Chapter 2

CHAPTER2

The sun blinked into my window, and I groaned. It was far too early to be awoken by the false promise of a bright new day. Especially when I had spent far too long into the night watching the army and imagining what today would bring.

I had watched Evren as he left my side and made his way back to the camp. He moved stealthily through the soldiers who waited there, and when I took my eyes off of him for only a moment, he disappeared. No matter how long I scoured those campgrounds, I was not able to find him again.

It didn’t matter, though. Evren was nothing more than a soldier who was there to do his job, and it was a job I hated him for.

Because today I would be seized from my home and taken to Citlali.

I tugged on my quilt until it completely covered my head, and I pinched my eyes closed against the reality of the day. I just needed a few more minutes to dream. A few more moments to think about what life might have been like if I wasn’t born with a few spots on my face and down my back.

Starblessed.

What a damn joke. The stars hadn’t blessed me. They had cursed me and my future, and I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

Last night was my first experience with fae magic, but I knew they were capable of so much more. I had been told stories throughout my childhood, but every one felt like a dark fairy tale. I had been told of how they drank the blood of the Starblessed to fuel their powers. A custom they had adopted from the vampyres before they had been banished from their lands. None of it had ever felt real, but today I would find out the truth.

Evren hadn’t looked like the monster I had imagined in my head. He looked nothing like I expected of the high fae at all.

“Adara, it’s time to get up.” My mother barged into my small room and jerked the blanket from my body. She was dressed in her finest pink dress that fell over her body as if it were made just for her. Her dark hair was pulled out of her face and showed off the gleam that lay in her eyes.

“Mother,” I growled as I reached out for my quilt, but she was already ripping open my curtains.

“It’s reported that the royal guards have already packed up camp and are soon to breach the cleave. You need to get up and get dressed. Today is your destiny.”

My destiny. My mother was foolish if she truly believed that today was anything other than my death sentence. She was willingly handing me over to the fae, and she smiled as she moved about my room with no hesitation.

For a moment, I wondered what she would have done if it had been the vampyres who had come to claim me. She had told me many legends of the Blood Court that was beyond the kingdom of Citlali. Would she have given me over so willingly then too?

I knew deep down that she would have still sacrificed me for the life she now lived. The people of this town worshipped my mother. She had birthed the Starblessed with the largest mark in over a century.

She thought that made her special, blessed somehow, and I guess the reality of it was that she was right. Birthing me had afforded my mother a life she would never have been able to have on her own, and all that it cost her was her daughter and a husband she had supposedly loved.

“I’m up.” I swung my legs over the side of my small bed and rubbed at my eyes. I was still wearing the same outfit from last night, and I figured my mother would complain about the dirt that I had managed to track into my bed.

But she didn’t say a word.

Instead, she stared at me as she swallowed hard. “You need a bath, then I will do your hair. You can’t arrive at the palace like this.”

“I don’t want to arrive at the palace at all.” I pleaded with my eyes even as I felt my heartbeat pounding through me.

My mother shook her head, but I didn’t feel like begging her to choose me. There was nothing I could say that would ever make her change her mind about the decision she was making. Even if I could, both of us knew that the royals would do the exact same thing to her that they did to my father when he had tried to deny them.

And my life wasn’t worth losing hers.

I pushed past her and into the washroom. She already had a bath drawn for me, and I quickly stripped out of my clothes before sinking into the lukewarm water. Tension eased from my body, but it couldn’t stop the way my heart raced in panic with every passing second.

I slipped under the water and drowned out the world for a few short moments. I tried to reach for that feeling I got when I stood at the edge of the cleave far above the town where no one could see me. There was a sense of freedom there that I never felt anywhere else, but that comfort eluded me today.

Instead, all I could imagine was Evren’s face and the way his dark eyes had studied me.

You will determine the future of our world.

Damning words that I wasn’t ready to face.

I pushed out of the water and gasped for breath. I didn’t know what Evren thought of me, but whatever it was, he was wrong.

