Chapter 16

CHAPTER16

We had been riding for hours, and my thighs ached with a desperation to get off the horse.

“Just a little bit farther,” Evren spoke from behind me. “We’ll stop for camp shortly.”

I nodded even though I wasn’t sure I could handle even a few more feet. My body was exhausted, and I could only blame myself.

“You’ve done so well so far.”

I gritted my teeth at his compliment. He had found me, but still, I had no interest in his kind words. I just wanted off this damn horse.

“Captain.”

I rubbed my thighs as Evren looked up toward Jorah.

“Evren!”

I heard his name just as an arrow whizzed past me.

“Fuck,” Evren groaned before wrapping his arm around my middle and jerking me down from the horse.

We landed against the ground hard, and my head slammed down against Evren’s chest.

“Stay down, princess.” Evren moved out from beneath me, and I watched in horror as he reached for the arrow that was embedded in his left shoulder and snapped it just before his flesh.

“Evren,” I called out for him as he pulled a black dagger from his hip, but he was already on the move.

I scurried back from the direction he was going as rocks and sticks tore at my hands. My back hit the base of a tree just as our horse spooked and kicked up on his hind legs. Another arrow was shot in my direction, and I quickly pushed to my feet and reached for my own dagger.

I could hear shouting before I ever saw the five men that surrounded us. One was pulling his sword from Caelum’s neck, and I gasped as I watched the guard I had just met a few days ago drop to the ground.

Evren launched his dagger at the man who was dressed in a uniform of all black, and he hit his target perfectly. The soldier’s eyes bulged as his hand met the dagger that was launched into his neck, and I watched as he searched for his killer before his gaze landed on Evren.

Evren stormed toward the man, unaffected by the others fighting around him, and he jerked his dagger from the soldier’s flesh before kicking his boot into his chest and knocking him to the ground.

Evren moved on to the next, launching his dagger into the back of the soldier who was currently facing off with Jorah. The man fell to his knees instantly as blood leaked out onto his dark uniform, and Jorah raised his sword and finished him before he could truly know what was happening.

Another soldier surged forward, his sword held high over his head as he aimed for Evren. The prince didn’t have his dagger back yet, but he charged the soldier before he could bring his sword down and knocked the both of them to the ground.

“No!” I gasped, but I couldn’t clearly see what was happening.

Landry lay on the ground behind Jorah, but I couldn’t see his chest well enough to see if he was still breathing. He had to be breathing. This couldn’t be happening.

I was trying to find Evren as the two of them fought on the ground, but my head was jerked backward with a cruel jerk of my hair. I screamed as pain shot through me and raised my hand to stop the man.

But it was no use. He pulled me backward, making me lose my footing, and he dragged me against the forest floor as I tried to fight against his hold.

I slammed my other hand behind me, trying to blindly hit the man with my dagger, but the way he held me made it impossible.

“Come on, star whore.” He lifted me to my feet, holding nothing but my hair, and I whimpered. “I want to see what all the fuss is about.”

I fought against him, kicking and swinging my arms, but his blade was swift, and he cut my cloak away from my body within seconds.

“Please don’t.” I searched for Evren, but the man behind me had pulled me farther into the forest and all I could hear was the grunts of men fighting and the sound of metal clanking against one another.

“Hold still.” He jerked me back harder before I felt his blade against the back of my neck. The cold metal induced a fear in me like I had never felt before, and I screamed out Evren’s name as his blade tore through my shirt and sliced it open all the way to my trousers.

Chill bumps broke out across my skin as the cold forest air kissed my skin and my mark, and the man’s hand tightened in my hair. I tried to force power from my hands like I did before, but nothing came from my trembling fingers.

“Holy gods,” he murmured, and I clenched my shaking hand around my father’s dagger. “The Blood queen has no idea…”

I didn’t let him finish his sentence. I slammed my dagger backward and connected it with his thigh. He roared in pain, but he was caught off guard enough that his grip slipped from my hair. I fell to my knees in front of him before quickly pushing up on my hands and trying to scurry away as quickly as I could.

The man reached for me, jerking one of my ankles until I slammed back to the ground on my stomach. I groaned at the pain, but dug my fingernails into the forest floor.

“Drop your hands from her now.” I looked up as Evren pushed through the trees and headed in my direction. The look on his face was murderous, but blood trailed down his temple and along his cheek.

