I envied that, but our situations were different. His was a matter of survival, life and death. Mine was not that. “But I think choosing the easier path is why I ignored my suspicions about the Ascended, or at least, it helped to dismiss them.”

“I don’t think you were alone in choosing that path. I’m sure many others in Solis have shared your suspicions, but it was easier to look past them, even if that meant suffering or sacrifice.”

I nodded. “Because the alternative would be the upending of everything you believe to be true. And not only that, it comes with the realization of the part you played. At least for me, it does. I was toted out to the people, put on display to remind everyone that the gods could choose anyone—that they too could be Blessed one day. And I always knew I wasn’t Chosen,” I whispered the last part, my chest heavy. “But I went along with it. And the whole time, they were stealing children to feed on. Taking good people and turning them into monsters. The easier choice I made too often didn’t make me a part of the problem.”

Casteel said nothing, but his fingers still moved idly.

“It made me a part of the system that bound an entire kingdom in chains created of fear and false beliefs.” I turned my cheek toward him. “You know that’s true.”

“Yes.” His breath danced along the corner of my lips. “It is true.”

I lowered my gaze to the hardened soil of the road.

“But you know what else is true? Right now, you are destroying an intricate section of the system that has chained an entire kingdom for hundreds of years,” he added. “You should never forget that you were once an accessory, but you also shouldn’t forget what you are now a part of.”

I looked forward, at the narrow road ahead and the snow-heavy needles. “But does the present really make amends for the past?”

Casteel didn’t answer immediately. “Who is the judge of that? The gods? They sleep. Society? How can they make decisions unbiasedly when they are prejudiced by their own sins?” he questioned, and I had no answer. “Let me ask you this. Do you blame Vikter?”

I frowned. “For what?”

“He was like a father to you, Poppy. He had to know how much you struggled with the whole Maiden thing. Even if he didn’t realize how much you struggled, he had to have seen it.”

The last conversation I’d had with Vikter, right before the attack at the Rite, had been about how I truly felt being the Maiden.

“And he knew what the Duke was doing to you, didn’t he? But he didn’t stop it,” he added quietly.

I craned my head to the side. “What could he have done? If he spoke one word or intervened, he would’ve been fired and ostracized, and that is a fate close to a death sentence. Or, he would’ve been killed. And then I wouldn’t have been trained. I never would’ve learned how to defend myself. Vikter did everything he could,” I defended vehemently. “Just like my mother and father did the night they were killed.”

“But one could argue that the right thing would’ve been to intervene. To stop the Duke from hurting you,” he said. “And I know I’m not one to talk about doing the right thing, but he could’ve chosen the more difficult path. Either way, you don’t hold it against him. And if you did, you’ve forgiven him, right?”

Heart aching, I faced forward. “There was nothing to forgive. But he…you heard what he said to me before he died.”

“He apologized for failing you,” Casteel confirmed.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes. His last words ever spoken were brutal. I hadn’t regretted what I’d said to him before the attack, but now? Now, I wished I hadn’t spoken so freely. I would do anything for Vikter to have died feeling as if he’d done right by me. And he had done just that to the best of his ability. He was the reason I could hold a sword and fire an arrow, fight with my hands and my mind.

“I think Vikter knew that you never held his inaction against him, but whether or not he believed he’d done all that he could was up to him,” Casteel continued softly. “I think it comes down to whether you can make amends with yourself.”

I saw the point he was making, but I didn’t know if anything I did from this moment on would be enough to erase being a silent party to the Ascended.

“In the meantime, while you try to figure out if you can make amends with yourself, it helps to find someone to blame. And in your case—and Vikter’s—blame can be shared.”

“With the Ascended?” I surmised.

“Do you not agree?”

