But never once had I seen an Ascended lift a single finger to fight the Craven, the one thing the people of Solis feared more than death itself.
The one thing they’d do anything and believe anything to remain safe from.
He had claimed that the Royals used the Craven to keep the people in check, and if that were true, it worked. They gave up their own children to keep the beasts at bay.
It had to be true.
Worse yet, others must be involved in this. The Priests and Priestesses. Close friends of the Court, who hadn’t Ascended. My parents?
Gods, I couldn’t lie to myself any longer.
What had happened with him was proof enough. His blood had healed me, not turned me. His kisses had never cursed me. And so far, neither had his bite.
The Ascended were vamprys—they were the curse that had plagued this land. They used fear to control the masses, and they were the evil hidden in plain sight, feeding off those they had sworn to the gods to protect.
And my brother was now one of them.
Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrapped my arms around my legs. I closed my eyes against the burn of tears, resting my cheek against my knee. He couldn’t be like the Duke. The Duchess wasn’t too bad. Neither was the Queen, but—
But if they were feeding on children, almost draining innocent people and creating Craven, they were no better than the Duke.
I pressed my lips together, fighting back tears that wanted to break free. I’d cried enough today, but Ian… Gods, Ian couldn’t be like them. He was kind and gentle. I just couldn’t believe that he would do those things. I couldn’t.
And then there was me. If it was all a lie, then I would never be given to the gods. What had they planned for me? Why did they make me the Chosen and link all these Ascensions to me? Was it my abilities? I thought about what he had said after I’d taken his pain. He knew something.
Something he needed to tell me.
I wasn’t safe here, and I surely wasn’t safe among the Ascended. If I did manage to escape, how could I go back to them, knowing what I knew now? How could I stay and allow him to take me to Atlantia when I would represent a kingdom who had slaughtered untold numbers of their people, who had enslaved their Prince to use him to make more vamprys?
How could I stay with him?
No matter what I felt for him, I could never trust him, and what I felt for him was also something I could no longer pretend didn’t exist. I loved him.
I was in love with him.
And even if by some small chance I’d been able to move past the fact that he had come to Masadonia with the intention of taking and using me as a bargaining tool, I could never get over the blood that had been spilled because of him. I could never forget that Rylan and Vikter, Loren and Dafina, and so many others were dead, either by his hand, by his command, or by what he represented. I could never trust what he claimed when it came to us.
What had he claimed about us, though?
He had led me to believe that he had feelings for me. That I was anything but someone he needed to protect as Hawke, and needed to use for his own means as a Prince of Atlantia. He’d been intrigued from the start because I wasn’t who he expected me to be, which apparently, was an immoral, spoiled supporter of the Ascended. He’d been kind and interested because he needed to discover all he could about me, and maybe because he was drawn to me. But what did that truly mean?
What happened in the woods may have proven that he was attracted to me, and that wasn’t a farce, but lust was not love, it was not loyalty, and it was not long lasting.
Neither as Hawke nor as Casteel had he claimed anything regarding us.
The reality was jarring, and it hurt. It sliced deep because he’d made me feel warm, but it was reality, and it had to be dealt with.
I mulled over the options in my head. Escape. Find my brother because I had to know if he was the same and then…what? Disappear? But first, I needed to figure out how to escape.
The wolven could track me, and he…
Escaping him would be nearly impossible.
But I had to try, and there had to be a way. Maybe when my head didn’t feel as if it were full of cobwebs, I would know what to do. Weary, I let my thoughts drift. I must’ve dozed off somehow, still curled up against the tub, because the next thing I heard was my name being called.
“Penellaphe.”
Jerking my head up, I blinked rapidly as Kieran’s face came into view. What the…？
“Good.” He was kneeling on the other side of the tub—the tub that I was completely naked in! “I was worried you were dead.”
“What?” I threw a hand over my chest and pressed my legs together as much as I possibly could. I didn’t even want to think about what he could see beneath the line of water. “What are you doing in here?”