“Here.” My mother handed me a bar of soap and gave no heed to giving me any privacy.

She didn’t leave my side again. Not until after I was bathed and my tangled wet hair combed. She sat on my bed as we argued about the dress she had set out for me and how I decided to wear my pair of dark trousers instead.

She was angry when I tucked my black button-down shirt that had belonged to my father into the trousers, but I didn’t care. She had made every choice for me, but I was going to wear what I wanted.

She offered to braid my hair and add a few flowers that she had picked from the field, and even though I wanted to argue, the anguish in her eyes made me sit down in front of her and bite my tongue until she was finished.

“You look beautiful.” She tucked in the last flower, and I looked away from her before I did something foolish like begging her once again not to do this.

It was only a second later when a loud chime of the town bell rang out throughout the town and dread filled me.

“They’re here,” my mother whispered the thing no one needed to say. We all knew what today was, and we all knew what they came for.

I stood and grabbed my father’s dagger from my dresser before tucking it down into my boot. My mother watched my every move, but she didn’t dare say a word against it.

She led me back through our house, and I tried to take in every little detail as I followed her. The walls were worn and stained with years of life, and there were fresh flowers set on the small table only big enough for the two of us. I wouldn’t particularly miss anything about it because it had never really felt like home to me, but it was the only real home I had ever had.

The place we lived before this, the home we had with my father, it was such a distant memory that I couldn’t recall a single detail of it. It was nothing more than a feeling now, but it was stronger than anything I felt here.

My mother opened the front door, and I swallowed a deep breath as I heard whispers and some cheers from our neighbors. They had all been awarded just as handsomely as my mother for living with and protecting the Starblessed.

As if any one of them could ever protect me.

They were all filled with fear, and that fear had every last one of them bowing their heads as the royal guard rode along our dirt road that led to me.

I held up my head in defiance as I stared straight ahead. I would not bow to some fake royals who thought they were gods in our world because they possessed a bit of magic.

They would take from me as they saw fit, but they would do so against my will. I was Adara Cahira of Starless, and even though I feared them more than most, I refused to bend the knee to them.

I would rather die.

The royal guards stopped directly in front of us, and my mother fell to her knees before them. I swallowed down my disgust as I stared ahead at the guard who rode in the lead.

He watched me carefully, and his gaze dropped to my knees before his jaw clenched. He didn’t reprimand me as he dismounted from his horse and moved around to stand in front of me.

“Adara Cahira.” His gruff voice sounded as if he had spent far too many years with a pipe in his mouth.

I nodded my head once but didn’t speak. My heart felt like it was lodged in my throat. I searched through the guards for Evren, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

“I am here on behalf of the house of Achlys to claim you for your betrothal to the crowned prince of Citlali.”

I scoffed and looked down the line of the other royal guards. “They were too busy to come themselves?”

Shocked gasps rang out around me, but the guard’s stern face carved into the slightest smile. “That they were, Starblessed.”

I rolled my eyes at the name. I hated that name as much as the fate it damned me with.

“We are expected to arrive in Citlali by nightfall.” He motioned toward the carriage that rode between the swarm of guards, and the dark black wood made me shudder with dread.

“How long is the trip?” I tried not to allow him to sense my fear.

“Several hours.” He nodded toward my mother who still hadn’t climbed from her knees. “You should say your goodbyes.”

I looked down at her, and only after the guard took a step back did she rise. Emotion choked me as I stared at her, and I wasn’t prepared for how affected I was by this moment. I had been angry with her for as long as I could remember, but I still wasn’t ready to leave her.

I didn’t want to say goodbye.

“Be smart, Adara.” She reached out for me and gripped my hands in her own trembling ones. “Do what is expected of you.”

I loathed her words. Every single one of them felt like a dagger to the chest, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. That was all my mother ever wanted from me.

I nodded my head toward her once before pulling her into my arms. I didn’t whisper words of love or fears of missing her because I didn’t know if either were true. But she was all I had.

