Gentle arms lifted me from the dirt floor. Kieran. His face blurred, and there was buzzing in my ears. Everything around me faded out until there was nothing, and I felt no pain. I stayed there until I heard him calling for me. Hawke.
“Open your eyes, Poppy. Come on,” he urged, and I felt fingers prying the dagger from my hand. It thunked off the floor next to me. His hand curved along my chin. “I need you to open your eyes. Please.”
Please.
I’d never heard him say the word please like that. My sluggish heart rate picked up as awareness returned, bringing with it burning, sweeping pain. I forced my eyes open.
“There you are.” A smile appeared, but it was all wrong and forced. There were no deep dimples, no warmth or laughing light to his golden eyes.
Out of lack of willpower or stupidity, I did what I hadn’t since I discovered the truth about him. I reached out with my weakening senses and felt the hum of anguish from him. It ran deeper than before, no longer feeling like chips of ice against my skin but like daggers.
Like claws.
I took a breath, and it tasted of metal. “It hurts.”
“I know.” Misreading what I said, his gaze latched on to mine. “I’m going to fix it. I’ll make the pain go away. I’ll make it all go away. You won’t carry one more scar.”
Confusion rippled through me. I didn’t know how he could do any of that. There were too many wounds. I’d lost too much blood. I could feel it in the coldness creeping up my legs.
I was dying.
“No, you’re not,” he argued, and I realized I’d said the last part out loud. “You cannot die. I will not allow it.”
He then lifted his arm to his mouth, and I saw those sharp teeth I’d felt before, watched in disbelief as he bit into his wrist, tearing open his skin. I cried out, trying to lift my hand to cover the wound. He’d kidnapped me. He’d killed to get to me, had betrayed me, and he was the enemy. Because of that, I’d been made helpless once more. I was dying, I shouldn’t care that he was bleeding.
But I did.
Because I was an imbecile.
“I’m going to die an imbecile,” I murmured.
His brows knitted. “You’re not going to die,” he repeated, the lines of his mouth tense. “And I’m fine. I just need you to drink.”
Drink? My gaze dropped to his wrist. He couldn’t mean… “Casteel, do you—” Kieran’s voice interrupted.
Casteel?
“I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t want your opinion or your advice.” Deep red blood trailed down his arm. “And I don’t require either.”
Kieran didn’t respond to that as I stared, caught in fascinated horror.
Hawke lowered his torn wrist toward me—toward my mouth.
“No.” I pulled away, not making it very far with his arm around my back like a band of steel. “No.”
“You have to. You’ll die if you don’t.”
“I’d rather…die than turn into a monster,” I vowed.
“A monster?” He chuckled, but it was a rough sound. “Poppy, I already told you the truth about the Craven. This will only make you better.”
I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. Because if I did, that meant…that meant that everything he’d said was true, and the Ascended were evil. Ian would be—
“You will do this,” he repeated. “You will drink. You will live. Make that choice, Princess. Do not force me to make it for you.”
I turned away, inhaling sharply. I caught a strange scent. The smell…it smelled nothing like blood, nothing like the Craven. It reminded me of citrus in the snow, fresh and tart. How…how could blood smell like that?
“Penellaphe,” Hawke spoke, and there was something different about his voice. Smoother and deeper as if it carried an echo. “Look at me.”
Almost as if I had no control over my body, I lifted my gaze to his. His eyes…the honey hue churned, swirling with brighter, golden flecks. My lips
parted. I couldn’t look away. What…what was he doing?
“Drink,” he whispered or yelled, I wasn’t sure, but his voice was everywhere, all around me and inside. And his eyes…I still couldn’t look away from them. His pupils seemed to expand. “Drink from me.”
A drop of blood fell from his arm to my lips. It seeped between them, tart and yet sweet against my tongue. My mouth tingled. He pressed his wrist more fully against my lips, and his blood ran into my mouth, coursing down my throat, thick and warm. In a distant part of my brain, I thought that I should not allow this. That it was wrong. I would become a monster, but the taste…it was like nothing I’d ever tasted before, a complete awakening. I swallowed, drawing in more.
“That’s it.” Hawke’s voice was deeper, richer. “Drink.” And so, I did.
