Page 102 of Empire of Dark
Her head continued to shake and her hands flew up, clasping over her ears.
I grabbed both of her wrists, pulling them away from her head. She was strong, I was stronger. “Venny, tell me—tell what is happening right now.”
“It’s him.” The words squeezed out of her mouth, a horrified whisper. “It’s him.”
I looked back to the hallway and the door of Damen’s study. “Who? Who?”
“Him.” Her eyes squeezed shut so hard, it had to be painful. Then her eyelids popped open. “It’s him.”
Looking into her amber brown eyes, I knew it in an instant.
Him.
The malefic that had done this to her.
Him.
The one that had tortured her. Treated her like an animal. Turned her into a monster. The one that still haunted her dreams—that made her scream in her sleep. I’d heard it, overand over at night. I’d even taken to going into her room and waking her up. But she would never talk about it. Never talk about him.
And I had never pushed her for details. I knew full well of not being able to talk about things I forced myself every day to try to forget.
All I knew was that he was one of Damen’s brothers, but I’d assumed it was one of the three that had been killed five years ago when Damen got Venetia back.
How in the hell could Damen ever let that bastard set foot in the castle? Ever set foot near Venetia?
Her eyes suddenly glazed over, unfocused, and her look shifted off of me as her body began to shake from her limbs all the way through her torso. She yanked free her sword hanging from the scabbard draped off her belt slung low about her hips. “I’m going to kill him—tear him and everything in his path down.”
I shook her. “No. We don’t know why he is here. We need to go back out and train—you need to hit me with that sword, harness all that energy running through you right now.”
“No. I can’t go back out there—not where he can see me—he’ll know I’m here. I need to kill him before he knows what is coming.”
“How are you going to do that?” I hissed in a low voice, desperate to not draw attention from inside Damen’s study. “All of your uncles have had hundreds of years of fighting behind them. You cannot beat him, not yet.”
She knocked my hands off her arms. “Then I’ll bring the fucking lava up—I need to kill him.” It glowed in her eyes, how deadly serious and desperate she was. Manic in her need to end her uncle.
The sword dropped from her hand and the shaking in her arms started to vibrate. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
Shit.
She was about to bring down the whole castle—and everyone in it.
“No. You’re not doing this.” I picked up her sword from the floor and grabbed her arm, yanking her from her spot. Dragging her with all my might, I took her in the opposite direction of Damen’s study. “You do this and you’ll destroy everything around us—this entire place and everyone in it. You need to hold it in.”
The undercrofts.
I ran, dragging her along with me even as I could feel the energy in her seeping out, becoming unstable. Chaotic.
Every nerve along my back spiked, frantic to get Venetia somewhere safe and away from that monster in Damen’s study.
Down the tight stone staircase. Down. Down.
Until we were in the undercrofts. Running.
If I remembered right, there was a large storage room on the opposite end from where we were. Space to swing swords. But hidden away.
Our feet clomping on the wet stones underfoot, my breath panting, a sudden warble of a scream stopped me in my tracks.
I looked to the left at the small storage room—much like the one I had hidden myself in weeks ago. The creaky old wooden plank door was ajar and inside of the room, two men were chained to a wall.