Evren’s fingers dug into the skin of my upper arms as he steadied me, and that feeling of electricity from earlier intensified. “What happened?” His dark gaze searched mine before he quickly glanced over my head. “Are you okay?”
He was still dressed in solid black, a uniform which I had yet to see him out of, but the fabrics that were currently draped across his skin were much finer than earlier. They reminded me of the prince’s if it weren’t for the lack of the royal crest along his chest.
“Adara.” His hands shook me slightly to get my attention.
I stared back up at his face as I tried to calm myself.
“Are you all right?”
It should have been a simple question, but I didn’t feel all right at all. Not really.
“I don’t want to go back into that hall.” I didn’t need to glance behind me. The voices of the many patrons and the echoes of revelry fell out of the doorway as if it couldn’t contain it.
“We don’t have to.” His fingers tensed on my arms, and he once again looked over my head before nodding once. To one of the other guards, I presumed. “I’d like to show you something.”
Evren reached for my hand, slowly linking his with my own before he pulled me in the opposite direction of the great hall. With every step we took away, my breathing eased. I didn’t think of where Evren was taking me, I simply allowed him to pull me along behind him, and when the cool night air hit me and danced along my exposed skin, I shivered.
The gardens. Evren pulled me farther away from the palace and into the lush gardens that were covered in flowers of a hundred different varieties. I was sure it was breathtaking during the day, but at night it gleamed under the many lanterns that hung from iron posts.
“I tend to come out to these gardens when I need a moment of solace.” Evren hummed as he turned toward me. “It is a nice reprieve from what goes on inside those walls.”
“I was not prepared.” I gently shook my head. “The queen.”
I couldn’t get the way she spoke to me, the way she looked at me, out of my mind.
“The queen is…” He pondered before looking back down at me. “Difficult.”
“Yet you serve her?”
He swallowed hard and shook his head gently as he thought over my question. It weighed heavily on him, but what I didn’t know was why. “You look beautiful.” His gaze trailed down the length of me, and it felt like a slow caress. “Has anyone told you that tonight?”
I shook my head gently. The things the crowned prince had said, they weren’t about me, not really.
“That’s a fucking shame.” He stepped closer to me, and the smell of him was overwhelming. “I shouldn’t be the one to tell you.”
“And why not?” I tilted my head up to look at him.
“We both know why not. My…” Evren looked over my head before quickly looking back down at me. It was a foolish thought, but I could have sworn that his gaze darkened as he did so. “The crowned prince is a fool if he doesn’t see how beautiful you are, nevertheless, you are his.”
“I am no one’s.” My voice was firmer than I intended, and the slight smile on Evren’s lips frustrated me even more.
“But you are.” He moved his hand along the backside of my forearm, and my stomach tightened as I watched his skin against mine. “And soon you’ll be his in marriage and in flesh.”
My gaze snapped back to his. “In a month’s time,” I repeated the words that had felt like my doom. “I will become the princess of Citlali and my blood taken from me in a month’s time.”
“I have been told that the experience is quite pleasurable.”
“What?” My arm recoiled in his touch, and he lowered his voice even further.
“The act of being fed from.” His dark eyes ran over every inch of me. “I have been told that some can hardly control themselves from the type of frenzy it causes inside of you.” His thumb ran along his bottom lip, and for a moment, I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have Evren to be the one to feed from me instead.
Would I still be so fearful?
“And have you?” I looked away from him before I could finish my question. “Have you fed from a Starblessed before?”
His fingers lifted and touched my chin gently before he forced me to look back at him. “I have not, but I could only imagine what it would be like.” Every word was like a stroke along my starving skin. “I could only dream of what one would feel to taste you.”
Evren was barely touching me. Only his finger remained at the base of my chin, but he was stripping me bare with his words. I did not know this man, and I knew that I shouldn’t want to. But my body craved the way he was speaking to me now with his hushed voice and his lips only a whisper away from mine.