The man didn’t loosen his hold on me. Instead, he said, “My prince.” Two words were all he was allowed before Evren’s smoke soared through the air and launched into the soldier’s chest.

His hand gripped my ankle roughly as a gurgled groan left his throat. I looked behind me just as he leaned forward, his other hand going to his chest, and he ripped at his shirt as if he could fight against Evren’s power.

I cried out as the weight of him slammed into me, pressing me harder against the ground, and I tried to scurry out beneath him. My fingers screamed in pain as I dug my nails into the earth as tears streamed down my cheeks, but then Evren was there.

He groaned hard and raw as he pushed the man off me, and I quickly climbed to my knees and slammed into his chest as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

“Shh.” He ran his hand over my hair, and I winced in pain but didn’t stop him. “It’s over.”

“The others?” I barely recognized my voice as I clung to him harder.

“Dead.”

“What?” I pulled away from Evren quickly, and he winced at the movement.

“The Blood Court soldiers are dead.”

“And ours?” I asked even though I didn’t want to know the truth. I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

“Jorah is the only one still alive.”

I reached forward, touching my fingers to Evren’s temple, and he recoiled. The injury looked relatively mild, but blood poured from the wound and down his handsome face.

“You need care.”

“I’m fine, princess.” He lifted his hands and ran them over my face. He touched every inch of my skin, his fingers trailing delicately. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not really.” But I was lying. I could feel the areas where my hair was ripped from my scalp already drying with my blood, and my body ached with every move I made.

“Princess, I…” His gaze searched my face as he searched for the words to say. “I’ve never been more frightened in all my life. I thought he would kill you.”

He swallowed hard, and I tried to catch my breath as his words slammed into me. “But you saved me.”

“I allowed them to hurt you.” He shook his head as guilt filled his eyes.

“Evren.”

“Let’s find Jorah.” He pressed his hands under my arms and helped me stand before climbing slowly to his own feet without meeting my eyes. He was just a step behind me when I heard his deep groan, and he collapsed to his knees.

“Evren!” I reached for him as he hunched forward and pressed his hand to his abdomen. Blood coated his fingers instantly, and I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. “Jorah!” I screamed for him as Evren fell to his side and took a deep breath.

“I told you I was fine, princess.” He grimaced, and I slowly lifted his hand and pulled it away from his wound.

“You are far from fine.” I quickly unbuttoned his black shirt before pulling it away from his skin, and I gasped as I saw the size of his wound. There was a clean slice against his stomach, longer than my entire dagger, and blood poured from the wound rapidly.

“Fuck.” Jorah fell to his knees at my side, and I could see the fear in the normally stoic guard’s eyes. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“What do we do?” I lifted my trembling fingers over Evren’s wound, but I had no idea how to help him.

Part of an arrow still protruded from his shoulder, but I couldn’t focus on that when I was looking at his stomach.

“Take her.” Evren shifted before groaning. “Get her the fuck out of here, Jorah.”

Jorah nodded once toward his captain, but they were out of their minds.

“I’m not leaving you.”

Evren didn’t look at me. Instead, he spoke directly to Jorah. “Tie her to the damn horse if you have to, but get her out of here. Don’t stop until you’ve reached our destination.”

“I am not leaving,” I growled, and finally he looked up at me. “I will fight Jorah every step of the way. We are not leaving you.”

“I can’t ride like this, princess.” Evren motioned toward his stomach.

“You have magic. Use your magic.” I ran my hands over my trousers. “Please.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” He shook his head gently, and it took far too much of his strength for just that small movement. “I could possibly stop the bleeding, but I can’t… I can’t heal this. It’s too much.”

I shook my head as I stared at his wounds. I knew he was telling the truth, but I didn’t want to believe him. I couldn’t just leave him here to die.

“Feed from me.” I jerked up the sleeve of my shirt and exposed the wrist where Gavril had fed from me just days ago. “Take my blood.”

“What?”

“Take my blood, Evren.” My voice broke as I pushed closer to him.

“I thought you said you’d never let another feed from you again?” He looked up at me and looked so relaxed. “I am not my brother, princess. I won’t take something from you that you don’t want to give.”

“I want to,” I cried as I tried to get him to see reason. “I want to save you.”

“I’ll be fine, Adara, but you need to get out of here.” He looked back to Jorah. “Those men didn’t recognize it was me, not until the end, but they knew her. Don’t let them catch sight of her again.”

