My blood pounded through me in a dizzying push. “I don’t like anything about you.”
He laughed as his lips skimmed the side of my throat. “I love how you lie.”
“I’m not lying,” I denied, wondering if he nudged my head to the side or if I had done that. It couldn’t have been me.
“Hmm?” His lips hovered over the spot where my pulse fluttered wildly. “Your penchant for violence isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Not with me. Haven’t I told you it turns me on?”
“One too many times,” I said, pushing off the ground and against Casteel. I felt him against me for a brief moment, felt the proof of his words. The tight throbbing response to the knowledge made me question my sanity.
Casteel hadn’t expected the move, and he slipped to the side—or maybe he was just humoring me. Probably the latter. Either way, I scrambled to my knees and turned on him, throwing a wild punch.
Casteel caught my hand. “Then I guess it would be repetitive of me to tell you how much you’re turning me on now?”
“That and how incredibly disturbing it is.”
He smiled up at me, his eyes twin golden flames. “I do so prefer hand-to-hand combat with you,” he said, catching my other wrist when I swung my fist down. “I like how close it brings us, Princess.”
I shrieked my frustration—my irritation—at him. At myself. “There is something so wrong with you!”
“Probably, but you know what?” He lifted his head off the ground. “That’s the part you like the most.”
“There is nothing—” My response died on the tip of my tongue. Under his head, the snow seemed to be rising off the ground, but that…that wasn’t right. I lifted my gaze, seeing white, misty clouds rolling softly along the snow. Mist. “Do you see that?
“What?” Casteel twisted his head. “Shit. Craven.”
My heart stammered. “I didn’t think there were any Craven here.”
“Why would you think there’s no Craven here?” Disbelief rang in his tone. “You’re in Solis. The Craven are everywhere.”
“But there’s no Ascended here,” I argued as the mist thickened and spread. “How can there be Craven?”
“There used to be Ascended here.” He sat up, bringing me closer. “They fed, and they fed a lot. Elijah and the others keep the Craven back, but with Whitebridge on the other side of these woods, and young, pretty girls blindly running through them in the middle of the night, it’s not like they don’t have a food source.”
“I didn’t run into the woods blindly,” I snapped.
“But you did, and you didn’t even realize there were Craven in these woods.” His voice hardened with hints of his earlier anger. “And all you had was a damn meat knife. Why did you run, Poppy?”
A high-pitched shriek sent a bolt of dread through me. “Do you think now is a good time to have this conversation?”
“Yes.”
I shot him an incredulous stare.
“No?” he said and then added a sigh. He rose as swiftly as the air, pulling me to my feet. Letting go of one of my arms, he bent and swiped up the sword he’d dropped.
Another shrill cry sounded, followed by the sound of snapping tree limbs, freezing the blood in my veins. “I think—”
Casteel hauled me against his chest without warning. Before I knew what he was even about, his mouth was on mine, stealing my breath and scattering my thoughts. The kiss was hot and raw, a clash of lips and teeth. I was reminded again of how, as Hawke, he’d held himself back when he kissed me, and how much he hid. It wasn’t just the fangs, it was also the power—his power.
He lifted his mouth from mine, his eyes nearly luminous as he stared down into my wide ones. “But we will have that conversation later,” he promised, thrusting the sword into my hand. “Make me feel incompetent and kill more than me, Princess.”
For a moment, I was rooted to the spot where I stood, the hilt of the sword cold against my palm. The Cravens’ screams jolted me from my stupor. I turned just as Casteel picked up the other sword. There was no time to think about anything, especially not the kiss. The mist grew, reaching our knees—
They streamed out from a cluster of trees, a tide of sunken, gray bodies, bared fangs, and blazing, coal-red eyes. I’d never seen the Craven so…decayed. Their skulls were bare of hair, or only patchy, clumpy strings remained. Ribcages were all but exposed through the ragged clothing they wore. They were so emaciated, so withered away that I couldn’t help but feel pity for the mortals they used to be and the rotting corpses they’d become.
I braced as they spilled over the fallen branches and boulders. Because even in their condition, they were fast, and they would be deadly in their bloodlust.
The first to reach me may have been a woman once, given the faded yellow frock and the jeweled ring still on her finger. She screamed, reed-thin legs pumping as she reached for me with outstretched hands, her fingers ending in razor-sharp claws that could easily shred skin.
I was proof of that.
Her jaw hung open, exposing the two elongated canines along the top, and the two that jutted up from the bottom. Meeting her halfway, I thrust the sword into her chest. Rotten blood spurted, filling the air with putridness. If the blade weren’t bloodstone or a stake fashioned from the trees within the Blood Forest, she would’ve kept coming, tearing herself in two to get to me. I’d seen a Craven do that before. But the blade was bloodstone, and she was dead the moment the sword pierced her heart.
Yanking the weapon free, I turned as she crumpled to the ground. Casteel had lopped off the head of a Craven, another surefire way of killing them. I wasn’t worried for him. I imagined it would take dozens of Craven, if not more, to overwhelm an Atlantian.
Piercing the chest of another Craven, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that if there had been any semblance of truth behind the Ascended’s claims of the Dark One controlling the Craven, I doubted they’d be trying to rip his skin open right now. I already knew that though, having seen the Craven go after him in the Blood Forest before. This was just more evidence of the truth he spoke.
And the lies I’d been told.
Fury energized me as I sliced the bloodstone through the neck of a Craven, severing its head. I whirled from the gore, only to come face-to-face with ghastly, inhuman eyes, and snapping teeth. A moment of pure, unadulterated terror swamped me when my gaze locked with the Craven’s. It threatened to toss me back through the years to when I couldn’t keep my grip on my mother’s slippery, blood-soaked hand as the pain of the first claw and then the first bite turned into a never-ending nightmare.
I wasn’t a small child now, incapable of defending myself. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t prey.
With a rage-filled shout I barely recognized as mine, I jabbed the blade through the Craven’s caved-in chest. The ungodly light went out in its eyes, the last vestiges of life.
“Six,” Casteel called out. “You?”
“Four,” I answered, calming myself as I almost wished I didn’t know what he’d meant. I darted under the arms of another Craven, driving the sword deep into its back. “Five.”
“Shameful,” he teased, and I rolled my eyes.