Page 12 of Crown of Ashes and Desire

“I can feel you watching me,” she said without turning. “Like a cold draft on my soul.”

I pushed the door open, irritated at being discovered. “You should be resting.”

“And you should be in whatever hell spawned you.” She resumed brushing, her knuckles white around the handle. “Yet here we are.”

I moved closer, trying to ignore how her addictive scent affected me. “The Council met today,” I said, my tone deliberately cold.

“How fascinating.” Her voice dripped venom. “Did you all compare notes on your latest atrocities?”

“They wanted access to you. To study your light magic.”

Now she did turn, eyes narrowed. “And what did the mighty Gölge Bey say to that?”

“It was a simple fucking no.” The words came out before I could stop them, revealing a protectiveness I despised in myself.

Something flickered across her face—surprise, perhaps—before her expression hardened again. “How noble. Keeping your possession all to yourself.”

I circled her, studying her as the tool she was to me. "You're not a possession."

“Then what am I, Hakan?” She turned to follow my movement, brush still clutched in her hand. “Your prisoner? Your victim? Your sacrificial lamb?”

“My wife,” I said, the word bitter on my tongue. A reminder of the chain that bound us both.

She laughed, a brittle sound that stirred unwelcome feelings I immediately crushed. “A title taken by force means nothing.”

“You’re right, but you’re still my wife.”

“Why don’t you go back to your father’s pits,” she spit. “Leave me here. We don’t need to be close to each other.”

I stopped directly before her, close enough to see the pulse flutter in her throat. “You never could control that tongue of yours.”

“And you never could accept that I’m not yours to control.”

We faced each other. Dangerous tension crackled between us. Her scent filled my lungs, her light called to my darkness. I loathed how my body responded, how even now, I craved what I should destroy. I did not know what she’d suffered after I’d driven her away—my father’s spell had ensured that any concern for her fate had been wiped clean from my mind until recently.

I wasn’t prepared for her hand transforming the brush—magic flowed through it, hardening the wooden handle to a lethal point. I wasn’t prepared for the speed with which she lunged, driving the makeshift weapon toward my heart with deadly precision.

The improvised stake pierced my chest, the pain white-hot and familiar. Blood bloomed across my shirt as a memory crashed over me?—

The marketplace five years ago, the fury in her eyes when she discovered what I’d done. We had grown up together, childhood sweethearts who became lovers. Back then, I was nobody—just a student apprenticed to Lord Kaya, unaware of my true heritage, unaware that Erlik’s blood ran in my veins.

I had gotten her cousin, Ferit, drunk, goaded him into insulting a high-ranking official. It was petty revenge for how he’d spoken to Ada, but the consequences were severe—Ferit imprisoned for disrespecting authority. It was one of many deliberate acts I’d begun committing, testing and growing my power.

“You set him up,” she’d hissed, blade buried in my side, her body pressed against mine in a mockery of an embrace. “He’s rotting in a cell because of your wounded pride.”

My hand had closed around her throat then, too. “Your cousin should have watched his tongue. Be grateful the punishment wasn’t worse.”

“Be grateful I missed your heart,” she’d whispered, twisting the blade?—

I staggered back, the wooden weapon still embedded in my flesh. Instead of rage, something like admiration flickered through me. Even now, facing the heir to darkness itself, she resisted.

“Still trying to reach my heart,” I said, and yanked the stake free with a grimace. Dark blood dripped onto the floor between us. “You always were fearless.”

“You don’t have one,” she gasped, her light magic flaring beneath her skin in defensive spirals. “It’s an empty muscle, and I fucking hate you.”

The defiance in her eyes, the way she stood her ground despite everything—it stirred memories I’d tried to bury. This was the woman who had once challenged me to races across rooftops, who had laughed in the face of danger. The woman I’d fallen in love with precisely because she was unbreakable.

“The feeling is mutual.” I stepped back to give her space. “And I should kill you for this.”

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