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Chapter 2

CHAPTER2

Ishot up and reached for my dagger as my heart lodged in my throat. Except it wasn’t there. Shit.

I was in a camp full of vampyres, full of my enemies, and I had no way to protect myself. I searched through the dark tent as the sound of groaning filled the small space. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from inside the tent or outside, but I knew it was Evren. I knew it without a doubt, and I jumped to my feet as his ragged breathing racketed up the beating of my heart.

I crept toward the opening of the tent and tried to pull my power forward. For the first time since I thought Queen Veda’s men were going to hurt Evren, I could feel it coursing through me, snaking through my veins like it was awaiting my word.

My hand wrapped around the thick material of the tent flap, and I was just about to open it, when I heard his groan from behind me. I spun around and blinked, begging my eyes to adjust to the dark, and then I saw him.

Evren was lying on his bedroll on the opposite side of the tent from where I had been, and he was alone. I stepped closer as I breathed a sigh of relief that no one was with him, that no one was hurting him. I took a step toward him, and another groan fell from his lips. His fists were clenched into his bedroll as his neck bowed from the ground, and he was in pain.

“Evren,” I whispered his name, but it was no use. He couldn’t hear me. He couldn’t hear anything through his agony. I rushed toward him and fell to my knees at his side, but I was fearful to touch him. Fearful to rouse him when he looked so far gone from this world. “Evren, please.”

“No.” The word was ground out through his teeth, and a deep ache shot through my chest as I watched him. I had never seen him like this, never considered what he had been through.

“Evren.” I reached forward and shook his arm, but he jerked it out of my touch. His face grimaced as if my touch had burned him.

My magic swirled through me, and even though I had no idea what I was doing, I reached inside of me and let it fall from my fingers in a desperate plea. Help him, I silently begged my magic as the inky black smoke swarmed the tent.

It seemed to obey, to calm under my command, and the swirls of darkness found Evren and Evren alone. It brushed against his skin, not leaving a single inch untouched, and I watched as the deep crease between his brows slowly smoothed away. His hands relaxed and his breathing evened, and just when I thought that I had fully calmed him, my name fell from his lips. He shot up in his bedroll, and his hand found his dagger before I had a single moment to react. But my magic wrapped around his wrist before he could lift it in my direction.

“Princess?” He said my name with confusion coating the word, and I tried to pull my magic back into me.

But it wouldn’t come.

“I’m sorry.” I looked up to meet his dark eyes before quickly looking away. “You were having a nightmare.”

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath before he searched my gaze with panic flooding his. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Are you okay?” I shouldn’t have cared. I shouldn’t have been forcing my hands to stay still so they wouldn’t reach out and trace every inch of his skin until I was certain he wasn’t hurt.

He didn’t deserve those things from me.

“Yes.” He nodded his head, but he didn’t seem sure. He started to lift his hand, but my magic held it in place. Not as a restraint but as if it was desperate to not let him go. “Your magic.” He moved his fingers through the smoke, and I felt the motion as if he was stroking my spine.

“I can’t control it,” I whispered the words I hated with a voice that showed how much he affected me. I didn’t want to be weak, and I desperately didn’t want to show my weakness to him.

Because I didn’t trust him to not use it against me.

“Yes, you can.” He nodded and leaned forward until his chest was completely wrapped in my magic. “You are its master, princess. Call it back into you. Make it bow to your will.”

I focused on what he was saying, but my heart was still racing and my skin felt alive from where my magic touched his skin. I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than him.

Evren reached forward, and I flinched away from his touch. It didn’t matter how affected I was by him; I didn’t want to be the stupid girl who simply allowed him to lead me to slaughter. He was my enemy now more than ever, and I needed to remember that.

“Let me help you, Adara.” He pressed his hand against my chest firmly, and I felt it ground me to my core. “Feel it here.” He pressed harder, and I took in a ragged breath. “Call it from here.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I tried to concentrate on that spot where his hand was touching. I focused on it and it alone, and I clamped my eyes closed as my chest rose and fell beneath his touch.

