Chapter 13

CHAPTER13

Ididn’t speak to Evren as I pressed my hand against the stone hallway and slowly made my way back to my room. It didn’t matter that he reached out to help me or that he tried over and over to speak to me.

I didn’t want to hear a word that he had to say.

And by the time I made it back to my room, I could feel the strength Gavril drained from me slowly seeping back inside me. I slammed the door in Evren’s face, to Eletta’s shock, and I quickly began gathering the things I brought from home from my small trunk.

Eletta was stunned with fear when I told her what I had just found out, but she quickly got herself together and helped me bathe and dress in the clothes I had brought with me.

It was the most comfortable I had felt since I arrived in the Citlali, and I laid down in my bed fully dressed along with my boots and dagger. I knew that I should try to get some rest, but my mind wouldn’t allow it.

I stared up at the ceiling as I ran my fingers over the dressing on my wrist that Eletta had redone. She hadn’t said a word when she saw the deep cut along my wrist, but we both knew where it came from. She was loyal to the people who had just taken from me, and she didn’t dare say a word against them.

I jumped to my feet when my door opened, quickly grasping my dagger from its home, but it was only Eletta returning with a warm cloak and a small satchel full of food and water. I thanked her before lying back down with my heart racing. I didn’t think it would ever calm, but eventually, my eyes became heavy and the pull of sleep too hard for me to withstand.

I didn’t know how long I slept, but by the time I was awoken with a soft hand gently shaking my shoulder, the fear of the threat had slipped away in my dreams.

“Evren,” I whispered his name into the dark as I saw him standing over me, but when I saw the grim look on his face, the reality of tonight came back to me quickly.

“We must leave, princess.” Evren looked back toward my door. “The threat is larger than I feared.”

He reached for me, but I pushed his hand away as I stood and checked to make sure my dagger was still in place. I wasted no time adding the cloak around my shoulders and slipping the satchel over my head. Evren watched me wordlessly before moving to the door and holding it open for me.

I followed him through the halls, in the direction that I had tried to escape, and the cool night air hit me the moment we stepped outside.

Jorah was mounted on a gray mare dressed in all black, and two other guards I had seen around the palace were mounted at his side. One black horse stood next to him, with his reins in Jorah’s hand.

Evren mounted the beast quickly before reaching down for me to join him.

“Where is my horse?” I took a step back, and Evren’s face formed into a grim smile even though he attempted to hide it.

“You’re riding with me, princess. We can’t risk you on your own.”

“I am more than capable of riding my own horse.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t, but if we are attacked, I need to have you with me. We can’t escape them if you are not with me.”

I looked between him and the horse, and even though I knew he was trying to protect me, I didn’t trust him.

“I want to ride with Jorah.”

There was a scoff from one of the guards, but I didn’t dare look away from Evren.

“That’s not fucking happening, princess. Now mount the horse before I have to come down there and get you. We need to leave.”

I growled in frustration because I knew he spoke the truth.

I reached up for the pommel of the saddle and tried to pull myself up, but Evren reached down for me and placed his hands under my arms before pulling me up. He settled me in front of him, my back pressed against his chest, and I stiffened in the saddle against him.

“Let’s go.” He kicked his heels into the horse, and the animal took off quickly through the dark night.

We trampled through the palace grounds as we made our way to the gate which was already open as we arrived. I looked back over my shoulder one last time to the dark palace behind us, and the horse only seemed to run faster away from it as I did so.

It was only as we passed through the gate that I noticed what hung on spikes just outside the palace walls. Three heads, each detached from their bodies with a sure blade. We passed by them quickly, but not before I recognized the faces of all three men that now hung lifeless.

The two guards whose names I didn’t know hung side by side. The two guards who had held me down while Gavril had fed from me. Their hands had been touching me only hours ago, but here they hung with blood still dripping from what was left of them.

The third was harder for me to recognize, but once I saw the cold, calloused grimace that still marred his face, I knew the man to be of the royal court.

Nobleman Etkin was staring ahead at me as we passed, and I looked away as quickly as I could.

Three men hung from those spikes. Three men who all had a hand in hurting me, and I knew deep in my gut that the man responsible was the one who rode behind me. But he didn’t say a word as we passed.

He kicked into the horse’s side, pushing him harder as we left them and the palace behind, but I knew it was him just the same.

My stomach tightened as I thought about what he had done, of what he had risked, but I refused to let my guard down around him.

Jorah led us quickly through the capital streets, taking sharp turns I would have never been able to manage on my own, and before I knew it, we were outside of the capital and sprinting at full speed through the land that surrounded it.

My thighs gripped the sides of the horse to keep me as far away from Evren as I possibly could manage, but they had already started to ache even though we had only just begun our trip.

We rode hard and fast for a long while until we finally came to the edge of the Onyx Forest. We slowed as if the horses were as spooked as the riders as we approached the dark trees.

“Are we going in there?”

“We are.” Evren nodded behind me. “We have no choice unless we go through the human lands.”

“Then let’s do that.” I looked around the woods and noticed how perfectly still everything seemed.