“Stop,” I cried again and lifted my dagger. I was about to press it to my own wrist before Evren placed his hand over my scar.

“Don’t, princess.”

“Then feed from me,” I begged him. “I’m begging you to feed from me.”

Evren looked at me for a long time, and I knew that he was contemplating what he should do. But the decision was simple. Evren wouldn’t survive these woods without my blood, and I worried I wasn’t going to survive without him.

His fingers wrapped around my wrist gently, and I wasn’t sure if he was simply trying to be careful with me or if that was all the strength he could muster. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t care.” I shook my head before forcing my wrist closer to me and my dagger. “I won’t let you die.”

“She’s right, Evren,” Jorah spoke to his friend and captain, but Evren was still staring up at me.

“I don’t need your dagger.” He pulled my wrist toward him, and I helped him close the distance between me and his mouth. “I told you what I am.”

Evren opened his mouth, and I held my breath as he gently ran his teeth along my sensitive skin before sinking them in deeper. I gasped as pain shot through my arm, pain like I had never felt before, and Evren’s hand tightened around me as if he feared I would pull away.

His teeth sank deeper and deeper until I feared he would hit my bone.

His eyes fluttered closed as I felt a part of me draining out of my veins and into him. But it was different. Even as the pain still radiated through my arm, I knew that what was happening with Evren was so much different than with Gavril.

My marks came alive against my skin as Evren’s lips sealed over my wrist, and they felt like they were burning in an exquisite kind of pain. It was as if they hadn’t truly been a part of me until that moment, but now, right then, they were branding into my skin.

The urge to scream was overwhelming, but I wouldn’t allow myself that weakness. Evren would stop if he knew what was coursing through my veins. Pleasure and pain mixed until I couldn’t tell one from another.

He would stop, but I refused to let him.

My wrist trembled against his mouth as he fed, and I worried about what would be left of me when he was done. I had been told a hundred times over that Gavril was my destiny, but what if they all had it wrong? What if I was Evren’s destiny instead?

What if I was a Starblessed not meant to save a kingdom, but instead, meant to save a bastard prince?

The pain flared inside me, peaking to a new height until I didn’t think I could handle another moment of it, then it changed. Warmth rushed through me, coating every inch of me until my eyes felt heavy.

The feeling didn’t stop. It created pressure everywhere it went, and my stomach tightened as that insistent rush centered between my thighs. I gasped, desperate for a breath I couldn’t seem to catch, but it did nothing to ease the need that grew inside of me.

With every drop of blood that Evren pulled from my body, he gave something back. Something that I couldn’t grasp on to no matter how desperately I chased the feeling through my body.

He took, and he took, but gods, it made me feel frenzied with my own hunger.

“Evren,” I said his name gently, but the sound was a little more than a moan. I wanted him. More than I had ever wanted anything before in my life. I wanted Evren more than I could bring myself to want my own freedom.

And it wasn’t just physical. Every fiber of who I was, was screaming for him as he took from me. My marks burned so deeply, yearning for his touch.

I wanted to open my eyes to look at him, to see the man I felt so desperate for, but I couldn’t. As every bit of what he gave me ran through me, I was capable of doing nothing else but endure what he gave.

And it was a sweet torture.

Evren shifted beside me, and I whimpered when he lazily pulled his mouth away from my wrist. He pressed his lips against the new wound that would no doubt cover the one before it, and I felt that small move all the way to my core.

“Please,” I begged as I pressed my thighs together.

Something had snapped inside of me. Something I couldn’t hold on to, but I knew that I would never be the same again after today. When Gavril had fed from me, he had made me feel like a shell of who I was before. But Evren? Evren made me feel more like myself than I ever had.

“It’s over, princess,” Evren whispered, but his words felt like they were crashing against my skin in waves. Everything was too much yet not enough all at once.

“Evren.”

His hand wrapped around the back of my neck before he pressed his forehead to mine. “Open your eyes, Adara.”

I did so as if he had commanded me to. I blinked my eyes open and stared at the man before me. His dark eyes were filled with heat and power, and I felt it thrumming from him as if it was tangible.

“I’m burning,” I said, the only thing I could think. I wanted to touch him, to see that he was okay, but all I could focus on was the burning need that coursed through my veins.

“Fuck.” Evren looked away to Jorah, I was sure, before looking back at me. “I hurt you?”

