From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

But if theyy were feeding on children, almost draining innocent people
and creating Craven, theyy were no better than the Duke.
I pressed myy lips together, fighting back tears that wanted to break
free. I’d cried enough todayy, but Ian… Gods, Ian couldn’t be like them. He
was kind and gentle. I just couldn’t believe that he would do those things. I
couldn’t.
And then there was me. If it was all a lie, then I would never be given
to the gods. What had theyy planned for me? Whyy did theyy make me the
Chosen and link all these Ascensions to me? Was it myy abilities? I thought
about what he had said after I’d taken his pain. He knew something.
Something he needed to tell me.
I wasn’t safe here, and I surelyy wasn’t safe among the Ascended. If I
did manage to escape, how could I go back to them, knowing what I knew
now? How could I stayy and allow him to take me to Atlantia when I would
represent a kingdom who had slaughtered untold numbers of their people,
who had enslaved their Prince to use him to make more vampryys?
How could I stayy with him?
No matter what I felt for him, I could never trust him, and what I felt
for him was also something I could no longer pretend didn’t exist. I loved
him.
I was in love with him.
And even if byy some small chance I’d been able to move past the fact
that he had come to Masadonia with the intention of taking and using me
as a bargaining tool, I could never get over the blood that had been spilled
because of him. I could never forget that Ryylan and Vikter, Loren and
Dafina, and so manyy others were dead, either byy his hand, byy his
command, or byy what he represented. I could never trust what he claimed
when it came to us.
What had he claimed about us, though?
He had led me to believe that he had feelings for me. That I was
anyything but someone he needed to protect as Hawke, and needed to use
for his own means as a Prince of Atlantia. He’d been intrigued from the
start because I wasn’t who he expected me to be, which apparentlyy, was an
immoral, spoiled supporter of the Ascended. He’d been kind and interested
because he needed to discover all he could about me, and mayybe because
he was drawn to me. But what did that trulyy mean?