From Blood & Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,205

connected to another door at the end. Cold, wet air drifted in through the open wall, but I barely felt it. I had no plan. No idea how to get out of the keep. I kept walking.

Halfway through the hall, it was like a switch was flicked inside of me. All the horror and the sorrow ceased, and instinct took over. Breathing heavily, I threw open the door and raced down the cramped stairwell, then out through an open doorway, into—

Into the snow.

For a moment, I was struck by the beauty of the thick flakes of snow slowly drifting down. A thin layer already blanketed the ground and coated the bare trees. It was so silent, and everything was clean and untouched.

A voice from inside the keep jarred me into action. Taking off across the snow-covered grass, I ran toward the woods. In the back of my mind, I knew I wasn’t prepared to make an escape. The clothing I was wearing was too thin, even if it wasn’t also torn nearly to shreds. I had no idea exactly where I was or where to go from here. There could be Craven in these woods. There would definitely be Descenters. There could also be wolven, who would surely be able to track my moves, but still, I ran, the thin soles of my boots slipping on the dusted ground of the forest floor. I ran because…

I stabbed him.

I stabbed him in the heart.

He would be dead by now.

I’d killed him.

A ragged sob left me as blowing snow mingled with my tears. Oh, gods, I had to do it. Everything about him, about us was a lie. Everything. I had to do it. I had to—

There was no warning—no sound, nothing.

An arm circled my waist, catching me mid-run. I shrieked as my feet slipped out from under me, but I didn’t go down. I was hauled back and slammed into a hard, warm chest. My feet dangled nearly a foot from the ground.

Shock stole the very breath from my lungs. I knew who it was before he even spoke. It was his scent of lush spice and pine. It was the burst of rage-laced anguish and disbelief that mirrored mine, coming through my senses that I hadn’t closed down. For the first time since I’d met him, his emotions overwhelmed him and, therefore, me.

This was not the Hawke I’d fallen for so quickly that held me against him.

It was not the guard who’d sworn on his life to keep me safe, who now wrapped his fist in my hair and jerked my head back and to the side.

It was not Hawke’s hot breath that caressed my exposed throat.

It was him.

Prince Casteel Da’Neer of Atlantia.

The Dark One.

“An Atlantian, unlike a wolven or an Ascended, can’t be killed by a stab to the heart,” he growled, yanking my head farther back. “If you wanted to kill me, you should’ve aimed for the head, Princess. But worse yet, you forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“That it was real.”

Then he struck.

Two twin bursts of fiery pain lanced my neck, causing my entire body to jerk. The burn traveled all the way through my body, stunning me in its intensity. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream around the pain.

His arm around my waist was like an iron vise as he drew long and hard from the wound his fangs had created. I shook, eyes peeled wide as my hands fell to his arm. My nails dug in. The burn, the deep, staggering pull against my throat as my blood flowed freely from me into him shorted out my entire system. The building scream clawed its way around the pain—

And then, within mere seconds of when he’d sunk his fangs into me, everything changed.

The intense hurting became something else, something overwhelming in a wholly different way. A new ache erupted inside me, heating my blood until it felt like every part of me was filling with molten lava.

My wide eyes were unseeing as the heat filled my chest, my stomach, and pooled in the space between my thighs. His mouth tugged on my throat once more, and this time, that pull went straight to my very core. My body jerked with a flood of pounding arousal.

He groaned, his arm tightening around me, and I felt him, hard and thick against my rear. I gripped his arm as tension coiled inside me—

Without warning, he ripped his mouth from my neck. He let go, and I stumbled forward, nearly falling. Trembling with