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.
Chapter 39
Hands trembling, I let go of the dagger and fell out of his lap. I scuttled backward, unable to look away from the glaze of shock settling over his features.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I wasn’t sure why I even apologized. I wasn’t sure why my cheeks felt damp. Was it blood? His blood?
He lifted his gaze to mine. “You’re crying.” A thin trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
I was crying. I hadn’t cried since I’d watched Vikter die, but tears now streamed down my face as I rose on numb legs. I stepped to the side. I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going, but I made it to the door. It was unlocked.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, shaking.
A choked, wet laugh rattled from him as he bent forward, slamming his hand down on the floor. “No,” he gasped. “No, you’re not.”
But I was.
I turned around, blindly staggering out the door into the empty pathway that connected to another door at the end. Cold, wet air drifted in through the open wall, but I barely felt it. I had no plan. No idea how to get out of the keep. I kept walking.
Halfway through the hall, it was like a switch was flicked inside of me. All the horror and the sorrow ceased, and instinct took over. Breathing heavily, I threw open the door and raced down the cramped stairwell, then out through an open doorway, into—
Into the snow.
For a moment, I was struck by the beauty of the thick flakes of snow slowly drifting down. A thin layer already blanketed the ground and coated the bare trees. It was so silent, and everything was clean and untouched.
A voice from inside the keep jarred me into action. Taking off across the snow-covered grass, I ran toward the woods. In the back of my mind, I knew I wasn’t prepared to make an escape. The clothing I was wearing was too thin, even if it wasn’t also torn nearly to shreds. I had no idea exactly where I was or where to go from here. There could be Craven in these woods. There would definitely be Descenters. There could also be wolven, who would surely be able to track my moves, but still, I ran, the thin soles of my boots slipping on the dusted ground of the forest floor. I ran because…
I stabbed him.
I stabbed him in the heart.
He would be dead by now.
I’d killed him.
A ragged sob left me as blowing snow mingled with my tears. Oh, gods, I had to do it. Everything about him, about us was a lie. Everything. I had to do it. I had to—
There was no warning—no sound, nothing.
An arm circled my waist, catching me mid-run. I shrieked as my feet slipped out from under me, but I didn’t go down. I was hauled back and slammed into a hard, warm chest. My feet dangled nearly a foot from the ground.
Shock stole the very breath from my lungs. I knew who it was before he even spoke. It was his scent of lush spice and pine. It was the burst of rage-laced anguish and disbelief that mirrored mine, coming through my senses that I hadn’t closed down. For the first time since I’d met him, his emotions overwhelmed him and, therefore, me.
This was not the Hawke I’d fallen for so quickly that held me against him.
It was not the guard who’d sworn on his life to keep me safe, who now wrapped his fist in my hair and jerked my head back and to the side.
It was not Hawke’s hot breath that caressed my exposed throat.
It was him.
Prince Casteel Da’Neer of Atlantia.
The Dark One.
“An Atlantian, unlike a wolven or an Ascended, can’t be killed by a stab to the heart,” he growled, yanking my head farther back. “If you wanted to kill me, you should’ve aimed for the head, Princess. But worse yet, you forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“That it was real.”
Then he struck.
Two twin bursts of fiery pain lanced my neck, causing my entire body to jerk. The burn traveled all the way through my body, stunning me in its intensity. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream around the pain.
His arm around my waist was like an iron vise as he drew long and hard from the wound his fangs had created. I shook, eyes peeled wide as my hands fell to his arm. My nails dug in. The burn, the deep, staggering pull against my throat as my blood flowed freely from me into him shorted out my entire system. The building scream clawed its way around the pain—
And then, within mere seconds of when he’d sunk his fangs into me, everything changed.
The intense hurting became something else, something overwhelming in a wholly different way. A new ache erupted inside me, heating my blood until it felt like every part of me was filling with molten lava.
My wide eyes were unseeing as the heat filled my chest, my stomach, and pooled in the space between my thighs. His mouth tugged on my throat once more, and this time, that pull went straight to my very core. My body jerked with a flood of pounding arousal.
He groaned, his arm tightening around me, and I felt him, hard and thick against my rear. I gripped his arm as tension coiled inside me—
Without warning, he ripped his mouth from my neck. He let go, and I stumbled forward, nearly falling. Trembling with confusion and the desire still sparking inside of me, I turned to him.
He stood several feet from me, his chest rising and falling with rapid, short breaths. His eyes were wide. Red smeared his lips.
I lifted my hand, pressing it to my neck. Wet warmth greeted my fingertips. I took a step back.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, and he ran his tongue along his bottom lip. His eyes closed briefly as he shuddered, letting out a rumble that reminded me of the wolven. His lashes swept up, and his pupils were so dilated only a thin strip of amber was visible. “But I should’ve known.”
Before I could figure out what he meant or what would happen next, he was on me, moving so fast I couldn’t track him.
His mouth crashed into mine as one hand shoved into my hair, his other arm clamped to my waist. I wasn’t just kissed.
I was devoured. I tasted my blood on his lips, on his tongue. I tasted him.
I wasn’t sure exactly when I kissed him back. Was it after a few seconds, or had I been kissing him from the moment his mouth touched mine? I didn’t know. All I did know was that I was starved for him, right or wrong, I wanted him.
That’s why I didn’t fight him when he brought me to the ground. The contrast of the cold snow against my back and the heat of his body pressed to my front drew a gasp from me. I didn’t think he heard it as it was caught up in his hungry kisses, and I realized then that he’d been holding back when he kissed me all the times before. Now, he wasn’t hiding who he was.
He rocked against me as he slid his hand over my waist to my hip. We moved, straining and gasping. His teeth caught my bottom lip. A brief sting registered, and he shuddered, groaning as the metallic taste renewed.
Breaking the kiss, he lifted up enough to look down at me. “Tell me you want this.” His hips were still churning against mine. “Tell me you need more.”
“More,” I whispered before I could even think about what we were doing, what we’d done—who he was.
“Thank fuck,” he grunted, and then he reached between us, his finger snagging the front of my breeches. He pulled on them hard enough to lift my hips. Buttons popped free, flinging into the nearby snow.
“Goodness,” I murmured.
He barked out a short, harsh laugh as he shoved my pants down until one leg was completely free, and the breeches snagged on the other ankle. “You know this shirt was beyond repair, right?”
“Wha—?”
The sound of cloth tearing was my only explanation. I dipped my chin, seeing my breasts. He was staring too, his hand tearing at his own breeches as his eyes tracked the streaks of blood dried along my stomach, moving over the hardening tips of my breasts.
“I will kill them,” he whispered. “I will fucking kill them all.”