But he still wasn’t listening to me. He leaned forward, closing the space between his mouth and my blood, and when his tongue swiped out of his mouth and lapped at the blood on my skin, I screamed.
I closed my eyes as I cried out, praying that anyone would hear me, that anyone would dare go against the queen to save me, and I hated that there was only one name on my lips. One name that I shouldn’t have dared whispered.
Evren.
I screamed for him as Gavril sealed his mouth over the cut and began sucking the blood from my veins. My scream cut off as the sensation overpowered me, and I opened my eyes to watch my betrothed as warmth raked through my body and my mark burned against my skin.
My mark had only felt so real when Evren had touched me, but that was different. This was, it felt… a soft moan slipped past my lips.
I watched as he fed from me, and even though I wanted to pull my arm away, I was frozen exactly where he wanted me. A rush of pleasure shot through me as he sucked deeper, and my eyes rolled back as I tried to make sense of what was happening.
I didn’t want this, but my body buzzed with desire.
“Please.” The word slipped past my lips coated in longing, and even I didn’t know what I was asking for. My stomach tightened with a need I didn’t understand, but even through the pleasure, I could feel myself losing part of me to him.
It seeped out of me slowly, lazily moving through my veins and into Gavril’s waiting mouth.
“That’s enough for tonight,” the queen barked, but I could barely hear her words. They felt muffled and so far out of reach.
I could barely feel the hold of the guards on me either. Everything felt so centered around Gavril and what he was taking from me.
“Gavril!”
He lifted his head then, his tongue brushing over his lips as he looked up at me, and I blinked my eyes open and closed to try to force myself out of the spell I felt trapped in.
“How do you feel?”
I glanced toward the queen when I heard the question leave her lips, but she wasn’t talking to me. Her gaze was directly on her son as he climbed to his feet before me.
But I couldn’t focus on either one of them.
Instead, my distorted gaze slammed into Evren. He stood in the room with his back against the door and hostility filled his gaze. I tried to lift my hand to reach out for him, but I felt so sluggish and my arm fell back against the chair.
I glanced back down at the cut on my arm, bright red blood coated my wrist and dripped from the cut. The cut where Gavril had just taken from me against my will. I looked back toward Evren and saw him staring at the exact same spot.
Had he watched him? Did he know what his brother had planned for tonight when he was whisking me around the dance floor and making declarations about others hurting me?
Of course he had. Evren didn’t belong to me. He belonged to this court. They were his family, the court that he served, and his loyalty lay with them and them alone.
I had just let him do things to me in that hallway I had never let anyone else do before, and all the while, he knew what his brother had planned for me at the end of the night.
He had me begging for him to feed from between my thighs moments before I would beg his brother not to feed from my blood. Did he think about that when he was bringing me pleasure? Did he know that I would hate him by the end of the night?
Because when he looked back at me, that was the only thing I could think. I had trusted him, and I hated that I had allowed myself to do so. He was the enemy, and I had put far too much hope into who I thought he was.
But he was no different than the rest of them. He was the captain of their guard, the son of the king, and I was a fool.
“Gods, I can feel her running through my veins.”
I looked back at Gavril as he spoke and watched as he clamped his hands into fists before slowly letting them relax.
“It’s never felt like this before.”
Before. When he had fed from other Starblessed. Had he done so against their will also, or had they been more than willing to serve their future king?
Gavril glanced back at me as the queen came to his side, and I could feel the fog from what he had done slowly lifting. My blood still coated his lips, but his eyes shone bright as he stared down at me.
“Are you all right, Adara?”