Page 65 of Empire of Dark
Venetia had told me very little of her life before Damen. Bits and pieces and off-handed comments that I’d weaved into a narrative thanks to a healthy dose of my overactive imagination.
What I did know was that the whole first part of her life had been horrendous—torture, starvation, and tidbits of love offered to control her, then taken away. It was as Damen had originally summed it up to me—she’d been forced into living as a wild animal.
It was remarkable, actually, that Damen had made as much progress as he had with her in the few years since he had her.
Venetia started walking around the room, her fingers poking curiously at the clutter of everything painting related strewnabout on every surface. She picked up a fat, short-bristled brush and rolled it in her fingers as she gave me a quick glance. “You’re panthenite. Do you know who my mother is?”
I looked up from the table of paints in glass jars I’d moved to. I could hear the pain etched into her voice. “Your father has never told you who your mother was?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know either. I haven’t been privy to any of the panthenite dealings with breeding in more than a century.”
“Because you’ve been hiding out at the Academy?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
While I wanted to shut down where this conversation had turned as quickly as possible, I knew honesty was the only thing that resonated with teenagers like Venetia. They just wanted the truth. Not platitudes. Not sugary language. Not false encouragement. Truth.
I picked up one of the metal paint tubes, the smears along it telling me it was crimson paint, and I tried to open the cover, even though the likelihood of the paint still being useable was poor. It was the type of tube I hadn’t seen in near a century. “Because some bad shit happened to me and I lost someone I thought I’d have for the entirety of my life. After it happened, I didn’t know who I was or if I could even survive, so I hid. Hid away from everything. I had to learn how to control the pain I was left with so I wasn’t out of control.”
Her big amber-brown eyes were intense on me. “Your head?”
I nodded. “My head.”
“How did you get it to stop? The pain? My pain collects in my arms and hands and before I can control it, it just slips out. That’s why my father hates me.”
My lips pulled inward and I bit them, trying to hide my intake of breath as I considered my words. “I don’t think he would havespent as much time as he has during the last years with you if he hated you.” I moved across the room to her. “Think about how you were when he first got you and think about how you are now. You have control now, where you had none before.”
“Not enough control.” She turned away from me, dropping the brush in her hands onto the table. “So he’s given up on me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He doesn’t try anymore.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t know what to do with me. That’s what he said after I tore down half the castle.”
She almost killed three of his other children, but now wasn’t exactly the time for me to point that out. “Just because he doesn’t know what to do with you doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. It doesn’t mean that he has lost all hope with you.”
“Whatever.” Her eyes rolled to the ceiling in a practiced dismissal move and she turned away from me, her arm sweeping around her. “So what do we need?”
End of discussion. I got it.
I surveyed the room. “Canvases and brushes. It looked like there were a lot of unused canvases stacked in that area.” I pointed across the large circular room to the aged linen canvases stacked against a wall. “And I was hoping some of the paints in these jars were still good, though I have doubts. I don’t know how old some of this stuff is. Maybe we can find some pigments and we can make paint if we can find linseed oil and turpentine down in the undercrofts.”
Venetia walked over to the shorter canvases against the wall. “You’re really going to make me paint something?”
“Yes.” I noted her sour face. “Humor me. We’ll call it a lesson on color theory.”
But really, I just wanted Venetia to hold a paint brush in her hands and to drip color across canvas—an experience everyone should have, no matter how much or how little talentthey actually had. Magic happened in one’s brain when creating something out of nothing. Little kids loved to paint for a reason, and the pure joy in sparking simple creativity was something everyone should feel at least once.
With an exaggerated sigh, she picked up four of the canvases that had never been used. “Is this enough?”
“That will work.”
“I don’t want to have to walk up here again.”
“Noted.” I flashed her a smile and grabbed an apron hanging from the back of a chair, laid it on the wooden seat and started to grab a number of the glass containers of pigment that I hoped would still be stable. Then I moved around the space, picking up a slew of brushes that were useable and two palettes. I plunked them down onto the apron and then pulled up the ends of the cloth to bundle all the tools.