Page 22 of Empire of Dark

Dislike him? Check. That I could continually do.

But hate him?

Hate was an emotion that took so much of my energy, it sucked me dry until my insides felt shriveled and cold. I wasn’t naturally inclined to hatred, and the feeling weighed hard in my belly as I fell asleep and then haunted my dreams.

So much so that I was having a hard time stoking my sparks of hatred into a fire every time I saw him.

The worst part about it was that I’d even cracked open the closet and started to wear some of the wardrobe that he’d provided.

I’d worn the dress that first night merely to disarm him. I needed my power back after he made me come with the slightest twitch of his fingers. So I wore the dress to set him off his game, to make him think I was compliant. To make himwantme, forit would be that much better when I denied him. And deny him I had, day after day.

Beyond that first night, I hadn’t touched one article of clothing he’d provided me. Until I did.

Granted, my trip into the enormous closet adjacent to my chambers was a short one.

But managing with just the few items of clothing that I had arrived with had gotten tiresome—and uncomfortable—for washing them in the sink meant I was putting on damp clothes every morning when there were perfectly acceptable sweaters for warmth and comfortable leggings available for me.

While the closet held more clothes than I would ever know what to do with, I’d only snatched a few items of workout wear—some black spandex pants, a few tanks, and three sweaters for the chill in the air. It was summertime, but the altitude meant it was never truly warm, much less hot.

Still, it stung of defeat.

I’d nudged over a bit the line I swore I wouldn’t cross.

An adjusted line, but I’d still held it firmly in front of all the dresses that stuffed the closet. No. I would never go there. Especially because Damen continually suggested through Josie dresses for me to wear.

I would be out of my room, exploring the castle, and then I would come back in and Josie would have laid out on my bed another dress for me to wear. Nope. That would be a step too far. I wasn’t a marionette doll Damon could dress up for his own entertainment.

For the first two days at the castle, I’d hidden in my room, reading, but that had only lasted two days before my skin was crawling and I needed to walk around if nothing else. I couldn’t afford any extra energy getting locked into my body. Plus, exploring the castle allowed me to get my bearings and start snooping about for more information on the Folotto family.

Damen had said no one would bother me in the castle, and he was correct. Anywhere I wandered, I would get polite nods of heads, but that was all. Josie was the only one that talked to me, and truly, that was enough. The woman was a chatterbox. And while I appreciated her cheer and having someone other than Damen to chat with, her ability to talk about a thousand different benign topics was astounding.

She never once slipped and told me anything about Damen or the Folotto family or the castle. No matter how I not so innocently prodded her to do so.

Her allegiance was firmly set.

So far, the most interesting room I’d discovered—actually a long wide hallway that ran the length of the castle on the cliffside—was an art gallery. The walls were filled with portraits and paintings.

Most were medieval paintings and almost all had people in them. Though the art spanned the ages—and the subjects: humans, panthenites, malefics—it was hard to tell which beings were which once people had been captured with paints. Though, in some of the portraits, master painters had managed to capture that specific glint in the eye, or an aura around someone so I could discern the species.

One just had to know what to look for to pick out a malefic or a panthenite in a crowd.

I’d spent hours in the gallery, searching for a likeness to Damen. Searching for family members of his that may have escaped our notice. I had complicated family trees of the Folottos that I’d spent years researching and creating safely hidden away with my belongings at the Academy.

All because I wanted the entire Folotto clan dead. Wiped from the face of the earth.

And then I would come back in here and set fire to the lot of the paintings, turning the memory of all of them to ash.

The gallery was far better than I had imagined it would be for the research. I’d thought I would have to sneak into the study or library and go through tomes of materials before I found anything useful. I still would, of course, but first, I needed proper lay of the land.

The vaulted undercrofts were my destination today. Deep into the bowels of the castle, I’d only just discovered the one staircase down into them yesterday, so I had high hopes to explore them more fully.

I walked down the main hallway that stretched from the north end of the castle to the south end and branched off to all the important rooms on the main level. As I passed by the library, my feet skidded to a stop and I took two steps backward, then leaned to my right to peer into the open door of the large room.

This was new.

When had a child arrived in the castle?

Well, not really a child. More like a teenager. A teenage girl.