Page 137 of The Primal of Blood and Bone (Blood and Ash #6)

POPPY

We didn’t speak until we returned to the sunlit hall.

There was a knot in my throat. “That was…”

Stopping by one of the windows, Casteel laid the strapped swords on the floor and pulled me into his arms. “Yeah.”

I rested my cheek against his bare chest, feeling his heartbeat. “I wish I could’ve helped her. Took away her pain.”

“I know.” He ran a hand over the back of my head, and we stayed that way until I felt the presence of a draken drawing near.

I looked up to see a statuesque woman wearing a loose, gold tunic and nothing else, carrying something dark in her hand.

Her hair was as black and glossy as shadowstone, and her skin was a warm, rich brown.

I almost didn’t recognize her since I’d only seen Aurelia in her mortal form once, and that had only been for a few seconds.

Stunning, cobalt-blue eyes met mine as her steps slowed. She bowed her head, then lifted the balled-up black material. “Reaver asked me to give this to you when we crossed paths earlier,” she told Casteel.

He turned and took what appeared to be a shirt.

“That was thoughtful of him,” I said, considering…everything.

“He said something about you all being as prudish as mortals,” she added.

Casteel, the least prudish person I knew, arched a brow.

“Do you know where they are?” I asked.

“I do.” Aurelia started forward but stopped, the lean muscles of her thighs tensing. “She’s not…” Her chest rose with a deep inhale. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Wrapping my arms around myself, I wished I could lie. “Yes.” I glanced down the hall we’d come from and then at Casteel, who was scowling at the shirt. “You should prepare yourself for the worst.”

Aurelia closed her eyes, her lips pursed. Then, with a slow breath, she nodded again and turned, her footsteps quiet and quick. Within seconds, I no longer saw her.

“Does Reaver think I’m an adolescent boy?”

I faced Casteel. “What?”

Lifting his brows, he held out the shirt. “I’m bigger than he is, yet he picked out a shirt that wouldn’t even fit him.”

The tunic was…smaller than one would’ve logically chosen. “I’m sure he was in a hurry and grabbed what he could.”

“Uh-huh.” He pulled the shirt on over his head. The stitches stretched along his shoulders, and I swore I heard some pop as he jerked it down over his waist. His hands fell away, and he met my gaze. “I can barely breathe.”

Despite everything, I laughed. “It is tight.”

“Tight is an understatement.” He bent, and I half-expected the tunic to rip up the center of his back as he picked up his straps. “I would call him an asshole because he is one, but right now, he gets to be an asshole.”

My smile faded as I remembered the look of absolute desolation on Reaver’s face. “I’ve never seen him look like that.”

“Do you know what their relationship is?” Casteel slipped the strap over his chest, the simple act loosening the stitches along his biceps. He sighed. “I thought they were related, but apparently, they were only raised together.”

“He’s never really talked about her much, so I’m not sure.” I drifted over to the window. “Whenever he did speak about her, I heard the sadness in his voice. I know he believed she was already gone.” Her hoarse words echoed in my mind. “She said she didn’t…”

“She needs time.” He sounded closer. “To get through what she’s been through.”

What she’s been through…

The breath I took was sharp. It stung, and the dense, scale-like foliage of the cedars blurred. I knew only a fraction of what Casteel had suffered while in captivity. How long did it take him to get through ? “Did you…?”

He leaned against the window’s ledge. “Did I what?”

My fingers dug into my sides as I looked at him. I had a faint memory of him talking about how he’d dealt with the trauma he’d experienced, but I knew we hadn’t had that conversation. “Did you not want to live after you were freed?”

Turning his head, he was silent as he watched the wind sway the branches, shaking their deep bluish-green needles.

“I wasn’t thinking of anything when I was first freed.

Or it felt that way. Maybe there was too much going on in my head.

” He squinted as the warm rays of sunlight sliced over a cheekbone, magnifying the natural hollow beneath it.

“But later? Weeks, months, and years later? Yeah, there were times I didn’t want to wake up when I went to sleep. ”

Pain lanced my chest, and I forced myself to breathe through it.

“Don’t.” He turned to me, the line of his jaw hard like the iron surrounding us. “Don’t pity me, Poppy.”

“I don’t,” I said, ignoring the sharpness of his tone.

He crossed his arms. “You forget I know what you’re feeling.”

“Well, you must not be that good at deciphering it,” I countered, angling my body toward him. “I feel sad that you wished not to live. I empathize . I’m angry that you experienced what you did. And I feel helpless because I can’t do anything to change it. What I don’t feel is pity.”