I shook my head quickly, but I didn’t know how to explain to him what I was feeling. I couldn’t put into words the heaviness in my chest or the way my body was begging me to reach out for him.

“I need you.”

“Tell me what you need, princess.”

Evren’s hand pressed against my cheeks as if he was trying to figure out what was wrong with me. But everywhere his hands touched felt like fire. The need inside me igniting under his fingertips.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head as I tried to clear my thoughts, as I tried to make sense of what was happening inside of me. “I just need you.”

His fingers tightened against my skin as I pressed my thighs together, and his dark gaze slammed into me, and his lips parted. I didn’t need his words to tell me the truth of what he was feeling, I could feel it.

More than I had ever felt his magic before, his power, the essence of who he was. It ran through every fiber of me as if it was trying to get to know me.

Everything about him felt different.

It felt real.

I had no idea if Jorah was still there, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Not when every part of me felt like it was going to combust if he didn’t touch me. I had never felt a thirst like this in all my life. It was as if something inside me was shifting, changing, begging to become his.

Black magic leaked from his fingers and felt like a soft graze against me. It wrapped around me slowly, binding me in his magic, and I moaned as it pressed along my back.

“I’ve got you, princess,” Evren spoke, and his words reverberated in his magic. He lifted to his knees in front of me, and his fingers pushed my hair out of my face. “Whatever you need from me. It’s yours.”

“Touch me,” I begged him as I reached forward and tried to close the space between us. “Please touch me.”

“Princess.” He sighed, and I could see it on the look on his face. He was going to deny me. He had every reason to. I was being irrational and absurd, but I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t control the urge that raced through me.

“I feel like I’m going to die if you don’t touch me.”

His gaze slammed into mine. I had barely wanted to be around Evren only moments before all this happened, but now? Now, I wouldn’t dare pull away from him.

His magic crept along my neck, and I let my head fall back as I felt the power of him against me. His hands moved down my sides, stopping along my breasts, and his knuckles skimmed the sides of my sensitive flesh. Even through my shirt, his touch was overwhelming.

“You are so damn perfect, princess.” His hand pressed fully against my breast, and he ran his thumb over my sensitive nipple. “I will forever be in your debt for what you did.”

“It was nothing.” My breath rushed out of me, and I pushed my chest forward, silently begging him for more.

“It was more than anyone should ever ask of you.” There was a slow caress down my spine, and I couldn’t tell if it was his hand or his magic. “It was far more than anyone should ever take.”

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to remember the way Gavril had taken from me or the way Evren had watched. Remembering that made me hate him, and right now, it was the last thing I wanted to do.

“I should kill my brother for what he did to you. I wanted to spike his head on that gate, just like all the others who had hurt you.”

I blinked my eyes open just as his hand kneaded my breast harder, and a soft moan escaped me. “You are loyal to your brother.”

“I am loyal to no one who hurts you, princess. My loyalty broke the moment I walked into that room and saw him wiping your blood from his deceitful mouth.”

His words ricocheted through me, and I tried to turn them over in my mind, but all I could concentrate on was the way his hand slowly slid down my stomach until it met the top of my trousers.

“My loyalty to my brother broke the moment he hurt something that is mine.” He shoved his fingers into my trousers, and I gasped as he met my wetness.

“Godsdamn, princess,” he cursed and pressed his forehead into my neck. “I feel so damn crazy for you.”

His fingers began working against me, moving the moisture and sliding it over my sensitive nub again and again. I could feel myself breaking apart before he had barely even touched me, and the feel of his magic continuously wrapping around me, getting to know every inch of my body, was more than I could handle.

His tongue lapped at my neck before his teeth grazed over the sensitive skin, and my hips surged forward in his hand.

“Please, Evren.”

“Let go, princess.” He kissed my neck over and over, making his way up to my mouth. “Let my magic that flows through you give you exactly what you need.”

I cried out as he spoke, my body thrumming with need and overwhelming pressure, and when he pinched my nub between his fingers, I fell apart with a scream.

Evren’s magic caressed my lips, muffling the sound before it was quickly replaced with his mouth, and he slowly brought me down with his fingers and his lips against mine. My body felt heavy, impossibly so, and I pressed my weight into him as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Even now, even sated as I was, every part of me still longed for him.

“Come, princess.” He pressed his mouth to my forehead. “The forest isn’t safe.”