I exhaled slowly. “We don’t need to talk about your over-inflated ego. That has been long since established. We need to talk about this whole marriage stuff. There is no way I’m—”
“We do need to talk about that, about our future. But not right now. It’s late. I’m tired. And if I’m tired, you have to be exhausted,” he said, and my eyes narrowed. “That’s the kind of conversation we both need to be fully energized for.”
“That conversation will take just enough time for me to say I’m not marrying you. Therefore, there is no future to speak of. Now the conversation is over and done with. See how simple that was?”
“But it’s not that simple,” he replied softly. “Why did you run tonight?”
Frustration began to burn a hole through me. “Could it possibly be because you’re trying to force me to marry you? Did that never cross your mind?”
“Possibly.” There was a stretch of silence as he stared at me. “Do you know why I chose the name Hawke?”
My heart kicked at my chest at the unexpected change of subject. “I figured it was a name that belonged to whatever poor soul you most likely killed.”
He laughed, but there was no humor. Suddenly, I realized that his laughs, like his expressions and even his smiles, were also like masks—each representing a different Casteel, a different truth or falsehood. “There was no poor soul who owned that name. Or at least not that I’m aware of. If there is or was, that would be a pure coincidence. But I chose Hawke for a reason.”
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t care, but I did. Oh gods, I wanted to know.
He lowered his hand. “In Atlantia, it is tradition to be given a second name, a middle one, so to speak. It's given in honor of a cherished family member or friend, usually picked by the mother, and it is a well-guarded secret only shared outside of the family with the closest of friends and with those who hold a special place in one’s life. My mother chose my middle name in honor of her brother. His name was Hawkethrone. My full name is Casteel Hawkethrone Da’Neer. When I was a small child, my mother took to calling me an abbreviated form of that name. And so did my brother. They, and only they had ever known me as Hawke,” he said. “Until you.”
Chapter 6
Hawke…
The name didn’t belong to someone else. It was real. Hawke was real?
“To be honest, the only time my mother calls me Casteel, it generally includes my full middle and last names, and it usually means she’s irritated by something I did or didn’t do,” he continued. “Although Kieran doesn’t call me Hawke, he knows the origin of the name. He was the one who chose the last name, Flynn. He thought it sounded like it fit with Hawke.”
“We…we don’t have middle names,” I heard myself say.
“I know.”
“Are you telling the truth now?”
His features tightened as some sort of emotion flickered across them. “I’m telling the truth, Poppy.”
My gift pushed against my skin, and what Kieran had said about my abilities resurfaced. I’d said that I had no intention of handling the Prince, but my gift could tell me what he was feeling and maybe help me determine if he was lying. Lies and truths were so often tied to emotions, and a person could try to hide what they were feeling. Sometimes, they were successful, even with the most extreme mental anguish. But while people could lie to someone about what they felt, they couldn’t lie to themselves.
Opening myself up was always easy. It required no effort. My senses stretched out, and it was like a cord formed between Casteel and me, connecting us. It wasn’t always like that, so singular. Sometimes, crowds overwhelmed me and pulled me in. Some people were projectors, their anguish so deep and raw that they formed the connection with me without trying. With Casteel, it took a few seconds for me to process what I was picking up from him. Emotions had a certain taste and feel to me, and what I felt now was both tart and tangy in the back of my mouth. Discomfort and…sadness.
His sorrow was familiar. It was always there, shadowing his every step, every breath. I often thought about how he could laugh and tease. How he could be so ridiculously vexing while feeling such grief. I wondered if the teasing and his all-too-easy laughter were also masks because I knew his pain started and probably ended with his brother.
I didn’t know what the discomfort was tied to, but I didn’t feel anything that made me think he wasn’t telling the truth now.
And maybe…maybe that meant the name Hawke was real. That it wasn’t a lie.
The next breath I took felt thin. “Why are you telling me this about your name? Why does it matter?”
He was quiet now, his features smoothing out. “Because knowing that Hawke is a part of my name, a part of me, matters to you.”
“Can you read minds?” I asked, thinking I’d probably asked that before but I felt like I needed to ask again. Mind reading couldn’t be too farfetched considering he could force his will upon others, and especially since what he said was true. It did matter to me. Why? I had no idea, because what did it change? At the end of the day…nothing.
A faint grin appeared. “No, I cannot, which is a disappointment when it comes to you. I would love to know what you’re thinking—what you’re really feeling.”
Thank the gods he didn’t know, because what I was feeling was messier than when I attempted to knit.
“I am Hawke,” he said after a moment. “And I am Casteel. I’m not two separate people, no matter how badly you want to believe that.”
I tensed, my grip tightening around the handle of the knife. I hated how well he knew me. “I know that.”
“Do you really?”
A rush of frustration scorched my skin because I did often think of him as two different people, but mainly that there were simply different masks he wore, and there’d been one for Hawke.
But it didn’t matter. It couldn’t.
“I know you are the same,” I said. “You are the one who lied to me from the beginning, and you’re the one who is holding me captive now. It doesn’t matter what name you used while doing it.”
He arched a dark eyebrow. “Yet you haven’t called me Hawke since you learned who I was.”
The frustration quickly flamed into anger. “And why does that matter, Hawke?”
A smile crept across his lips then, one that showed the barest hint of fangs. “Because I miss hearing you say it.”
I stared at him for what felt like a small eternity. “You’re ridiculous, Casteel.”
He laughed, and the sound was warm and deep and real. I felt his amusement through the connection, a sprinkling of sugar on my tongue. That almost angered me enough to do something very reckless with the knife yet again. Somehow, I managed to resist the impulse that proved just how violent I could be.
His humor faded. “I haven’t lied to you since you learned who I was.”
“How am I to believe that?” I demanded. “And even if you haven’t, that doesn’t erase those lies.”
“You’re correct. I don’t expect you to believe, nor do I expect you to ever forget those lies,” he said. Again, through the connection I had left open, I felt sadness with the fading taste of humor. “But I have nothing to gain from lies now. I have what I want. You.”