Above the Academy, dawn was breaking. Somewhere in the palace, priests were preparing for morning prayers. The court was waking to another golden day.
And I lay in water stained with shadow blood, my body still trembling, knowing that nothing would ever be clean again.
I didn't want it to be.
CHAPTER 8
GIZLI ANLA
Ada
His fingers were inside me when I heard footsteps in the corridor.
"Hakan—" I gasped, trying to pull away, but his other hand pressed flat against my lower back, holding me in place on his lap. It was scandalous, but freeing. The old piano bench creaked beneath our combined weight.
"Ignore it." His voice was rough against my throat, lips brushing the sensitive skin just below my ear and my light was burning through my core. "They won't come in here."
"But—"
He curled his fingers, finding that spot deep inside me that made my vision blur and my magic flare, and the protest died in my mouth. My head fell back, a moan escaping before I could stop it. We were in the abandoned music room—our sanctuary for the past few weeks—and I was straddling him with my skirts hiked up around my waist, my small clothes pushed aside, his handand his shadows between my thighs doing things that should have been sinful.
"That's it," he murmured, his breath hot against my throat. "Let me hear you, starlight."
Three weeks ago, I'd slapped him in the middle of the market and told him I never wanted to see his face again. Every day I reminded myself that he was the monster who'd humiliated me in front of the entire Academy all those years ago, who'd made my first kiss into a cruel joke, who'd called me desperate and pathetic while his friends laughed.
And then came the night in the tower.
I could still feel it sometimes—the ghost of his blood on my skin, dark and warm, slicking between my legs while his fingers moved inside me with a fury that wasn't about pleasure but about claiming. About proving that whatever existed between us was stronger than either of us had the will to deny. His shadow blood had mixed with the wetness of my body, and he'd licked his fingers clean while staring into my eyes, tasting corruption and divinity together, and saidNow I'll taste you for days. Both of us. Together.I'd gone back to my chambers and run a bath and watched his blood dissolve in the water like ink, like shadow, and it wouldn't wash off completely—kept staining my skin in faint traces no matter how hard I scrubbed.
The next morning, I'd expected awkwardness. Distance. The careful retreat that always followed when we got too close. Instead, I found him waiting in the corridor outside the dining hall, and without a word—without preamble or discussion or any of the careful negotiation I'd braced myself for—he took my hand. In front of everyone. Held it loosely, naturally, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. As if his blood hadn'tbeen inside me twelve hours earlier. As if we hadn't shattered something irreparable in that tower and built something new from the wreckage.
Sarp had been the first to see us. He'd paused mid-bite, looked at our joined hands, looked at Hakan's face, and then said, with perfect theatrical gravity, "Finally. I was beginning to think I'd have to fake my own death to speed things along." A pause. "Which, for the record, I was prepared to do. I had a whole speech written."
That was it. No grand declaration. No dramatic confession. Just his hand around mine in a crowded corridor, and the quiet, devastating certainty in his eyes that saidI'm done hiding.
Three weeks since then. Three weeks of stolen moments turning into this: his hands on me, his mouth on me, pushing me to the edge over and over until I was begging.
"Someone could?—"
"No one comes here. No one but us." He bit down on my pulse point, hard enough to bruise, and a whimper escaped me. "Now stop thinking about anything except my fingers and how badly you want to come on them."
The footsteps faded. I stopped caring about anything except the pressure building low in my belly, the obscene wet sounds of his hand working between my thighs, the way his eyes had gone dark and hungry as he watched me fall apart on his lap.
He'd been like this since we'd made our truce in the tower. Every stolen moment turned into this: his hands on me, his mouth on me, pushing me to the edge over and over until I was begging. He hadn't taken me fully yet—I'd asked him to wait until after I'd spoken to my father, until we could do this properly, andhe'd agreed with a groan that told me the restraint was killing him—but that hadn't stopped him from learning my body like a scholar learns ancient texts.
"You're so fucking wet," he breathed against my ear, and I clenched around his fingers at the crude words. "So tight, Ada. You have any idea what it does to me, feeling you like this? Knowing I'm the only one who's ever touched you here?"
I couldn't answer. Could barely think. His thumb was circling that bundle of nerves while two fingers worked inside me, stretching me, preparing me for something we both wanted desperately, while his shadows—those shadows I was still getting used to—caressed my nipples, traced bare skin along my collarbone.
"I think about this constantly," he continued, his voice dropping to something dark and sinful. "Sitting in lectures, walking through the palace, lying in my bed at night—all I can think about is getting my hands on you again. Getting my mouth on you. Spreading you open and tasting every inch of you until you're screaming my name."
My inner walls fluttered around him. He felt it—of course he felt it—and his smile against my throat was pure masculine satisfaction.
"You like that idea, don't you? Like thinking about my tongue inside you. My mouth on your cunt while you pull my hair and beg for more."
"Hakan—" His name came out broken, desperate.
"When I finally get you in my bed," he said, thrusting his fingers deeper, harder, "I'm going to spend hours between your thighs. Going to make you come so many times you forget your ownname. And then—" He twisted his wrist, hitting a spot that made stars explode behind my eyes. "Then I'm going to bury myself so deep inside you that you feel me for days. Going to fuck you until you can't walk, can't think, can't do anything except lie there and take whatever I give you."