He silently held my gaze for a few seconds and then exhaled roughly. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Cas. I get it.”

The aura of eather pulsed behind his eyes as he let out another breath, this one less harsh. “You do. We don’t have the same past, but we both have things we don’t want to be pitied for.”

We did.

I ran my tongue over the backs of my teeth. “How did you cope?”

“I didn’t. Not really.” His throat moved on a swallow.

“I drank the memories away. Fucked them out of my head. And when that didn’t work, I was reckless with my life and Kieran’s.

” A faint pink stain climbed up his throat as his words struck a chord of familiarity in me.

He exhaled slowly. “I used to think I got my shit together before I started planning to find and free Malik. That having that goal cleared my head or was proof I cared about life, but that’s bullshit. My plan was reckless as fuck.”

“It was,” I agreed, resisting the urge to reach out, touch him, and ease the pain I knew he shielded me from. But he wouldn’t want that. Not right now. “You didn’t care about life even then?”

He inhaled through his nose and continued watching the cedars. “I cared about life—Malik’s. I cared about Kieran’s. So, I stopped doing extremely dumb shit. But mine?” He shook his head. “No.”

The ache expanded in my chest as I followed his gaze.

Several long moments passed before he said, “Ask what you want to.”

“It’s annoying how well you know me.”

He responded with a low chuckle. “The answer is yes, by the way. I care about my life now.” He pushed off the window when we felt Seraphena, then dipped his head and kissed me softly. “Ask me why later.”

I met his eyes. “I will.”

Draping his arm over my shoulders, we turned to find Seraphena coming up the hall. She was pale, her eyes glassy.

“Aurelia will return shortly,” she told us. “She knows she is needed here.”

“How was Jadis before she left?” I cringed as soon as the words left me. “I mean, I know she wasn’t…good.”

“I understand.” Seraphena’s faint smile was reassuring. “She calmed. I think it just being the two of us helped.” She glanced at the rotunda and sighed. “Did Reaver return?”

“No,” Casteel answered.

She looked over at him and then did a double take.

“Reaver.” He sighed. “This is the shirt he thought fit me best.”

Seraphena mashed her lips together, but it didn’t stop the smile. It only created a grin with puffed-out cheeks.

“But it was nice of him to even think of getting you one,” I offered. “Especially since he wasn’t…”

The amusement vanished from Seraphena’s face.

“It was hard on Reaver—it’s going to be hard on him,” she said.

How she said it gave me the impression that she knew that firsthand.

“But they’ll be okay. We’ll make sure of it.

” Her gaze returned to me. “I need to get back, but I have to talk to you about something first.” She paused. “Alone.”

Casteel stiffened beside me, but I spoke before he could. “Whatever you need to discuss with me can be said in front of him.”

“You’re right. It can be said in front of him.” She held my gaze, and something in her stare caused tiny balls of bloodstone to form in my stomach. “But it doesn’t need to be.”

That comment caused the balls to multiply. There was a heavy meaning there I didn’t understand—or want to. “I want him here,” I said.

Seraphena looked like she wanted to argue.

“She wants me here,” Casteel began, and my head cut toward him sharply. His voice was soft—too soft—when he finished. “So, you’ll have to physically remove me.”

Her head tilted. “You think I can’t do that?”

“I think you can try,” he replied with a curl of his lips, causing just a hint of his right dimple to appear. “Keyword being try .”

Eather flared in her eyes, momentarily turning them pure silver.

“Okay.” I stepped in before it went further. “What did you want to talk about?”

I would’ve had better luck talking to the wall.

Neither looked away from the other. Casteel still had that smirk on his face, and the curl of her lips matched his.

The air charged, and a sharp gust of wind whipped through the hall, tossing strands of hair across my face.

I had no idea which of them was responsible for that.

“You know,” I said, stepping between them, catching the strands of wind-tossed hair, and tucking them back. “It’s almost like you two are related.”

“Thank you,” Casteel murmured.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Sounded like it to me,” she replied.

“For fuck’s sake.” I threw up my hands. “You know what? I’m going back to Wayfair. You two can stay here and try to out peacock each other.”

Both heads turned to me.

“Out peacock each other?” Seraphena asked, her brow furrowed.

“You know how peacocks are,” I said.

“I don’t think we do.” The wind settled as Casteel arched a brow. “Please, tell me how peacocks are.”

“They’re always fluffing their feathers at one another,” I told them. “And puffing out their chests.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Seraphena murmured.