Page 103 of Empire of Dark

One with cuts all along his stomach, his innards starting to seep out. The other bleeding profusely from the sockets where his eyes had once been.

Torture.

The most vicious kind. They were both mostly dead, but just enough alive to feel every ounce of the pain.

In Damen’s castle.

Damen’s castle.

Damen.

He’d done this.

He. Had. Done. This.

Vicious torture.

What hell had I stumbled into? Damen’s castle had—until a few minutes ago—been a safe haven, but had somehow just turned into a vile house of horrors.

I blinked, shaking my head, and realized Venetia stood next to me, her stare desperate on me, looking for me to make this right.

When none of this was right.

Not Damen’s brother here.

Not these half-dead men.

Not what was seeping out of Venetia’s hands.

Unless it had all been an illusion.

Everything Damen had done, everything he had set around me. It’d been an illusion that was dissolving with the slightest shift in the wind.

The shake in Venetia’s limbs had grown so strong, it vibrated up my arm.

“What do we do, Ada? What do we do?” Panic made her voice squeak and she looked down at her hands. Green sparks of energy had started to flow from her palms, even though her hands had curled into balls like she was trying to draw the energy back in but couldn’t. “I don’t think I can stop it.”

I ran. Ran, dragging her the rest of the distance to the storeroom and then spun, shoving her sword into her hand and drawing out my own. “Lift your sword. We train.”

She looked at me, horror pulsating in her eyes. She glanced back over her shoulder.

“No, Venny. You don’t look anywhere but at me. Me. Just me.” I advanced on her, my sword swinging, praying I coulddraw all her chaotic energy toward me instead of at the ground. “Strike me.Now.We train like our lives depend on it.”

Because they did.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

{ DAMEN }

The clanging reached my ears.

In my study, I glanced with feigned interest at Cletus as he ranted on about our brother, Eustice. The travesty that our brother had been killed by the Genora family. What a loss Eustice was. How I’d failed our family for allowing it to happen. How I’d been too wrapped up in my offspring and not concerned enough about the fate of the malefics. How I was worthless.

Word must have been slow in getting to Cletus about Eustice, for as long as it had taken for him to come to me. Which either meant he hadn’t known about Eustice’s plans to upend me, or he’d waited to make it look like that. One was stupid if they took anything Cletus had to say at face value.

On and on he railed. Once a maniac, always a maniac. Cletus was my fourth eldest brother and the most unhinged one of the rancid lot.

At least I knew now we’d covered our tracks well enough at Glint—or rather, Sylas had covered our tracks. I owed him for that.