Come back to me.

I felt my magic pause as if it heard me. It hesitated as it rolled through the tent, and I called it again as I felt the weight of it bearing down on me.

Come back to me.

This time it listened.

Slowly, it seeped back toward me, and I allowed it to do so. I breathed it in, desperate to feel it back inside me.

With every inch that sank back into me, I felt more complete. It snaked its way back into my veins, and I could taste my own power as it did so.

“That’s it. Let it come to you.” His words fell over me as my magic filled me, and I slowly blinked my eyes open to look at him.

His hand was still on my chest, and his thumb slowly stroked over the base of my neck as the last of my magic disappeared inside me.

We were silent for a long moment as we simply stared at one another. There were so many thoughts running through my head, so many words I was desperate to whisper from my lips, but I would have been foolish to say any of them.

“I should go back to my bed.” My voice trembled.

“You should stay.” His dark eyes were pleading, and I hated how badly I wanted to soothe that look on his face.

“We both know that I shouldn’t,” I spoke softly as I shook my head.

“Stay.”

I looked at him like he had lost his mind. I wasn’t his to command. I didn’t answer to the man who betrayed me beyond all others, but still something inside me begged me to listen to him.

“I hate you.”

His eyes shuttered, but he simply nodded. “I know you do, but you can hate me tomorrow. For tonight, just stay.”

I pushed up off my knees as I shook my head. I avoided looking at him as I climbed to my feet because I knew I needed to put distance between us. I hated him, but my body still called to him as if it couldn’t imagine leaving his side. But before I could move away, he caught my hand in his and clung to me with a heartbreaking desperation.

He pressed my palm to his chest, and his heart raged beneath my fingertips.

“Please just stay for tonight. Just tonight.” His hand trembled against my own, and I bit down on my lip as my chest seemed to ascend and descend to the same frantic beat. “Please, Adara. I need you.”

His words sliced through me, cutting through every bit of resolve I had left, and I knew that I would end up letting this man destroy me if he asked me to. He had shown me exactly who he was, but I was still willing to walk into the fire as if he hadn’t.

I looked back to my bedroll as I tried to fight the urge to say yes. I felt weak giving in to him. It was sickening how hard it was to push the word no from my lips.

“Just tonight.” My lips trembled as I said the words, but his hand steadied against mine. He pulled me forward until I had no choice but to drop back to my knees in front of him. He lifted my hand in his, and I couldn’t look away as he brought my wrist to his mouth and pressed a gentle kiss to the sensitive skin on the inside.

The same skin his brother had torn open with his dagger and taken from. The same skin that I thought he had healed.

I attempted to pull out of his touch, but he held firm, dragging me closer to him inch by inch. Just as our chests were about to meet, Evren laid back and pulled me down with him. We were hardly touching, only his hand still on my wrist, but I could feel him everywhere as I lay at his side and stared into his handsome face.

He wasn’t saying anything. Just silently watching me with his hand in mine, and I didn’t understand how he was so calm when I felt like screaming.

“What were you dreaming about?” The question slipped through my lips before I could think better of it, and I watched the edge of pain that still filled his eyes.

“You.” His gaze searched over my face as I flinched back from his answer.

“Me?”

“Yes.” He nodded before lifting his hand and sliding two fingers across my cheek until he tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I dreamed of what I have to lose, princess. I dreamed of what my brother would be willing to kill for.”

A chill ran down my mark, and I swallowed down my fear at the truth of his words. Gavril would kill to get me back, but how far would he go? Would he hurt Evren in order to get the power that flowed through my blood?

“He is your brother.” The words slipped past my lips and my chest ached for him. It was something both Evren and I shared. Those who were our own blood, the people who should have cared for us most, were more than willing to use us so easily.

