He pulled back and nodded. “Noelle was correct. Cassander’s in there.” His head instantly turned toward the closed door and cocked to the side, holding completely still. “Theron’s awake. He’s halfway down the stairs. You better hurry. He’s not even trying to be quiet he’s coming so fast.”
Poppy yanked open the chamber door and rolled out the metal table, heavy with a dead body. She quickly unzipped the bag down to his waist and shoved the edges out. Poppy was on a mission, only glancing once at Cassander’s face in death. Instead, she yanked out her dagger and opened the vial.
A simple prick of her finger and one droplet of blood fell into the clear liquid. The blood swirled when she lifted the vial over his chest, directly over the fatal wound.
“Please work,” Poppy whispered. “Please come back. We all need you.Ineed you.”
The morgue door slammed open.
An enraged Theron stood right in the doorway.
The king bellowed, “What do you think you’re doing to my son?”
Poppy blinked in the face of his wrath, her body trembling.
She tipped the vial over, pouring the liquid onto his wound.
Theron watched with wide eyes, furious and confused.
Poppy wiggled the bottle, making sure it all came out. “I’m not sorry for doing this, Theron. I want him back.”
All expression drained from his face, the wheels turning in his mind. “What have you done, Poppy? What did Joshua Striker promise you that spell would do?”
“It’s supposed to bring him back to life, just as he was. Cassander mentioned once that he could have done it for Godric, but it would have turned Cassander dark. I believe Joshua this time. I believe that killer was finally telling the truth.”
“Only because you wanted to believe it,” Theron charged forward toward us. “He’s never told the whole truth about anything, even before he went dark. Joshua has always been evil.”
Wolfe interjected calmly, “Don’t blame only Poppy. I helped her in this.”
Theron rubbed at his temple while he stared down at his son’s dead body. “I know you did. Apparently, you haven’t forgotten my training.”
I cleared my throat softly, so as to stay as “small” as I could, from the king. I pointed a finger at Cassander’s chest on the left side of his wound. “He’s starting to regenerate.”
The king’s lips thinned into a hard line, all of us watching a miracle happening before our eyes. “All we can do now is pray he’s not a monster.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “And someone needs to run up the stairs to get me my favorite gun.”
