Page 29 of Heart of the Raven Prince

Silence. A beat passes between us. Two. I hold his red gaze steady as I take another pull, before puffing the cloud of smoke directly on him. His lips thin into nonexistence, and he nods at me once, before turning and scurrying off.

Then it is only me, and the princess, alone under the light of the blood moon. She slowly turns, glaring at me like she wants to snatch the cigarette from my lips and shove it straight through my eye.

Fuck.

Why do I like that?

This fucking asshole.

All I wanted was one moment alone. One gods-damned moment to finally grieve, and he had to go and ruin that as well. Caden’s staring at me with those unnerving black eyes, the reflection of the red glow of his cigarette dancing in his gaze. That, mixed with the bloody shadows cast by the moon, makes him look entirely different. Feral. No, demonic. He looks every bit the villain I know him to be.

“That’s a disgusting habit,” I snap, glancing to his cigarette. I don’t know why I say it, why I even open my mouth at all. But apparently, I have no self-control when it comes to this fae. He blinks at me, canting his head as he pulls in a slow, deliberate drag on his cigarette, a subtle fuck you that makes me scoff. He flicks the nub away from us, and my eyes follow the glowing ember until it winks out in the darkness. He finally blows out a cloud of smoke that smells harshly of herbs and ash before setting his gaze firmly back on me.

He looks furious.

“The next time I place you somewhere, stay there.” His voice is filled with that same cold indifference as when he suggested I be whipped twelve times.

“Excuse me?” I hiss, incredulous. He devours the space between us, coming to stand within a hair’s breadth of me. I do not relent. I do not back up. I continue to hold his unwavering gaze.

“I told you,” he huffs out in a sharp whisper. “To stay put.”

If I move even an inch, I’m going to strike him across the face, and if I do that, I will likely die soon after. So I fucking stay put, if only to keep myself from launching at him. But I cannot stop the ragged breath I pull in as I try uselessly to quell the rage that burns inside of me whenever I am close to him. I see him inhale deeply—the only movement he makes as he continues to glare down at me.

“What do you want from me?” I finally ask. It is a question that has been stuck in my throat from the moment I saw my parents’ corpses coated in their blood. Why us? Why Gaelynn?

Why me?

He leans against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets and staring at me. His lips are tilted down in a frown, his eyes hard, but that ever-present anger in his gaze has shifted to something closer to confusion. I have the smallest flash of a thought, that maybe he doesn’t know what he wants from me either. Memories of the rubies hanging from far too many ears flash in my mind, and I know what he desires. He wants my blood. My flesh. He wants me to—

“Stay away from Lochlan,” he says, breaking the strained silence between us, but offering no real answer to my question.

“Why?” I scoff. “Jealous?” My hand goes to the throbbing bite marks on my neck, trying to conceal them in an absentminded attempt to not appear weak in front of a predator. Before I can, he slaps my hand away and reaches for my throat. I open my mouth, sucking in a breath to scream when he clamps his free hand over my lips.

“For fucking once, be silent and hold still,” he says between gritted teeth. He doesn’t strangle me like I assumed he was going to. Instead, he plants his hand gently over my clotted wound. His magic doubles when he touches me, a cooling sensation seeping in and numbing the pulsing pain. Glancing at the rusty bloodstain on my tunic, right where his dagger cut me, he grimaces. A complicated look flashes across his face before he moves. Quicker than I can track, he yanks the collar of my tunic down before covering the cut with his hand and sending another jarring jolt of his magic into me. “Stop making it so easy to hurt you. Stay quiet and stay the fuck away from Lochlan.”

Is he fucking blaming me for—wait. Did he just heal me?

“I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter,” I seethe, yanking away from his frigid touch and taking a step back. “That fucking fae and his cronies locked me in a carriage before I could get away.”

I expect him to punish me for the way I spoke of his race so flippantly. The wise part of my mind realizes that the foolish part of it is trying to provoke him, trying to fight him the only way I can. But this male has shocked me at every turn, and he does so yet again by not responding to my not-so-veiled insult, and instead grabbing the collar of my tunic and yanking me forward until our bodies are pressed uncomfortably close together.

“Lochlan is not a fae,” he growls, his voice dripping with so much unbridled power I am struck momentarily mute by it. The crackling feel of his magic swirls around me, running pinpricks down my arms, my legs, my back. It snares me, holding me firmly to him. Almost like phantom arms trapping me, chaining me to him.

“I—what?” I ask, tripping over my words as I resist the urge to shove away from him. I am already struggling under the deluge of his magic. The last thing I need are my hands pushing against his chest and magnifying that daunting power.

“His kind are not fae, never call him one again,” he says, his voice dangerously quiet.

“Well excuse the fuck out of me for not knowing.”

“You insolent little…” he trails off, his wings twitching behind him. “What did I tell you about silence being a gift here?”

“I guess I wasn’t listening,” I spit, trying and failing to pull his hand off my collar. He smirks cruelly at me, watching me struggle against him when he’s barely even trying to hold me.

“Start listening, Oisín. You won’t last long here if you don’t,” he says, his words a quick whisper, his eyes suddenly trained on my hand still holding his wrist. The skin around my fingernails is broken and bloody from where I picked at it, a nervous habit of mine. His nostrils flare, his eyes focusing only on the wounds on my fingers.

On my dried blood.

“If you cared about my safety, you should have left me on Gaelynn. If you truly gave a single shit about me,” I say between clenched teeth. “Then you should have never stepped foot on my shores. I would only be safe if we never met.”