I drank while his gaze remained fixed on me, seeming to miss nothing. I drank, and my skin began to hum. I drank, clasping his bloodied arm and holding him to me before even realizing what I was doing. The taste of his blood…it was pure sin, decadent and lush. With each swallow, the aches and pains lessened, and the rhythm of my heart slowed, becoming even. I drank until my eyes drifted shut. Until I became surrounded by a kaleidoscope of vivid, bright blues, the color reminding me of the Stroud Sea. This blue carried startling clarity as if it were a body of water untouched by man.
But this was no ocean. There was cool, hard rock under my feet, and shadows pressing against my skin. Soft laughter drew my gaze from the pool of water to the dark-haired—
“Enough,” Hawke bit out. “That’s enough.”
It couldn’t be enough. Not yet. Latched to his wrist, I drank greedily. I fed as if I were starving, and that was how I felt. That this sustenance was what I’d been missing my entire life.
“Poppy,” he groaned, breaking my hold and pulling his ravaged wrist away.
I started to follow because I wanted more, but my muscles were liquid, and my bones soft. I sank into his embrace and felt like I was floating, a little lost in the way my skin continued to buzz, and heat poured into my chest. I had no idea how much time had passed. Could’ve been minutes, or it could’ve been hours before Hawke called out to me.
My eyes fluttered open to find him staring down at me. His features were a little out of focus, fuzzy around the edges. He was leaning back against a wall, head tipped against it, and he looked utterly relaxed in that moment, as if he were the one to have tasted the magic and not I.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Was my body burning as if it were on fire? Did it sting and pulse? No. “I’m not cold. My chest…it’s not cold.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
He didn’t understand. “I feel…different.” A small smile appeared. “Good.”
“I feel like my body…isn’t attached.”
“That will go away after a few minutes. Just relax and enjoy it.”
“I don’t hurt anymore.” I tried to steady my thoughts, but they were swirling. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s my blood.” He lifted his hand, brushing strands of hair off my cheek. His touch sent a shiver of awareness through me, and I liked the feeling. I liked the way he made me feel. I always had, but I wasn’t supposed to now. “The blood of an Atlantian has healing properties. I told you that.”
“That…that is unbelievable,” I whispered.
“Is it?” Reaching over, he picked up my arm. “Were you not wounded here?”
My gaze followed his to my inner forearm. Dried blood and dirt smudged the surface, but where claws had ripped the tissue open, the skin was now smooth under the grime.
“And here?” he asked, moving his hand so that his thumb swirled around my upper arm, right below my shoulder. “Were you not clawed here?”
My gaze snagged on the pale scar of the old Craven attack, just inside my elbow. I forced my gaze to where his thumb continued to glide in small circles. There were no fresh marks. No gaping wounds. I stared in wonder. “There’s…there’s no new scars.”
“There will be no new scars,” he said. “That is what I promised.” He had. “Your blood…it’s amazing.”
And it was. My mind sluggishly delved into all that could be accomplished with it. The wounds that could be healed, and the lives that
could be saved. Most people would be against drinking blood, but— Wait.
My gaze snapped back to his. “You made me drink your blood.” “I did.”
“How?”
“It’s one of those things that occur during maturity. Not all of us can… compel others.”
“Have you done it before? On me?”
“You probably wish you could blame your prior actions on that, but I haven’t, Poppy. I never needed nor wanted to.”
“But you did it now.” “I did.”
“You don’t even sound remotely ashamed.”
“I’m not,” he replied, and a hint of a teasing grin appeared. “I told you that I would not allow you to die, and you would’ve died, Princess. You were dying. I saved your life. Some would suggest a thank you as the appropriate response.”
“I didn’t ask you to do it.”
“But you’re grateful, aren’t you?”
I snapped my mouth shut because I was. “Only you would argue with me about this.”
I hadn’t wanted to die, but I also didn’t want to become a Craven. “I won’t turn—”
“No,” he sighed, placing my arm back so it rested across my stomach. “I told you the truth, Poppy. The Atlantians did not make the Craven. The Ascended did.”
My heart skipped a beat as my gaze shifted to the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling. We weren’t in the cell. I turned my head, seeing a rustic bed with thick covers, and a small table beside it. “We’re in a bedchamber.”
“We needed privacy.”
I remembered hearing Kieran’s voice, but the room was now empty. “Kieran didn’t want you to save me.”
“Because it’s forbidden.”
It took me a few moments to remember what he’d told me before, and my stomach dropped. “Will I turn into a vampry?”
He laughed.
“What about that is funny?”
