From Blood and Ash(96)

“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?