His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to the side as he studied me with a slow gaze over every inch of me. I wouldn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie regardless of what he told me, but no matter who he was, he was strong. He screamed power without uttering a word. He could be the crowned prince standing in front of me, and I wouldn’t know him.
“My name is Evren.”
“Evren,” I said his name aloud and savored the way it felt across my lips. “Are you going to be the one who escorts me to my prison?”
He jerked back as if I had slapped him. “You consider your betrothal to the crowned prince a prison?”
“I’ve never met the man, and yet my hand has been forced in marriage simply because he craves the power he believes my blood possesses. If that is not walking into a prison, what would you call it?”
He stepped forward, coming close enough to me that I could smell the hint of leather and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I tensed as his eyes darkened and he clenched his jaw.
“You should watch the way you speak about the royal family.”
Threatening. Everything about him felt like a threat.
“Or what?” I challenged and stared straight up at him as my breath rushed in and out of me. “They’ll imprison me? They’ll kill me? My blood is no good to them if it runs cold.”
“You’ve lived a charmed life off the royal coin, have you not?”His tone was sharp and his gaze steady.
The urge to smack him was overwhelming, but I refused to let this fae see how badly his words affected me. “You know nothing of the life I’ve lived.”
He was fae, and he couldn’t possibly imagine the horrors that happened in our world. The Starless lived in poverty and fear. My family had been blessed by the starlight markings on my face and back, but we had also been cursed.
The royal favor had provided us with water and food to ensure I didn’t starve, a roof over our heads to keep me safe, but it also stole my father from me. It stole my fate.
My cheeks and nose were covered in what looked like freckles if it weren’t for their unnatural light golden color that seemed to flow against my skin. But it was my back that always shocked people. Those same markings cascaded down my spine in row after row of starlight, and it shot out at the edges as if it couldn’t be controlled. Some edges stayed tightly against my spine while others touched the curve of my ribs.
Markings that almost felt like nothing to me, but they meant the world to everyone else.
“Perhaps, I don’t.” He lifted his hand, and for a second, I thought he was going to touch the markings on my cheek, but his hand balled into a fist and dropped back to his side. “Perhaps you are nothing like I thought you would be.”
“But you have thought of me?” I questioned, my curiosity eating at me.
“We have all thought of you, Adara.” He took a step back, putting some space between us before clutching my dagger back in his hand and holding it in my direction. “You will determine the future of our world.”
My heart raced at his words, and my fingers trembled as I took my weapon back from this stranger who so easily stole it. “And what if you’re wrong about that? What if I am nothing like what you all thought I would be?”
He took another step back into the shadows of the trees, but I could feel his gaze still roaming over every inch of me. “I’m counting on that.”