She clung to me before pulling away and tucking a stray hair behind my ear so nothing was out of place. Her dark brown eyes that were a mirror of my right one searched my face, but there were no more words to waste between us.

Part of me wondered if she regretted the decisions she had made as she looked up at me and saw the reminder of my father staring back at her in my ice-blue eye.

She had always told me that I was equal parts him and her. Half my father and half the woman who was so easily watching me leave, but she was wrong. I was nothing like her.

I stepped away and turned back to the guard who tilted his head in the direction of the carriage. I took the few short steps and ignored his hand when he held it out in my direction.

I climbed into the carriage and took a deep breath as the door closed behind me and surrounded me with the fear of my future. The interior was far nicer than anything I had ever seen in my entire life. The seat a supple black leather with satin red pillows against the wooden backrest.

I pressed against them before looking back out the open window. One of the guards was loading my small trunk onto the carriage while my mother gazed in longingly with unshed tears in her eyes.

The sight ripped at my chest until I noticed her hands clinging to a piece of parchment that was sealed with the blood-red royal crest.

I knew what that piece of parchment held without her even opening it. That was what she had traded me for. That was whatever she had been promised all those years ago when she had so willingly accepted my betrothal to our enemy.

The guards didn’t linger, and they had no reason to. They had gotten what they came for, but I still clung to the seat as the horses lurched forward and the carriage began to move.

With panicked eyes, I looked back to my mother, but I could barely see her through the crowd of people that had gathered on the street. Most of them were waving at me with smiles on tired faces while others were tossing white wildflowers in my direction.

It was a sign of respect, something we usually only did to honor those who had passed to the gods, and dread filled me as I watched them hit the ground.

I traced the outline of my dagger as we began to pass by them in a blur. It was only a couple minutes’ ride until we hit the cleave, and I anxiously watched my world fly by as I tried to steady my racing heart.

With every turn of the wooden wheels of our carriage, my fear spiked higher and higher.

I had never seen a single human pass through the cleave besides my father, and I was far too young to truly remember it. It is legend that passing through the cleave alters the Starless, changed forever by the magic that slumbered there, but there were very few stories about the Starblessed. The only thing I knew for sure was that it was said once you passed through, you shall never return.

It didn’t matter how they were changed after they passed through the magic, because they were never going to return. I was never going to come back here after today.

I held my breath as we neared the edge of my world, and I slowly blinked them open once I knew we should have passed through. The horses didn’t slow. They continued in their punishing rhythm.

I searched out the window, but the world around me didn’t look much different from the one I had just given up. But it felt different. It was hard to explain, but it made me feel similar to the way I had with Evren the night before.

The smattering of marks across my cheeks and spine felt like they were alive, and my skin buzzed. It was as if the magic in this land sparked something inside of my curse to life. But it was duller than when Evren touched me. The magic of this world felt like a watered-down version of him.

I ran my fingers over my cheek as I tried to trace that feeling with my fingertips. It was foreign, but it also felt like it belonged.

I spent a long time tracing over those marks I had been born with before I switched over to staring out the window. The scenery that passed us was so like that back home, and I soon became bored of the lush fields and dense forests.

I hadn’t even realized I had fallen asleep until I was awoken by the stopping of the carriage. My hand shot out to catch myself on the seat across from me, and my heart raced as I realized I had let down my guard so easily with these fae males.

It was already dark outside, and as I stepped outside of the carriage, I realized that the fae sky was as starless as my own.

Only the twin moons shined high in the sky and provided what little light that they allowed. We were still near the forest edge, and I saw no signs of Citlali City.

“Where are we?” I asked one of the passing guards as I wrapped my arms around myself. Nightfall brought a chill along with it. Another thing that hadn’t changed between worlds.

“We’re about an hour outside of the capital, ma’am.” He tilted his head down as if he was showing me honor, as if I was one of the royals that he served. “We tried to make it the entire distance, but the horses require water.”

