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Quinn and Lydia both snickered, and I wanted to demand that they stop. Instead, I stood, pushing my chair back with my knees, and Gavril finally looked back at me.
“I’m going to the library.” I wasn’t asking his permission or waiting around for his approval. I may have been his betrothed, but I refused to sit here and listen to this. Especially when I was dying inside to look to his brother and never look away.
“Are you all right?” he asked as if he couldn’t possibly see why I’d want to leave.
“Of course.” I nodded. “I’m just tired and would like to read for a bit.”
“Okay.” He stood and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. My gaze met Evren’s as soon as Gavril’s lips were pressed against my skin, and he looked as if he was ready to come across the table. “Join me for dinner tonight?”
I nodded because I didn’t trust my voice. Not when Evren was looking at me like that.
Gavril held my fingers in his until I walked away and forced him to drop them. I didn’t look back as I pushed out of the room. I didn’t say a single one of the million things that was running through my head.
And I didn’t let the whispers of Quinn’s voice as I left the room run through my head over and over. I didn’t like that girl. It wasn’t because of the way she acted in there or the fact that she made it clear that she had been with my betrothed, but I couldn’t stop imagining the ways she could’ve possibly touched Evren as I sat down in the library and grabbed a book.
I slammed my book closed in frustration and walked back to the shelf to grab another. I didn’t know what I was looking for as my hand trailed over the leather spines.
I just needed something, anything, to take my mind off of him.
My hand stalled next to a solid black book with no writing on the spine. I pulled it from the bookshelf, and the front looked the same. Not a title or marking anywhere in the leather.
I walked back to my seat with the book in hand and searched the doorway before I sat. My fingers traced over the black leather, feeling the supple fabric that had to be much older than me before I slowly opened the cover.
I was greeted by yellowing pages with black handwritten ink. This wasn’t just some book; this was a journal. I flipped through the pages as I scanned over the writing. There were notes of the palace and a hand-sketched map of the grounds.
I flipped past those quickly, and only stopped again when I noted the words curse of the stars staring back at me. The words looked like they had been scribbled so quickly that I could hardly read them, but below them was a sketch of a woman with dots spread out across her chest and running down the center.
An arrow pointed toward the markings and the words star mark were written alongside it.
My gaze ran over the page looking for more information, but it was basic things. Things I already knew. I flipped to the next page quickly, devouring the information and searching for more.
It wasn’t until I got to the final page of the book that I found what I was looking for.
Starblessed are a blessing and curse on our world. Their power can be extraordinary yet wicked. A mated Starblessed equals a threat.
I read the words over and over, but I was confused. I had never heard of a mated Starblessed before. Only fae mated, and even that was rare. It was another thing that I had only heard of in stories passed down to me by the mouths of those in my village.
But no one had ever spoken of a mated Starblessed.
“Have you gotten your fill of reading yet?”
I slammed the book shut in my lap and snapped my head up to look at Evren. He was standing in the exact same spot he had been the first time he found me in the library, but something seemed different about him.
Dangerous almost.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“I don’t know, princess. Is there?” He ran his hand along his jaw as he watched me, and I felt like he was eating me alive with his gaze alone.
“I don’t know.” I pressed the book to my chest as I stared at him, watching every move he made. “You seem upset.”
He pushed away from the wall and took two small steps in my direction. “Frustrated.”
“By what?”
His gaze ran over every inch of me, and he didn’t hide a moment of it. “That my brother can touch you, can talk about you like you’re his.”
“I am his, Evren. We’ll be married soon enough.”