“Nothing.” The other side of his lips now tipped up. “I know you still don’t want to believe the truth, but deep down, you do. That’s why you asked that question.”
He had a point, but I didn’t have the intellectual or emotional capacity to go there. Not right now.
“To turn, you would require far more blood than that.” He returned to resting his head against the wall. “It would also require me to be more of an active participant.”
Muscles low in my body clenched, proving that they were not, in fact, soft. “How…how would you be more of an active participant?”
Hawke’s smile turned to smoke and became just as sinful as his blood. “Would you rather I show you instead of telling you?”
My skin flashed hot. “No.”
“Liar,” he whispered, eyes closing.
The warmth in my skin started to spread as if it were a spark, and I shifted, feeling less…floaty and more…weighted. I tried to ignore it. “Are…Naill and Delano okay?”
“They will be fine, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to know you asked about them.”
I doubted that, but something was happening, changing.
My body didn’t feel like it was mine, not when the heat was seeping into my muscles, flushing my skin, and pooling in my core. I imagined it was him—Hawke’s blood slowly making its way through every part of my body.
He was inside me.
I felt out of control, just like the night in the Blood Forest, and when we were in the room above the tavern.
My chest suddenly ached and became heavy, but it wasn’t from pain, lack of air, or coldness. No. It was like when Hawke had touched me, when he’d stripped me bare and kissed me—kissed me everywhere. I felt loose. My insides tingled, just as my skin hummed. Razor-sharp lust pulsed straight through me, a dark desire that burned.
Hawke’s nostrils flared as he inhaled, and then his chest seemed to stop moving. His features were still hazy, but the longer I stared at him, the hotter I felt.
“Poppy,” he bit out.
“What?” My voice sounded full of honey. “Stop thinking what you’re thinking.” “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
His chin lowered, and his stare was a caress. “I know.”
Shivering, I shifted my hips, and Hawke’s arm tightened around me. “You don’t know.”
He didn’t respond, and I wondered if he could feel the liquid fire in my veins, and the damp heat of my core.
Biting down on my lip, I tasted his blood and moaned, closing my eyes. “Hawke?”
He made a sound, and maybe he said something, but it was indecipherable.
I stretched, taking quick, shallow breaths. The coarse shirt and breeches scraped my skin and the sensitive, hardened tips of my breasts. “Hawke,” I breathed.
“Don’t,” he said, stiffening. “Don’t call me that.” “Why not?”
“Just don’t.”
There were a lot of things I shouldn’t do or say, but everything in me was focused on the way my entire body burned and throbbed with need. My hand moved, sliding up my stomach, over the ruined, clawed shirt, to my breast. Guided only by instinct and need, I closed my fingers over the shivery flesh, molding it to my palm. An aching shudder worked its way through me.
“Poppy,” Hawke ground out. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered, back arching as I stroked myself through the thin, worn shirt. “I’m on fire.”
“It’s just the blood,” he said thickly, and instinct told me he was watching me, and that made me all the hotter. “It’ll pass, but you should… you need to stop doing that.”
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My thumb rolled over the pebbled hardness, and I sucked in air. It reminded me of what Hawke had done, but he’d used more than just his hands. I wanted him to do that again. An intense, pulsing ache between my legs twisted my insides. Hips shifting, I pressed my thighs together, but that didn’t help. The pressure only made it worse. “Hawke?”
“Poppy, for the love of the gods.”
Heart thrumming, I opened my eyes, and I’d been right. His gaze was fixed on me—on my other hand, the one that had a mind of its own and was slipping down my stomach.
“Kiss me?”
Taut lines formed around his mouth. “You don’t want that.”
“I do.” My fingers reached my waist, where the breeches gaped. “I need it.”
“You only think that right now.” His face cleared, and there was no mistaking the way his features had sharpened. “It’s the blood.”
“I don’t care.” The tips of my fingers brushed the bare skin below my navel. “Touch me? Please?”
Hawke made a low sound in the back of his throat. “You think you hate me now? If I do what you’re asking, you’ll want to murder me.” He paused, and his lips curved upward. “Well, you’ll want to murder me more than you already do. You don’t have control of yourself right now.”
What he was saying made sense, but it also didn’t. “No.” “No?” His brows lifted, but he didn’t look away from my hand.
“I don’t hate you,” I told him, and there was a pained twist of the heart that told me that was the truth. I should be upset by that.