The Ascended created the system Vikter and I and everyone else became a part of, unintentionally reinforced, and ultimately became victims of in different ways. My mother hadn’t been able to defend herself or me because of the limitations the Ascended placed upon women. Families handed over their children to the Court or to the Temples because the Ascended taught them it was the only way to appease the gods and then used the very monsters they created to reinforce those fears. Mr. Tulis made the choice to shove a knife deep inside me, but the kingdom the Ascended created was what drove him to that. Vikter could never speak against the Duke without repercussions that would’ve either had him removed from my life completely or ended his. And I…

I had my freedom stripped from me and was kept so sheltered that I could turn to no one with my suspicions. And the Queen, she who cared for me so tenderly, was the foundation of that system. There was no denying that. Nor was there any denying that the system would only strengthen and grow unless access to the Atlantians was cut off. Even without the ability to make more Ascended, they would still be strong if they remained in control. If Casteel’s father did not go to war against them.

But war was never one-sided. Casualties always piled up on both sides, and the losses were always the greatest among the most innocent. Many of those who would be free if Atlantia went to war with Solis would die before they even realized how much they’d been chained.

“Yes. They are to blame,” I said finally, raggedly. I had no idea how we strayed so far off topic. Brushing a stray piece of hair back from my face, I cleared my throat. “So, there is your answer to why I’ve been quiet. If I’d known that insulting and threatening you would convince others of our agreement, I would’ve pulled a knife on you this morning in the banquet hall.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, squeezing me. “But if I may make a suggestion? I would stop calling our engagement an agreement or understanding. That sounds entirely too business-like. As if we’re discussing the trade of milk cows.”

“But isn’t that what this is?”

“I would say that what we have is a very intimate agreement. So, no.”

“What we have is simply an impersonal agreement and nothing more.”

“Impersonal? Is that so?” His hand drifted lower, over the flap of buttons on my pants.

My breath hitched. “Yes.”

“Truly?”

“Yes,” I hissed.

“Interesting. It didn’t seem impersonal last night,” he murmured, and then caught the lobe of my ear between his teeth. I gasped, my eyes wide as the little nip set fire to my blood. Slowly freeing the sensitive flesh, he chuckled as his lips touched the space behind my ear, and then I felt the indecent thrill of his sharp teeth dragging over the skin of my throat.

For a moment, all thoughts scattered. My boiling blood roared in my ears, through my body, tightening my breasts and settling between my legs, where his fingers ventured dangerously close. They made those tiny circles that tugged at the seam of my pants, rubbing it against my very center. My back arched without thought, and a hidden, reckless part of me wished I could will those fingers lower—

“And now?” he repeated. “Sure doesn’t feel impersonal.”

I reacted without thought, slamming my elbow into his stomach. Casteel grunted out a curse.

“Please don’t fight atop the horse,” Delano called out from somewhere behind us. “None of us wish to watch Setti trample either of you.”

“Speak for yourself,” came Kieran’s droll voice.

Casteel straightened behind me. “Don’t worry. Neither of us will fall. It was just a love tap.”

“That did not look like a love tap,” Naill commented.

“That’s because it was a very passionate one,” Casteel replied.

“You’re about to get a love tap to your face,” I muttered under my breath.

Casteel curled his arm more firmly around my waist as he laughed. “There’s the vicious little creature. I missed her.”

“Whatever,” I grumbled.

He leaned into me, lowering his voice once more. “Back to the original subject at hand, our engagement is far more believable when you’re hitting me than when you’re standing by quietly.”

My brows snapped together. “That sounds like a very dysfunctional…engagement.”

“You can’t spell dysfunctional without fun, now can you?”

“That…I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“My point is that you just need to be yourself, Princess. Couples argue. They fight. Most don’t go around stabbing or punching the other—”

“Most don’t start off being lied to or kidnapped,” I interrupted.

“True, which has led to the stabbing and punching, but people who are in love enough to marry—the ones that people know are together before they even realize it—never consist of just one person, one personality, or one will. They fight. They argue. They disagree. They make up. They talk. They agree. The one thing they never are is perfect.”

“Are you telling me that the key is for us to fight and make up?” I asked, because there was no way anyone could look at us, see the way we behaved toward each other, and think we were madly in love. They probably thought we were insane.

“What I’m telling you is that there is no one way anyone behaves in a relationship. There isn’t a textbook of things to do or how to behave with the exception of the stabbing. I take back my fun in dysfunctional statement.”