I nodded in understanding before stepping away from him and looking down the line of guards. There were far too many guards for the task at hand, in my opinion, but I assumed giving up this many men was nothing to the royals.

I stepped into the line of the dark forest and a chill ran down my back. The moonlight seemed to disappear with that one simple step, and I searched the line of black trees as my mark felt like it was flaring against my skin.

“Whoa there.” A strong arm wrapped around my middle and jerked me back against his hard body and a step outside of the forest.

Evren.

My curse knew it was him before I could manage to put even an inch between us.

“The Onyx Forest is no place for a Starblessed. Especially not alone.”

I looked back at him over my shoulder, and my stomach fluttered under his hold. “I didn’t see you.”

“That’s because you were staring out into the trees.”

“No.” I shook my head softly. “Before.”

“Were you looking for me?” A half smile formed on his lips.

“No.” I told a lie we could both easily see through.

His hand tightened around me, almost involuntarily, as he stared down at me, and for a moment, we said nothing.

Evren had given me no reason to, but something deep inside me told me that I should fear this male. Everything inside of me felt tense and my heart hammered against my chest. But I couldn’t bring myself to look away from his dark eyes even as that feeling sank into my gut.

“Don’t go near the forest again without someone accompanying you.” His voice was a hard warning.

“Why?” My gaze finally flicked away from him to look back to the quiet woods. “What’s in there? Why are the leaves black? Are the vampyres this close to Citlali?”

My spine straightened at the thought. As much as I hated the fae, I was far more fearful of the vampyres. Every story I had ever been told of them had been of their cruelty. While the highest of fae fed from the Starblessed to garner their powers, the vampyres fed from anyone they chose.

For food, for power, for pleasure.

“You have no reason to fear the vampyres here.” Evren spoke softly above me and brought my attention back to him. “There are far worse things that lurk in those trees.”

A chill coursed through me at his words.

“I am surrounded by enemies then?” I took a step out of his hold and tried to clear my head.

“You are surrounded by threats.” He nodded his head once as if in warning and took a small step closer to me. He searched my eyes for a long moment before he lowered his tone. “You shouldn’t trust anyone here.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.” His eyes darkened and my stomach became heavy with yearning that made me feel like a traitor. This man was no different from the rest of them, and I would do well to remember that.

“Captain!” one of the guards called out, and Evren’s jaw tensed. “We’re ready to push on.”

He looked over his shoulder toward the guard, and I watched as the young guard flinched. I wasn’t sure if it was from respect or true fear, but my hands trembled as I watched the guard lower his head.

I couldn’t trust him. He had just warned me of that himself.

“The future queen needs a moment.” His voice was pure power, and it sent shivers down my spine.

It took a moment for his words to really hit me. I had known almost my entire life that I was betrothed to the future king of Citlali, but I had never imagined myself as anything other than his property. To hear someone call me the future queen, it messed with my head.

“Of course, Captain.” The guard quickly backed away from where we stood, and Evren brought his attention back to me.

His gaze was still dark and domineering, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.

“We’ll arrive at the Achlys palace shortly. You should prepare yourself.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked breathlessly. “How am I supposed to prepare myself for what lies inside that castle?”

I didn’t know why I was asking him these questions. Evren was one of them. He was a high fae and loyal to the house of Achlys. But part of me was still desperate for his answer.

“You are the future queen of Citlali. Those who reside behind those castle walls will fall to their knees when they see you, as will all of Citlali.”

“You didn’t.” I lifted my chin as I stared up at him.

A small smile played on his lips as he searched my face, and I could see his gaze roaming over every inch of the starlight that marked my face. “Trust me, princess. It took everything inside of me not to fall to my knees before you.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets, and even though I knew I should have retreated, his words made me fall impossibly closer to him.

“Don’t call me that.”

He lifted his fingers until they were only an inch away from my jaw before he slowly pulled them away. “You should get back to your carriage. The night is still young, and as the chosen Starblessed, you have much to face.”