From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,203

said. Hawke couldn’t question every one of his supporters or his kind. I wasn’t safe here. “And me…what are you going to do with me?”

He lifted his gaze from mine. A muscle clenched in his jaw. “I already told you. I will use you to barter with the Queen to free Prince Malik. I swear, no more harm will come to you.”

I started to speak, but then I remembered the name Kieran had called him. My entire body seemed to seize up as I stared into those beautiful eyes. “Casteel?”

He froze against me.

“Kieran…Kieran said the name Casteel.” My gaze swept over his striking features as Loren’s words came back to me. She claimed that she’d heard that the Dark One was handsome, and his looks had gained him entrance to Goldcrest Manor, allowing him to seduce Lady Everton….

And Hawke’s own words came back to me, the ones he’d spoken to me at the Red Pearl. They have led quite a few people to make questionable life choices.

My heart had seemed to stop, but now it sped up, racing. Things began to click into place. Inconsequential things like little comments he made here and there, bigger things like how he’d silenced me when I called out his name the night we…the night we made love. The way everyone followed his orders, how Jericho had obeyed him in the barn, seeming to not want to cross him, even though it hadn’t stopped him. How Kieran and the others said his name as if it were a joke.

Because Hawke wasn’t his name.

And we hadn’t made love. He’d fucked me.

“Oh, my gods.” Stomach roiling, I pressed my hand to my mouth. “You’re him.”

He said nothing.

I thought I might be sick as I dragged my hand to my chest, to tear at the already torn shirt. “That’s what happened to your brother. Why you feel such sadness about him. He’s the Prince you hope to use me to get back. Your name isn’t Hawke Flynn. You’re him! You’re the Dark One.”

“I prefer the name Casteel or Cas,” he replied then, his tone hard and distant. “If you don’t want to call me that, you can call me Prince Casteel Da’Neer, the second son of King Valyn Da’Neer, brother of Prince Malik Da’Neer.”

I shuddered.

“But do not call me the Dark One. That is not my name.”

Horror rolled through me. How could I now just be figuring this out? The signs had been there. I’d been so, so stupid. Not just once. I hadn’t gotten any wiser after I learned that he was an Atlantian. I hadn’t seen what was right in front of my face.

That everything truly had been a lie.

I reacted without thought, slamming my fist into his chest. I hit him. My palm stung from the slap I delivered upon his cheek, and he let me. He took it as I shoved at his shoulders. I screamed at him as tears blurred my vision. I hit again and again—

“Stop it.” He caught me by the shoulders, pulling me to his chest and folding his arms around me, trapping mine to my sides. “Stop it, Poppy.”

“Let me go,” I demanded, my throat burning.

My heart clenched with the kind of anguish I was used to feeling from others. I almost reached out to him to see if it had radiated from him, or had erupted from deep inside me, but I stopped.

I will use you.

The pain…the pain was mine. He hadn’t saved me because he cared for me. He hadn’t promised that no more harm would come to me because he cared for me. How did I keep forgetting this? Hawke—

Hawke.

That wasn’t even his name. It was Casteel.

And he had an agenda. All of our conversations, every time he had kissed me, touched me, and told me I was brave and strong, that I intrigued him and was like no one he’d ever met. He did those things not just under a false persona but also under a false name, to gain my trust. To make me lower my guard around him, all so I would walk out of Masadonia with him willingly and right into a pit of vipers who either wanted to use me because I was the Maiden, the Chosen—the Queen’s favorite—or wanted me dead for the very same reasons.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

He was worse than Jericho and the others who wanted me dead. At least there were no pretenses with any of them. Everything about Haw—everything about Casteel, from his name