dagger.
With the captivity, bloodletting, and new blood loss, Casteel realizes he needs to feed and fears becoming the thing he turned into while in captivity before. There are also other similarities between then and now. They bring in a bath, and he refuses to use it, knowing they were always rewards or preludes to punishments, and he hasn’t done anything to deserve a reward.
When they remove his index finger, he’s more bothered by the fact that they took his wedding ring than by the loss of the digit. And why wouldn’t he be? It was a union blessed by the gods and a symbol of their always and forever. At least he knows that Kieran is with her.
When the Queen’s Handmaiden, Millicent, comes in to tend to him, something about her seems familiar. He wonders if it’s her scent, but he can’t quite place it. She proceeds to tell him that she broke the wards in the tunnels when she Ascended into her godhood and that Poppy carries the blood of both the Primal of Life and the Primal of Death within her. Casteel immediately assumes it’s Nyktos, but Millicent shuts that down right away by telling him that he knows nothing.