He made that sound again, and when his hand closed over my wrist, I almost wept with joy. He was going to touch me.
Except he did nothing more than hold my hand in place. “Hawke?”
“I plotted to take you from everything you knew, and I did, but that is nowhere near the worst of my crimes. I’ve killed people, Poppy. There is so much blood on my hands that they will never be clean. I will overthrow the Queen who cared for you, and many more will die in the process. I am not a good man.” He swallowed hard. “But I am trying to be right now.”
A nervous flutter filled my stomach. His words…they should infuriate me, but I…I wanted him, and thinking was…well, it was all I ever did. I didn’t want to do it anymore.
“I don’t want you to be good.” Without even realizing it, I had lifted my other hand, fisting the front of his shirt. “I want you.”
Hawke shook his head, but when I tugged on the hand he held, he bent over me. My grip on his shirt tightened when he stopped with his mouth mere inches from mine. “In a few minutes, when this storm passes, you’ll return to loathing my very existence, and for good reason. You’re going to
hate that you begged me to kiss you, to do more. But even without my blood in you, I know you’ve never stopped wanting me. But when I’m deep inside you again, and I will be, you won’t be able to blame the influence of blood or anything else.”
I stared at him, some of the fog of lust lifting from my mind as he lifted my hand and brought it to his mouth. He pressed a kiss to the center of my palm, surprising me. It was such a…tender act, one I imagined lovers did all the time.
I pulled on my hand, and he let go. I placed it against my chest. The tingling was fading from my skin, but the ache of unspent desire was still there. Not nearly as all-consuming as minutes before, but the part of me that felt like it was starting to wake up knew he spoke the truth. What I felt for him had nothing to do with the blood.
What I felt was…it was messy and raw. I hated him, and…I didn’t. I cared for him, as idiotic as that was. And I wanted him—his kiss, his touch. But I also wanted to hurt him.
We weren’t lovers.
We were enemies, and we could never be anything else. I was surrounded by people who hated me.
“I never should’ve left,” he said. “I should’ve known something like this could happen, but I underestimated their desire for vengeance.”
“They…they wanted me dead,” I said. “They will pay for what they did.”
I shifted, feeling less…floaty and more solid. I moved my arm along my leg, still surprised that there was no pain. “What will you do? Kill them?”
“I will,” he said, and my eyes widened. “And I will kill anyone who thinks to follow their path.”
I stared at him, not doubting that he meant what he said. Hawke couldn’t question every one of his supporters or his kind. I wasn’t safe here. “And me…what are you going to do with me?”
He lifted his gaze from mine. A muscle clenched in his jaw. “I already told you. I will use you to barter with the Queen to free Prince Malik. I swear, no more harm will come to you.”
I started to speak, but then I remembered the name Kieran had called him. My entire body seemed to seize up as I stared into those beautiful eyes. “Casteel?”
He froze against me.
“Kieran…Kieran said the name Casteel.” My gaze swept over his striking features as Loren’s words came back to me. She claimed that she’d heard that the Dark One was handsome, and his looks had gained him entrance to Goldcrest Manor, allowing him to seduce Lady Everton….
And Hawke’s own words came back to me, the ones he’d spoken to me at the Red Pearl. They have led quite a few people to make questionable life choices.
My heart had seemed to stop, but now it sped up, racing. Things began to click into place. Inconsequential things like little comments he made here and there, bigger things like how he’d silenced me when I called out his name the night we…the night we made love. The way everyone followed his orders, how Jericho had obeyed him in the barn, seeming to not want to cross him, even though it hadn’t stopped him. How Kieran and the others said his name as if it were a joke.
Because Hawke wasn’t his name.
And we hadn’t made love. He’d fucked me.
“Oh, my gods.” Stomach roiling, I pressed my hand to my mouth. “You’re him.”
He said nothing.
I thought I might be sick as I dragged my hand to my chest, to tear at the already torn shirt. “That’s what happened to your brother. Why you feel such sadness about him. He’s the Prince you hope to use me to get back. Your name isn’t Hawke Flynn. You’re him! You’re the Dark One.”
“I prefer the name Casteel or Cas,” he replied then, his tone hard and distant. “If you don’t want to call me that, you can call me Prince Casteel Da’Neer, the second son of King Valyn Da’Neer, brother of Prince Malik Da’Neer.”
I shuddered.
“But do not call me the Dark One. That is not my name.”