“It will add days on to our trip, and we can’t afford that. We need to get you safe as quickly as possible.”

“Do you really think the vampyres will try to capture me?”

Evren groaned behind me and his chest pressed harder against my back. It took everything inside of me not to sag against him and let his body take the weight of mine. “You are the Starblessed to the future king. You are the future queen of Citlali. To the Blood Court, you are everything.”

My heart raced as I let his words take hold of me. I was nothing more than a chess piece to be used how they saw fit.

“The Onyx Forest is dangerous, but it’s dangerous for them as well. We will all face things in these trees that we’d rather not, and we hope to use that to our advantage. My guards and I have traveled through this forest more times than we can count.”

I wasn’t sure that made me feel any safer, but despite everything that had happened in the palace, I still trusted Evren more than any of the others. If there was anyone I believed could get me through the Onyx Forest alive, it was him.

But I didn’t say as much. Instead, I kept my mouth clamped shut as we pushed through the forest edge and a magic like I had never felt before washed over me. My marks buzzed in a dull throb, but the new cut on my wrist burned like fire. I pressed my hand against the bandage, and Evren looked down at the movement.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I pulled my cloak tighter around me as the chill blew through the air. It felt colder somehow, even though we had just moved beneath the blanket of darkness the trees provided.

We continued on through the forest wordlessly. I was on high alert, my gaze snapping to every possible movement I thought I saw in the trees, but after some time, the movement of the horse had my eyelids feeling the weight of the lack of sleep I had.

They would flutter closed before I would snap them back open, and I looked ahead of us at Jorah. He pushed ahead as if there was no threat around us, and my eyes fluttered closed once more.

When they finally opened again, it was because our horse had slowed almost to a stop, and my head gently rolled to the side. I let them flutter closed again, disoriented from sleep, and I breathed in the scent of Evren as my nose pressed against his neck.

I moaned softly as his hand pressed against my stomach, holding me against him, and I pushed back against him. His body was molded against mine, holding me up on the horse, and I didn’t want to move away from the warmth of him.

“Princess.”

“Hmm?” I breathed him in again. How did he always smell so good?

“Princess, I need you to wake up. We’re going to set up camp.” He pressed his hand harder against my stomach, and my thighs tightened around the horse.

I moaned softly against his neck. I needed his hand to drop just a few inches and take care of the ache that throbbed between my thighs.

“Princess, I swear to the gods.” Evren turned his head into me and spoke softly against my ear. “I will rip you off this horse and fuck you right here in front of my men if you don’t stop making those damn noises.”

I blinked my eyes open then and lifted my head away from his shoulder. Evren was right. His men were tying their horses to trees, but all three of them kept glancing in our direction. I shot away from Evren, putting as much distance between us as I could, and he laughed behind me before gently running his hand from my stomach to the small of my back.

Evren dismounted then, climbing off the horse as if it was nothing before he reached his hands up for me. I wanted to deny him, to do it on my own, but my thighs ached with more than my need for him. I was sore from riding, and as I lifted my right leg to swing it around, I couldn’t do it.

“Here.” Evren placed his hands on my sides before lifting me off of the saddle and against his body. He slowly lowered me until my feet touched the ground before him, and I could feel him through his trousers. He wanted me as badly as I wanted him.

And I wished that I didn’t.

Everything would have been so much easier if I hadn’t wanted him at all. But as I stood there looking up at him, I could barely force myself to step away.

“We need to set up camp and get some rest before we continue riding.”

I looked up at the sun that was trying to peek through the trees. “But it’s daylight.”

“It’s the only time one should sleep in the Onyx Forest. We need to be completely alert by nightfall.”

“Okay.” I nodded, and Evren reached out and moved some hair out of my face.

“You camp with me.”

His words pissed me off. After everything, here he was still bossing me around like nothing had changed.

“Did you kill those men?”

“What?” He searched my face, but there wasn’t an ounce of shock on his at my question.

“The men outside the gates. The men that held me down and Nobleman Etkin. Did you kill them?” I needed to know. Even if deep in my gut I already knew the truth, I had to hear him say it.

“I told you that no one will hurt you and not see the end of my blade.”

“Except your brother?” I held up my bandaged wrist in between us and forced him to look at it. I forced him to face what he had allowed. “Is he the only one allowed to harm me?”

Evren’s jaw tensed as he gently gripped my wrist in his hands. I tried to pull it away from him, but he forced it to his mouth and pressed his lips gently against the bandage. He held his mouth there as he stared at me, and his jaw clenched with unspoken words. Words he wouldn’t allow himself to say to me.

“I can heal this.”

“No.” I shook my head and pulled my hand against my chest. This time, he let me go. “I don’t want to lose the reminder of what they did to me. Of what you allowed.”

His gaze darkened, and he stepped impossibly closer to me. “I didn’t allow that.”

“You did.” I took a step back and almost ran into our horse. “You’re just as bad as your brother.”

I didn’t wait for his response. I dropped my gaze from his and moved toward where the guards stood, providing hay for their horses.

“Jorah, is there somewhere that I can have a bit of privacy?”

