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CHAPTER2
The sun blinked into my window, and I groaned. It was far too early to be awoken by the false promise of a bright new day. Especially when I had spent far too long into the night watching the army and imagining what today would bring.
I had watched Evren as he left my side and made his way back to the camp. He moved stealthily through the soldiers who waited there, and when I took my eyes off of him for only a moment, he disappeared. No matter how long I scoured those campgrounds, I was not able to find him again.
It didn’t matter, though. Evren was nothing more than a soldier who was there to do his job, and it was a job I hated him for.
Because today I would be seized from my home and taken to Citlali.
I tugged on my quilt until it completely covered my head, and I pinched my eyes closed against the reality of the day. I just needed a few more minutes to dream. A few more moments to think about what life might have been like if I wasn’t born with a few spots on my face and down my back.
Starblessed.
What a damn joke. The stars hadn’t blessed me. They had cursed me and my future, and I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.
Last night was my first experience with fae magic, but I knew they were capable of so much more. I had been told stories throughout my childhood, but every one felt like a dark fairy tale. I had been told of how they drank the blood of the Starblessed to fuel their powers. A custom they had adopted from the vampyres before they had been banished from their lands. None of it had ever felt real, but today I would find out the truth.
Evren hadn’t looked like the monster I had imagined in my head. He looked nothing like I expected of the high fae at all.
“Adara, it’s time to get up.” My mother barged into my small room and jerked the blanket from my body. She was dressed in her finest pink dress that fell over her body as if it were made just for her. Her dark hair was pulled out of her face and showed off the gleam that lay in her eyes.
“Mother,” I growled as I reached out for my quilt, but she was already ripping open my curtains.
“It’s reported that the royal guards have already packed up camp and are soon to breach the cleave. You need to get up and get dressed. Today is your destiny.”
My destiny. My mother was foolish if she truly believed that today was anything other than my death sentence. She was willingly handing me over to the fae, and she smiled as she moved about my room with no hesitation.
For a moment, I wondered what she would have done if it had been the vampyres who had come to claim me. She had told me many legends of the Blood Court that was beyond the kingdom of Citlali. Would she have given me over so willingly then too?
I knew deep down that she would have still sacrificed me for the life she now lived. The people of this town worshipped my mother. She had birthed the Starblessed with the largest mark in over a century.
She thought that made her special, blessed somehow, and I guess the reality of it was that she was right. Birthing me had afforded my mother a life she would never have been able to have on her own, and all that it cost her was her daughter and a husband she had supposedly loved.
“I’m up.” I swung my legs over the side of my small bed and rubbed at my eyes. I was still wearing the same outfit from last night, and I figured my mother would complain about the dirt that I had managed to track into my bed.
But she didn’t say a word.
Instead, she stared at me as she swallowed hard. “You need a bath, then I will do your hair. You can’t arrive at the palace like this.”
“I don’t want to arrive at the palace at all.”I pleaded with my eyes even as I felt my heartbeat pounding through me.
My mother shook her head, but I didn’t feel like begging her to choose me. There was nothing I could say that would ever make her change her mind about the decision she was making. Even if I could, both of us knew that the royals would do the exact same thing to her that they did to my father when he had tried to deny them.
And my life wasn’t worth losing hers.
I pushed past her and into the washroom. She already had a bath drawn for me, and I quickly stripped out of my clothes before sinking into the lukewarm water. Tension eased from my body, but it couldn’t stop the way my heart raced in panic with every passing second.
I slipped under the water and drowned out the world for a few short moments. I tried to reach for that feeling I got when I stood at the edge of the cleave far above the town where no one could see me. There was a sense of freedom there that I never felt anywhere else, but that comfort eluded me today.
Instead, all I could imagine was Evren’s face and the way his dark eyes had studied me.
You will determine the future of our world.
Damning words that I wasn’t ready to face.
I pushed out of the water and gasped for breath. I didn’t know what Evren thought of me, but whatever it was, he was wrong.
“Here.” My mother handed me a bar of soap and gave no heed to giving me any privacy.
