From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

gotten anyy wiser after I learned that he was an Atlantian. I hadn’t seen
what was right in front of myy face.
That everyything trulyy had been a lie.
I reacted without thought, slamming myy fist into his chest. I hit him.
Myy palm stung from the slap I delivered upon his cheek, and he let me. He
took it as I shoved at his shoulders. I screamed at him as tears blurred myy
vision. I hit again and again—
“Stop it.” He caught me byy the shoulders, pulling me to his chest and
folding his arms around me, trapping mine to myy sides. “Stop it, Poppyy.”
“Let me go,” I demanded, myy throat burning.
Myy heart clenched with the kind of anguish I was used to feeling
from others. I almost reached out to him to see if it had radiated from him,
or had erupted from deep inside me, but I stopped.
I will use you.
The pain…the pain was mine. He hadn’t saved me because he cared
for me. He hadn’t promised that no more harm would come to me because
he cared for me. How did I keep forgetting this? Hawke—
Hawke.
That wasn’t even his name. It was Casteel.
And he had an agenda. All of our conversations, everyy time he had
kissed me, touched me, and told me I was brave and strong, that I
intrigued him and was like no one he’d ever met. He did those things not
just under a false persona but also under a false name, to gain myy trust. To
make me lower myy guard around him, all so I would walk out of
Masadonia with him willinglyy and right into a pit of vipers who either
wanted to use me because I was the Maiden, the Chosen—the Queen’s
favorite—or wanted me dead for the veryy same reasons.
I squeezed myy eyyes shut.
He was worse than Jericho and the others who wanted me dead. At
least there were no pretenses with anyy of them. Everyything about Haw—
everyything about Casteel, from his name to the first night at the Red Pearl,
had been a lie designed to garner myy trust.
He’d succeeded, but at what cost?
Ryylan was dead.
Phillips and Airrick and all the guards and Huntsmen were now dead.
Vikter was dead.
Myy parents were dead.