“He is.” Evren looked down at my wrist, and I wondered if he could remember the night we left as easily as I could. Did that night haunt his dreams as it did my own? “But that doesn’t mean anything, Adara.” His thumb traced over my scar before he slowly looked back up at me. “He will stop at nothing until he has you back.”

“I won’t go back.”

His grip tightened on my wrist. “I know. I won’t let him take you again.”

“And if that means he tries to kill you to get to me?”

“You are mine, consequences be damned.”

“Yet you would so willingly use me as a pawn in your games?” These were games of kingdoms. A game I had no business being part of.

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” He didn’t speak a single word that lacked conviction. “Do you not think it would be far easier for me to give in to what my father wants or even my mother? Do you honestly think I wanted to fall for the one person I shouldn’t want, the one person who could destroy everything?”

I didn’t say a word in return. I simply stared up at the tent ceiling as I tried not to let his words affect me. I was failing miserably, and I feared he could hear the erratic beat of my heart.

“I have spent my entire life making decisions based on others, princess. If I was thinking of no one other than myself, then I would have stolen you away the first moment I had the chance. I would have stolen you away and never looked back.”

“Your mother?” I was desperate to know how many of his decisions had been affected by her. What would his mother have him do with me if he allowed her the chance?

“My mother, my kingdom, my friends.” He tucked his arm behind his head and rolled to his back. He stared up at the tent ceiling too, and I wondered what thoughts were running through his head that he didn’t say aloud. “The acts of my father, and my brother after him, have determined the fate of my decisions more than anything. It is often that we are ruled by hate far more than we are ever controlled by love.”

Chill bumps ghosted over my skin. He was right. Far too many of my own decisions were fueled by hate. Hate for my mother and the decisions she made. Hate for his family for the life they forced me to live. Hate for the dreams that plagued my mind of my father, whom I didn’t even know.

“But your powers are…” I trailed off, and he turned to look at me.

“I’m strong, Adara.” He lifted his fingers just above his chest and let his magic fall from them. It coiled around his wrist almost as if it were alive and eager to touch him. “But I am not strong enough to defeat them. Not on my own.”

“But you’re strong enough with me?” Fear consumed me, but I didn’t know what I feared the most. The fact that I was going to be used in this war against kingdoms or the fear I wouldn’t be what they had expected of me.

That everything that had happened wouldn’t be worth it.

“It’s not about me being strong enough.” He finally looked over at me, and there was something in his gaze that I couldn’t place. “It’s about what we become together. It’s about the choices we’ll make as mates.”

“And what if that’s not what I want? What if I don’t choose to be everything that the world has deemed me to be?”

“I fear you don’t have a choice in that. Neither of us do.” He didn’t take his gaze off me as he lifted his hand and pressed his fingers to my cheek. “But if I did have a choice, Adara, I would choose you.”

I shook my head as I watched him because I couldn’t allow myself to believe his words. Believing them made me weak, they made me vulnerable to being hurt even more than I already was.

“I would choose you over anything, princess.”

He leaned forward and closed the space between us, and I didn’t stop him. I simply let my eyes fall closed as he pressed his mouth to mine and kissed me with desperation that was far too familiar to my own.

His kiss felt like a brand. It felt like an apology that he would never be able to say with his words.

And I chased the feeling of it. I kissed back just as hard, and I moaned into his mouth when his hand grazed over my neck. I wanted him.

I wanted his body, his passion. I wanted him to make me forget everything but this moment we were in.

I wanted to forget that I was the Starblessed and he was the prince of both blood and magic. We were mates, and I wanted to think of nothing else in that moment.

But he slowed the kiss, and reality crept its way back in. He pulled away from me slightly before pressing another gentle kiss to my mouth.

He searched my face, and there was so much indecision staring back at me in his own.

“We should sleep, princess.” He ran his fingers along my cheeks, and I could see him warring with himself. “Tomorrow will bring much for us to face.”

I clamped my eyes shut as he guided me until my head was laying against his chest.

I felt his next words rumble beneath me. “But we will face them together.”

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