Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Landing on the windowsill of Demir’s bedroom, I sat there fluffing my wings, waiting for any inkling that someone was present, but it was dark, empty and quiet.
Almost eerie. This didn’t look like the room of a prince; it looked like that of a servant.
Someone despised and hated by his own father and people.
He was treated like an outsider in his own home.
I couldn’t fathom it. The workers in my walls lived under better conditions.
Shifting into my actual form, I stepped onto the barren stone floor; not even a carpet stood between me and its coldness.
The only ostentatious thing in the room was a wardrobe filled with attire befitting a prince likely to uphold appearances.
Every drawer and cupboard was empty; not a single personal effect or photograph remained.
I thought back to my time at the Academy and where I had always hidden my private and personal effects—under the mattress.
Within two strides, I was by the bed, lifting it, and there sat a thin box.
When I opened it, a silver necklace lay there—one I had seen his mother wear at formal occasions over the years.
Likely a memento he kept of her to remember her by.
A photo of her long brown hair and honey eyes that mimicked his stared back at me; she had been beautiful.
I couldn’t grasp the fact that she was dead; I thought, after all this time, she was simply living a quiet, secluded life behind castle walls.
No one had thought to question her disappearance from events over the years.
Our shadows and whispers had only ever been able to track rumours of her losing her mind and needing constant care somewhere deep in their lands.
Beside it was a broken hair tie. Was this the one he had kept of mine all those years?
My heart clenched. There was a photo next to it of Everett and him as young boys, smiling genuine smiles.
It was a look I had never seen on him before.
Not one shrouded in arrogance or mock amusement.
It was real. He was happy, and at the bottom lay a single note.
My perfect princess,
You will never read this, and if the need ever arose, it wouldn’t matter anymore, but I need the world to know.
My father is becoming more erratic by the day and it’s only a matter of time before he turns on me the way he did my mother.
I knew it was an obsession when every break from the Academy felt like torture—a brutal agony far greater than any physical wound my father could ever inflict.
After we graduated, it was so much worse because there was no guarantee I would ever lay eyes on you again.
Just the thought of it alone sent me into the panic.
You were the one thing I always looked forward to, but now, on your 21th birthday, I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.
My only hope is the Alumni Ball. I’ve never believed in the gods, but if you knew the depth of how I pleaded with them to have you there, to see you one more time before it’s too late, you would finally understand.
Every broken bone, every scar slashed into my skin and every moment of isolation—your face, your enraged face—got me through when my only company was the darkness.
You were my light through it all. The way you never stopped fighting made me want to do the same, and for so long I tried, but something in me is breaking.
There is not a single drop left of the man I once knew in my father and I don’t want to die at his hands; I don’t want to die like my mother did.
So I pray to every God in every realm I see you one last time because the moment I see those dark brown eyes filled with so much fire and strength, I will finally be able to take that blade to my throat.
I will not be used to hurt you, my Princess.
I would rather end it all here than carry out a single act against you, because acting against you would be acting against myself.
You have unknowingly embedded yourself in the deepest recesses of who I am.
I don’t know when it came to be, but at some point, I stopped living this life for myself.
You were the reason I bothered to wake up every single morning and why I endured the pain.
You may be a queen, but I fell for you when you were my princess, my ethereal goddess of death, destruction and unparalleled strength.
I watched you for so long at the Academy, the way you would get up every time someone beat you down.
The way it sent a thrill through you when you sent fear through the others.
The way you looked covered in the blood of your enemies, the delight in your eyes.
Your unrelenting power. The way you let everyone underestimate you, only to decimate them in class or on the grounds when they thought they had caught you unaware.
You were unlike anyone I had ever seen, and there wasn’t a single person who could break you.
They tried to, they chipped away at you but nothing and no one could ever truly shatter you.
As my father worsened, I tried to channel that unbreakable strength of yours, but since graduation, I have felt more and more disconnected from this world and my life, like the distance from you has left some part of me empty. So there is no point in any of this any longer.
I can never be a part of your world, even though you are mine in its entirety, and I’m tired of living through the pain, all of it.
So I will do everything I can to see you at the ball one last time, and then, then it will be over for me.
I think I love you, Princess, but the word feels too inadequate.
I am obsessed with you. I don’t want you, I need you.
I live only for you, and the saddest part is I barely know you, and you definitely do not know me.
Consumed by you always and forever,
Your princeling
After dropping the note into the box, I slammed it shut and shoved it so far back under the mattress that I nearly threw myself out the window in a rush to get some air.
I felt the scratch of panic clawing at my skin, but there was no one here to save me from it until something shocked me and stopped it in its tracks, a single thought.
He knew how to calm me at the ball because he had been suffering through the same thing because of me.
Had the bond truly always been there for him to some degree?
I had never known anything about his feelings.
How could I have been so blind to it all?
He was ready to end it all—what had changed?
Was it the bond snapping into place? God, he had been planning to kill himself while I had planned to kill him.
What a sick twist of fate that the very thought now sliced through me.
Without thinking, I flew back to the cell and shifted midair, slamming into him.
