Page 67 of Empire of Dark
Chapter Seventeen
{ DAMEN }
Never had I wanted to strangle her more.
And damn, shewasfast. Faster than she’d ever let on.
Still, I was taller, stronger and my stride was double hers. What she had on me in speed I made up for in pure rage pushing me to keep up with her.
Through the castle’s winding corridors and up the twisting stone staircase of the south tower.
Of course she would lead me here.
At the open doorway to the circular room at the top of the tower, I finally caught her, snaking my arm around her waist and stopping her motion, sending her legs flying out from under her just as she busted into the painting room.
This wasn’t her room to do whatever she damn well pleased with.
It was Rodo’s room.
Rodo’s room.
His room.
Not hers.
She twisted in my hold, grunting, shoving at my arm. While I wanted to lock my other arm around her and squeeze heruntil apologies came flying from her lips, that was something my brothers would do. Something my blood would demand I do.
Instead, I forced my arm away from her waist and dropped her.
She landed more gracefully than I expected and spun to me, a typhoon of raging wind and sea in her green eyes. “What in the hell is wrong with you?”
“What in the hell is wrong with me? What in the hell is wrong with you?” I thundered back. “Taking things that don’t belong to you. Touching things that you shouldn’t touch.”
“Forget the fucking room,” she screamed, her arm swinging out around her. “Didn’t you see what you were doing to Venetia? See what was happening to her? She was afraid of you—terrified.Terrified, Damen.”
That gave me pause.
“What? No. No, she wasn’t scared of me. And she can’t do whatever she wants around here. She?—”
Ada stepped toward me, her face twisted in frustration, her voice still pitched loud and high. “Are you even listening to me? I did this. I took the stuff out of here. And I am also the one that just got you away from your daughter before you set her off. Before she took down this whole fucking tower, this room included. Did you not see it in her eyes? In her hands curling? What she was going to do? What the hell were you thinking? She reacts when she’s frightened—that is when her control is the worst. That is what your shit brothers did to her. And you’re just reinforcing it.”
I heaved a breath, a few of her words finally trickling into my brain. “You wanted me to chase you up here.”
“Of course I did.”
“You’re trying to control me.” I couldn’t temper the growl in my voice.
“I’m not trying to control you—and if you would have listened to bloody reason, then I wouldn’t have had to outmaneuver you. You’re the one that told me how dangerous she can be and now you’re pissed because I listened to you? Because I believed you?”
She spun away from me, walking deeper into the painting room, her right hand rubbing across her face.
Pacing for a moment, her feet finally stopped in front of one of the nearly completed paintings still sitting on an easel across the room.
Her hand dropped from her forehead and she stared at the painting for a long while. At the demons falling from the sky. At the family blissfully unaware of impending doom above them.
“What is this room, Damen?” She asked the question without looking at me.
“It is the past.”