He looked up at me, and I knew that he hadn’t expected me to come to him.

“You can go just behind these trees, but we will have to stand guard, Starblessed. It’s too dangerous.”

“Fine,” I huffed and headed in that direction. “But I’d like you to be the one to do so.”

He looked back toward Evren before turning back to me. “Okay.”

I stepped past him into the trees, and I could feel his footsteps directly behind me. “Also, Jorah. Please stop calling me Starblessed. My name is Adara.”

“I’m sorry, Adara.”

I stopped beside a tree that was far enough away from the rest of them before twirling my finger in the air. Jorah grinned before turning his back to me.

Neither one of us spoke as I relieved myself and Jorah was stiff as a statue until I came back to his side.

“I’m sorry you ended up on this job.” I straightened out my cloak, and Jorah finally looked down at me.

“Don’t be.” He shook his head. “I will always be at Evren’s side.”

“Why is that?” I looked ahead of us as Evren fed our horse before pulling things out of the saddlebags. “Why are you so loyal to him?”

Jorah looked at me for a long moment before he finally spoke. “Evren has earned my loyalty over and over. I am loyal to him and him alone.”

“But not to the crown?”

“Only if that’s where Evren wants my loyalty.”

I was shocked by his answer, and I turned to look at him fully. Jorah was so handsome even if his face was typically severe in a scowl. “Were you born in Citlali?”

His back straightened, and for a long moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer me. “No. I was not.”

“Where were you born?”

“Jorah,” Evren called out to him, and I looked back to see him watching me. “I need you for a moment.”

Jorah left my side without hesitation and made his way to his captain. They spoke close to one another in hushed tones, and I wondered what they were discussing. None of the other guards seemed to mind them as they laid out bedrolls against the hard ground.

I sat down next to them, and all three looked in my direction.

“No fire?”

“No.” The one with light blond hair shook his head. “It draws too much attention.”

A chill ran down my spine, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking over my shoulder. I didn’t see anything lurking in the trees, but I knew that didn’t mean anything. Things that lurked in the darkness knew how to not be found.

I wrapped my cloak tighter around me as I looked back at them. The air seemed to get cooler and cooler the farther we made it into the forest, but I would make do just like the rest of them.

“What are your names?”

They looked up at me curiously as if they hadn’t expected me to talk to them at all.

“That’s Landry.” Evren dropped a bedroll beside me as he pointed to the guard who had just spoken to me. “That’s Achar.” He pointed toward the handsome guard who had his shoulder-length hair pulled back with a leather string. “And that heartthrob over there is Caelum.” He pointed to the last man of the group whose beard was so large that it took up most of his face. He smiled, large and genuine, and I decided right then that I liked him.

“It’s nice to meet you all.” I nodded in their direction. “I’m Adara.”

Evren chuckled before dropping another bedroll beside the one he had just put down. “They know who you are, princess.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Evren didn’t reply. He just sat down on the bedroll before looking to his guards. “Get some sleep. Jorah’s taking the first watch.”

All three of them obeyed him immediately, but I didn’t blame them. I knew they had to be exhausted from riding all morning. Jorah probably was too.

“I can take first watch so Jorah can sleep.”

“That’s not happening, princess.” Evren patted the bedroll next to him. “You need to get some rest. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“I’m not sleeping beside you.”

“You are.” He laid down and rested his head against his arm. “You can either sleep next to me willingly or I can tie you to a tree and sleep next to you there. It’s your choice.”

“Such great choices,” I huffed and looked up to see Jorah watching us.

“Just fucking get on your bedroll, princess. I’m not going to be able to get any rest unless you’re beside me.”

I wanted to argue, to tell him exactly how little I cared about him getting any rest, but the truth was he was the one responsible for getting me safely to where we were going. If I wanted to make it through the Onyx Forest alive, then I needed him. I needed all of them.

I untied my cloak from my shoulders before standing and moving to the bedroll Evren had provided for me. He watched my every move as I laid down with my back facing him and covered myself with my cloak.

“How long until we arrive in Nabál?”

“A few days at best.” Evren spoke softly before I could hear him rolling over behind me.

He wasn’t touching me, not a single inch of skin next to mine, but I could still feel him over every part of my body. He was so close to me. If I scooted back even an inch, my body would have met his.

And I felt desperate to do so.

“And at worst?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed behind me. “I don’t want to think about it at worst.”

“And what happens when the threat is over?” I whispered my biggest fear. I was scared to death of the Blood Court and what they could mean for our world, but I was more fearful of going back to that palace.

I didn’t want to be Gavril’s betrothed. I didn’t want him to feed from me while his brother watched.

“I don’t know, Adara.” His fingers trailed over my back, and I jolted forward at the contact. “I have no idea what’s going to become of us.”

He meant us as in his kingdom, his family, but the word hit my gut as if he was speaking about the two of us alone.

“I’m not going back,” I whispered only loud enough for me to hear, but Evren’s hand stilled on my back.

“Get some rest, princess.”

I allowed my eyes to flutter closed as he pulled my cloak over my shoulder, and with my enemy at my back, I fell into a restful sleep.