Chapter Twenty-Two

Traveling along Stygian Bay after Pompay’s ruins, Poppy and the party pass burned farms and toppled columns. Birdcall signals reveal guards, and the gates of Spessa’s End open. Within the Rise, Casteel explains the Stygian Fortress survived the war and the caretakers lie in nearby stone graves, the Ascended having destroyed the towns but left the sacred site standing.

Casteel reveals Atlantians have quietly reclaimed Spessa’s End as a temporary answer to land shortages, moving select, trained settlers there. Quentyn Da’Lahr and young wolven Beckett greet them; Casteel publicly introduces Poppy as his fiancée. Quentyn leads them to warmed, well-appointed rooms once used by Casteel’s father. Talk of showers hints at Atlantia’s comforts, and Casteel tends Poppy’s arm before stepping out.

Alone, Poppy wrestles with the horror of the mass graves and her complicity in trusting Ascended lies. She cleans up and sleeps. By morning light, she wakes entwined with Casteel, her robe loosened. As she tries to withdraw, Casteel startles awake feral—eyes black, fangs bared—pinning her by the throat, unrecognizing and ravenous.

Poppy arms herself and orders him off, sensing through her gift a gnawing starvation and dark heat beneath his emptiness. The situation turns indecent and overwhelming as his hunger takes a different turn, and he consumes her with determined, possessive intimacy. Her cry brings Kieran, who pauses at the scene while Casteel wheels toward him, poised to attack.

Feeling Casteel’s fury and void through the bond, Poppy reaches for him, flooding the connection with a cherished memory and quietly saying, “It’s okay, Hawke.” The name and emotion cut through the haze. Amber returns to his eyes; shame and sadness surface beneath the hunger. He covers Poppy, apologizes with a hoarse “Honeydew,” and leaves past Kieran, the danger averted but the volatility of his hunger—and their deepening entanglement—laid bare.