Holding him so tightly that I wanted to scream, it felt as though he was smoke and water and would slip through my hands.
‘What’s wrong?’ he whispered, fear and worry coating his voice.
‘Me. Everything. This life,’ I said, not making a single coherent sentence, too lost in my mind, just needing to feel him safe in my arms. I didn’t understand it, and beyond these cell walls, I would deny it, but right now my soul yearned for exactly this.
The line between passion and hate was truly razor thin.
He gripped me tighter, as if knowing exactly what I needed to pull myself from this spiral.
He gripped me by the hair on the back of my head and pulled.
My gaze snapped to his, and there was nothing but firmness.
‘Do you need a distraction, Princess?’
God, that name carried so much weight now, and I liked it, though he would never know.
I nodded once as those honey-coloured eyes blazed in response.
His muscles tensed and rippled with unyielding strength, causing my body to cave.
Relaxing fully into his control. I wanted to be owned in this moment and used in a way that did not leave room for a single thought I didn’t want to have.
‘Did you know that all those years at the Academy, when you snuck off to the back of the library with Visarous, I was right there, listening to every moan of pleasure when you needed a distraction? I would stand in the aisle over from yours, my cock so hard I felt as though it would break every time you made a sound. I would picture it was me you were fucking.’ My breathing stopped at the revelation, but my body responded.
The thought of Demir listening to me and touching himself sent flames of pure desire through me.
‘But I noticed something, Princess, you always controlled the moment, but it’s not what you truly wanted or needed.
You always left not fully satisfied. What you really needed to get out of that pretty little head of yours was to be owned and claimed.
You needed someone to take that cursed control away from you and set you free.
Let me make you mine, Princess,’ he breathed in my ear.
Then, he pulled back and slammed his lips onto mine, and devoured me like he was breathless and I was air.
With his hand still wrapped in my hair, he pulled me back, breaking the kiss, but with my eyes closed, I searched for him.
His low chuckle at my neediness had my eyes snapping open and there was that arrogant little smirk of his—it used to infuriate me, but now it just left me wet between my thighs.
He pulled my hair tighter, moving my head lower, and pure arousal swept over me.
This is not something I had ever experienced with a man or woman, a true lack of control but fuck, if it wasn’t the hottest thing I had ever experienced.
I was in freefall, completely at his mercy—a man I shouldn’t trust but something inside me told me that I could. That letter showed me I should.
His muscled forearm made quick work of undoing his pants and shifting his underwear down, and without a single moment to prepare, he shoved my head down to the hilt.
His smooth head hit the back of my throat as my tongue felt the veined underside of his incredibly erect cock.
I had never felt something so hard and smooth at the same time.
He was thick to the point where my lips felt so stretched there was an edge of pain and I fucking loved it.
Slowly, he pulled me back up then slammed me back down with even more force.
I wanted to choke and splutter, but he pressed down deeper, not giving me a shred of space or air. He held me there.
‘Swallow around my cock, Princess,’ he commanded, in a voice that I had never heard on his lips before, the voice of a leader, and it stirred something in me.
I did what he said and the almost animalistic noise that left him had me moaning in pleasure just at the sound of it.
The vibration of my moan had him cursing as he quickly pulled me back up.
‘Fuck, little princess, you have no idea how many times I pictured exactly this. You choking on me and your body begging for more, completely at my mercy. I would take the power you’ve given me in this moment over ruling my realm every single day of my life.
Now be good and make me come. I want you to taste what you do to me, what you’ve always done to me. ’
Kneeling now, he forced me onto all fours as he thrust into my mouth over and over again in a steady rhythm that built with intensity as his pleasure climbed higher.
His groans of pleasure told me exactly how close he was, and when he was on the edge, I grabbed his balls and squeezed as he shot ropes of thick come down my throat.
I’d never tasted anything so delicious; it was warm with a salty sweetness to it that had me lapping up every drop.
As his hips stuttered one last time, he pulled me off him, never letting loose that tight grip he had on my hair while we both caught our breath.
He pulled me in close, his lips barely brushing mine.
‘Good girl, little princess,’ he cooed before he slid his tongue inside my mouth tasting his own release on me, savouring it. He dragged a finger across my pants as he deepened the kiss, feeling just how wet he made me. The feeling making us both moan in pleasure.
‘Not today, little princess. You wanted a distraction, so let what I’ve left unfinished between your legs distract you from every rational thought for the rest of the day.’
We lay back down in the cell, his arms enveloping me. It wasn’t long until Demir began to doze off, but before he completely succumbed to sleep I whispered in his ear. ‘This never happened.’
His hand on me tightened and his jaw clicked. A slight nod was all the confirmation of his understanding I received before he nuzzled into my neck and slept.
I couldn’t sleep after the way he had left me.
Once he fell into a truly deep sleep, I slid out from his grasp and sat in the same corner of the cell where I had been when he first saw me.
Gone was my original form, and back came the peasant girl.
I sat there for what felt like hours, replaying every conversation, touch and word from that note.
Everything I thought I knew had been a lie, but I couldn’t fall for any of it.
I had one goal, and I wouldn’t allow this bond to distract me again.