Page 35 of Empire of Dark
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Her green eyes lifted to me. Focus in them, as solid as the day I met her. “What? Where did it…where did it go?” she asked, breathless, her hand moving up to clutch onto my left forearm by the side of her head. Her fingernails dug into my skin, in her desperation to know what had just happened.
“Empath. I can make you feel pain or pleasure.” I stared hard at her face, waiting for the focus in her eyes to veer off again. “I can also wipe those things away from you. That was an easy thing for me to do.”
She nodded, still stunned, and she dropped her grip from me to take a step away. Breaking my contact with her, she stumbled.
I grabbed her shoulders, righting her.
Her head shook as she looked up at me. Her eyes not so much telling me to back off, as looking at me for answers to clear the confusion shimmering in her eyes. She took another step away from me, her hand going out to the castle wall. Her fingernailsdug into the limestone as she turned and leaned back against the wall, still trying to get her bearings back about her.
A lesser one of my kind would take advantage of her in this moment—in her weakened state. But I was not a lessor kind.
Ada would come to me on her own volition. I just had to have patience.
“You…what you did to that man.” Her eyes closed as her hands went onto her hips and she took a deep breath. She’d tied the bottom of her black tank to the side and three little beads of sweat slipped down the tight skin of her belly with every breath she heaved. Her head fell back against the stone. “You sliced off his arm without even a thought.”
“My thought was that he was about to hurt you.”
A gargled chuckle left her throat and her head swung back and forth, her eyes still closed. “You didn’t even ask. You didn’t give him a chance.”
“When it comes to your safety, there is no chance, there is no asking.”
Her eyes opened and her look slowly dropped to me. “Why? I am nothing to you. A means to an end.”
“While you are here, you are mine. I would never let harm come to something that is mine.”
Her stare sank into mine, confusion still sending swirls of clouds into the green of her irises.
I glanced back in the direction of Jacob, though I couldn’t see him through the hedge of the maze. “If it assuages the matter, the man will be well compensated for his injury.”
Her look went incredulous. “There is proper compensation for losing an arm?”
“He will not have to work again in his life.” I shrugged. “So yes. He’ll think it proper.”
“Not that he had a choice.”
“He chose to work for me long ago. He knows the danger. He’s witnessed the danger.”
She shook her head. “A man like that—he doesn’t want tonotwork. He’ll likely go mad without purpose.”
“I’ve already made a mental note to get him a prosthetic once he’s healed. A normal one, but he’ll probably want a sharp menacing hook as well, because he’s that sort. Any options he sees fit. He can move back into the line when he’s ready.”
“A hook?” The words coughed out, then her bottom lip jutted upward and her stare left me, her gaze shifting to the ground. “Just when I was beginning to think of you differently. As different than your kind. And then this happens. True nature.”
“I think you’re forgetting your part in this.”
“My part?” Her head snapped up as her voice lifted into a screech.
I gave her one nod. “What were you even doing out there with Jacob?”
Her jaw slammed closed.
“Well?”
“I…I have to make this up to him. Somehow. I didn’t mean…didn’t imagine this could…” Heavy regret in her eyes, she looked across the expanse of the grounds to the labyrinth where on the other side Jacob was probably still sitting on the ground.
Regret I didn’t quite understand. Regret was something to be squashed out. Never allowed to see the light of day, for it only created weakness.