Horror rolled through me. How could I now just be figuring this out? The signs had been there. I’d been so, so stupid. Not just once. I hadn’t gotten any wiser after I learned that he was an Atlantian. I hadn’t seen what was right in front of my face.
That everything truly had been a lie.
I reacted without thought, slamming my fist into his chest. I hit him. My palm stung from the slap I delivered upon his cheek, and he let me. He
took it as I shoved at his shoulders. I screamed at him as tears blurred my vision. I hit again and again—
“Stop it.” He caught me by the shoulders, pulling me to his chest and folding his arms around me, trapping mine to my sides. “Stop it, Poppy.”
“Let me go,” I demanded, my throat burning.
My heart clenched with the kind of anguish I was used to feeling from others. I almost reached out to him to see if it had radiated from him, or had erupted from deep inside me, but I stopped.
I will use you.
The pain…the pain was mine. He hadn’t saved me because he cared for me. He hadn’t promised that no more harm would come to me because he cared for me. How did I keep forgetting this? Hawke—
Hawke.
That wasn’t even his name. It was Casteel.
And he had an agenda. All of our conversations, every time he had kissed me, touched me, and told me I was brave and strong, that I intrigued him and was like no one he’d ever met. He did those things not just under a false persona but also under a false name, to gain my trust. To make me lower my guard around him, all so I would walk out of Masadonia with him willingly and right into a pit of vipers who either wanted to use me because I was the Maiden, the Chosen—the Queen’s favorite—or wanted me dead for the very same reasons.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
He was worse than Jericho and the others who wanted me dead. At least there were no pretenses with any of them. Everything about Haw— everything about Casteel, from his name to the first night at the Red Pearl, had been a lie designed to garner my trust.
He’d succeeded, but at what cost? Rylan was dead.
Phillips and Airrick and all the guards and Huntsmen were now dead. Vikter was dead.
My parents were dead.
He took from me everyone I cared about, either by his hand or by his orders, through separation or death. All so he could be reunited with his brother, another Prince, something that even I could understand, could sympathize with. But he also took my heart.
And made me fall in love with the Dark One.
That was who he was, even if everything else he claimed actually appeared to be true. Even if the history I’d been taught was all a lie. Even if the Ascended were vamprys who were responsible for the Craven, for what had happened to my parents and to me. Even if my brother was now one of them.
“Poppy?”
Eyes burning, I rolled onto my side. I needed space. I needed to get away from here—from him. I wasn’t safe, not from anyone here, and definitely not from him.
Because the longer he kept me here with him, the harder it would be for me to remember the truth. The more I would desperately want to believe that I was special to him because I just wanted to be special to someone. Anyone. To be something other than a pawn. The longer I was with him, the more likely I would be to forget about all that blood that was on his hands.
And that he had already broken my heart twice now because that was happening all over again. Even after the first betrayal, I still cared for him. Even though I wanted to hate him. I needed to hate him, but I couldn’t. I knew that now because I felt like I was dying another death. How could I be so stupid?
I couldn’t let him do it again. I couldn’t forget that.
Panic poured into me, forcing my eyes open. My wild gaze bounced around the room. “Let me go.”
“Poppy,” he repeated my name, placing his fingers at my neck. I tensed before realizing that he was checking my pulse. “Your heart is racing too fast.”
I didn’t care. I didn’t care if my heart exploded out of my chest. “Let me go!” I shouted.
His hold loosened enough for me to pull away, to sit up. His arm was still at my waist. I placed my hand on the floor to leverage my weight, but my palm glanced off the dagger—
The dagger Mr. Tulis had stabbed me with. It was bloodstone.
Heart dropping, I looked down at the blade. Grief swelled, closing off my throat. I couldn’t breathe around it, around the knowledge that I…I loved the man who’d had a hand in the deaths of so many.
Who had left me here with these people, his people, who wanted me dead.
Who lied to me about everything, including who he truly was.
My heart cracked wide open, pouring icy slush into my chest. I would always be cold, from here until the end.
“Poppy—”
I twisted in his arms, moving on instinct. I didn’t feel the cool hilt in my hand, but I felt the blade sink into his chest. I felt his warm blood splash against my fist as the hilt of the dagger became flush with his skin.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze to his.
His amber-colored eyes widened in surprise as he held my gaze for a moment and then looked down.
To where the dagger protruded from his chest. From his heart.
